Final Fantasy 16 Won’t Have Characters of Color
Final Fantasy 16 Producer Naoki Yoshida has informed the gaming public that the game will not feature Black characters or people of color due to medieval realism. According to him, it will not be realistic geography-wise. After all, the game has a European setting during the medieval period.
“Diversity in entertainment media has become a much-discussed topic as of late,” Yoshida said. “Our design concept from the earliest stages of development has always heavily featured medieval Europe incorporating historical, cultural, political, and anthropological standards that were prevalent at the time.”
With that said, Yoshida believes that Final Fantasy 16 will not have a realistic feel for its players if it had an “ethnically diverse” cast. However, Yoshida may be wrong on this front. Fans have pointed out that there were people of color in medieval Europe.
Still, Final Fantasy 16 is a game and should not be treated like as if it was someone’s thesis. Who will be and will not be part of the game solely depends on its developers.
Moreover, this is actually not the first time for games to commit to some form of realism. In fact, devs used this as a reason many times to justify the lack of diversity. They also used it as an explanation as to why many fantasy RPGs do not feature any female characters. Many fans found this odd considering that such titles have massive dragons—but no women.
Devs are well aware that incorporating ethnic diversity into the game is immensely important. However, they seem to have a limit of how much of it they are willing to incorporate. “An over-incorporation into this single corner of a much larger world could end up causing a violation of those narrative boundaries we originally set for ourselves,” Yoshida added. “The story we are telling is fantasy but it is also rooted in reality.”
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