A PoC Scion please? There is so much untapped potential here.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Being black is about more than just skin color, as well. If they added a Scion and gave him/her dark skin, I really don't think that would be enough to check the box on the "cultural diversity" list.

I would humbly suggest that you've missed the point.

[WhiteArchmage]

I know this a troll thread but... the OP reminds me of another thread that got nuked into oblivion when discussion started to center around the BLM and it just went downhill from there. I don't mean the THEME reminds me, I mean ACTUAL WORDS.

P.S. Just to echo and expand what other posters said: Even if the game is made by a japanese company, it does not make the characters Asian. There's a thing called "mukokuseki" which is basically a penchant for bland "featureless" features so character aren't one specific nationality or ethnicity... whoever this only goes for features with very similar skintones which seems to default (in anime and videogames) as white. Any race with some melanin is instead "ambiguously brown" and could be South Asian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, Native/First Nations, or a lighter-skinned Black. You can see it in the game where Hien's skintone isn't that much different from other, Eorzean, characters (and the unfortunates of Yda and Minfillia, both Ala Mhigan women who should be Highlanders from an Arabic-inspired culture, are instead white, blonde, Midlanders; which is slightly excused by the fact that when they were introduced there were NO Highlander women models).

[MikkoAkure]

I'd say they're pretty damn close in shape. Obviously not 1:1, but much closer than I originally thought they were tbh.

Even the basic layout of forest and desert is fairly close. Ul'dah, Ala Mhigo, Gridania and Sharlayans colony all shift over to the map of Africa reasonably accurately, even Ishgard sort of makes sense, if you picture the Sahara as a frozen desert instead of a sandy one.

The main differences seem to be the lack of mountain ranges along the west/south of the Sahara, and Africa's complete lack of a sea of floating islands

Madagascar was just shifted to the other side of the continent.

Posting in a troll thread, but just because the shape of the continent in a fantasy game looks like Africa, doesn't make that Africa. The local Hyur have legit Celtic/Germanic names, Elezen have French-esque names, and Roegadyn have Germanic/Scandinavian names and their own Scandinavian-inspired language. The clothing everyone wears is very European. Ul'dah has some Middle-East cues, but so does Thavnair, which more classically fits that theme. Ala Mhigo feels a lot like Turkey/Ottoman Empire in their design ideas. Nothing is 1-for-1, and this is a fantasy world so it doesn't matter too much anyway. Their leaning into real world places (far east, near east, far west) helps connect players to the game's background, but I feel like it also weakens the story when you just cut and paste real life places and cultures into a fantasy world.

[Hezkezl]

Let's stop feeding the troll guys, c'mon you're better than this...

[Jennah]

I know, right? We've still never really had an Au Ra, Viera, or Hrothgar Scion!

[Derio]

Considering my character is PoC and is a scion, and is the main character. I pretty sure we are good.

[Jandor]

Posting in a troll thread, but just because the shape of the continent in a fantasy game looks like Africa, doesn't make that Africa.

Likewise, some of the city-states being inspired by Europe doesn't make Eorzea into 'Fantasy Europe'.

Eorzea doesn't just share the shape of Africa, it fits in the same place geographically, and it fits in the same place thematically, as the last major continent to face invasion by a technologically advanced Empire that has notions of 'bringing civilization to the savages'.

The clothing everyone wears is very European. Ul'dah has some Middle-East cues, but so does Thavnair, which more classically fits that theme.

The clothing in Ul'dah doesn't seem very European to me, what with everyone rocking turbans on their heads, not to mention that Miqote dancer gear. What little we know of old Ala Mhigan fashion doesn't exactly seem very European to me either, like Lyse's fancy dress.

Nothing is 1-for-1, and this is a fantasy world so it doesn't matter too much anyway. Their leaning into real world places (far east, near east, far west) helps connect players to the game's background, but I feel like it also weakens the story when you just cut and paste real life places and cultures into a fantasy world.

The lack of cut and paste from the real world is why I like Eorzea, it's a good mix from a wide variety of sources. A bit of Africa, a bit of the Middle East, a bit of Europe, all mixed together in a way I find interesting and unique.

My point isn't that Eorzea is 'Fantasy Africa' (although it definitely has more than a hint of the old "dark continent" trope about it,) it's that Eorzea is not 'Fantasy Europe'. Some parts of it are, but other parts of it clearly aren't, and summing the whole place up it as if it was and ignoring all the other elements that have gone into it does it quite a disservice IMHO.

