Quote Originally Posted by Tatiana View Post
I want a more diverse cast in the next expansion...There's almost no Hroth or Viera cast members in the main story, it seems like new characters are always an elf or a lizard.
They honestly could have had added a couple in the cast this expansion. No diss against the other races, but let's be real here:
In 5.X, Yoshida implied that adding NPCs from the two most recent races would not be feasible, as it wouldn't fully reflect the demographic established by the lore team. That being that Hrothgar were essentially concentrated only to Bozja, whereas while Viera were free to roam, they were few and far between, and Male Viera would have virtually no prominence due to them being even more isolationist than females.
Hrothgar NPCs appearing in Garlemald makes sense, as they were there primarily so there'd be a focus on the people that got conquered by Garlemald and were now integrated into their society.
Sharlayan stood out like a sore thumb when not only is one of the most prominent characters in there a Male Viera, we then have the SGE quests being all about another Sharlayan male Viera. Where's the rarity? It being a hotpot of different ethnicities begs some questioning, as while it would make sense for Eorzeans who escaped with Nyunkrepf to be diverse, how all the other non-Eorzean races managed to be so widespread in what's essentially a rather isolationist state is striking.
All the while, female Viera have no new character introduced that has any plot prominence, and Hrothgars only have the one voiceless and forgettable NPC in Garlemald that's "mean to the natives".

A waste.

We could have had anything else in Radz-at-Han, but we didn't. We had the usual Hyur and... Raen? Sure, they explain this, but just replace Raen with literally any other race, and it would fit. There's no real reason for Square Enix to hide these other races, as they can quite easily come up with lore reasons for them to show up elsewhere. Square can come up with whatever excuse they need, there's no need to tell us players that we won't see them "because the lore wills it". They make the lore. And they're not being very consistent at following it.

I do wish that the new foray into the Thirteenth and potential developments for the First add more diversity to our main roster. It doesn't have to be Hrothgar or Viera, it can be Roegadyn and Lalafell. I just mention the former two because they're the ones with the lowest representation in the Source, and it would do wonders to boost their popularity and make use of otherwise interesting races.

Them recycling Krile sounds great on paper, as it would offer Krile a bit more plot permanence and express her skills better... but that's all it is: recycling. Square has all