Now if you want to say the Far East is just lifted from our world and dumped into the game, then go nuts. It's obviously not exactly 1-for-1, but when thought of as a follow up to Eorzea I found the region to be a bit disappointing tbh.

[Packetdancer]

I'd say that Europe is missing from the world map, as things stand.

Eorzeas shape and location is much reminiscent of Africa than Europe, it also happens to be a wild and untamed land full of "backwards" tribes that are being invaded by a much more technologically advanced Empire that sees them as inferior.

Yeah, this is a troll thread, but there's LORE being discussed and I'm demonstrably incapable of shutting up when that happens, so...

It's worth noting that map you embedded is literally just the northern part of the world... and not even the entire northern part. We have the New World to the west of Aldenard (much like you have the Americas west of Europe in our world), which seems to bear out some inspiration from the real world, yes. But there's also a whole giant continent to the south of Aldenard: Meracydia. And from what we know of Meracydia, I don't think Antarctica is a good analogy! (Though, to be fair, Allag did supposedly leave large swaths of it something of a wasteland...)

So while there's some obvious inspiration that's taken from the real-world map in laying out the map of Hydaelyn—and I admit, I've wondered before if there once was a landmass where Europe would be in what is now the Northern Empty, the expanse of ocean with only a few scattered islands, and it was destroyed in a previous Umbral Calamity—I don't think there is a 1:1 mapping... nor do I think there's really intended to be anything remotely like one.

Sure, you could argue that Thanalan and Ul'dah take some inspiration from Morocco, for instance—and maybe a little bit from Egypt?—as well as pulling from Middle Eastern folklore in general.

But Gridania seems much more the "mysterious woods" of European tales (even moreso back in 1.0 before the aetheric imbalance of the Calamity robbed the elementals of some of their powers, when they were still this ominous, ineffable force that could make you vanish with a thought if you provoked the greenwrath), drawing from the same sort of folklore that J.R.R. Tolkien took inspiration from in creating Lothlórien and Mirkwood.

And I'd argue that Limsa is almost like a Mediterranean island town (I wanna go back to Santorini...), while Vylbrand in general feels kind of like the Iberian region of Spain.

Dravania is downright Scandinavian, what with the names the various dragons have.

Coerthas used to strike me a bit like Crusader-era Europe in 1.0, specifically the Gothic period starting in the mid-12th-century. (Now it's like... Crusader-era Europe with a constant Russian winter. THANKS BAHAMUT.)

Gyr Abania/Ala Mhigo feel a little bit like parts of Turkey; the Peaks remind me somewhat of Cappadocia, while the Lochs strike me as a little bit like Pamukkale.

So I don't think Eorzea is meant to be Africa, much less all of Aldenard being Africa. In fact, I think the Eorzean cultures actually pull from a surprising variety of places; the classical China/Khanate Mongolia/isolationist Japan -> Doma/Steppe/Hingashi mapping was almost disappointing to me in comparison. Yes, they probably pulled from various real-world locations, but most writers/artists do that; pulling a little bit from a real-world location means you can make something feel a bit more grounded and cohesive, recognizable to readers in our world. (And makes it easier to find art references.)

And while you can maybe argue that Eorzea serves a similar storytelling purpose as a 'dark continent' or 'unknown land' from the point of view of the Imperials regarding Eorzeans as 'savages', I feel like trying to say it's intended that way is somewhat subverted by the fact that Ilsabard is covered up by clouds in all of the maps we've seen, making it a literal 'dark continent' within the narrative, as no one seems to really know what happens within the boundaries of the Empire, and only the bravest Eorzeans dare venture past those borders.

[Shougun]

Not a Scion but having really wanted some new Chocobo content I thought it fun if they sort of revived Sazh from FFXIII, baby chick hidden in the fro. This time give him two daughters or something, one of them can be focused on some of the new chocobo gathering content and raising, and the other on the new chocobo battle content. His wife can be Chocolina . . . :3

Not picking him because of his color but because he was one of the few characters I liked in FFXII and I always think of his chocobo chick on his head when thinking of chocobos now XD (didn't hate most characters, but he was on the 'liked' side which happens to be smaller than the dislike and ambivalent list).

With the family's help you start with a micro chocobo beast tribe mechanic (through the family they share knowledge / items), but later in the quest progression you find chocobo paradise together where the rest of the content expands.

[Lihtleita]

breaking news there has never been a dark skinned person in europe before the year 1950. The moors? I dont know her.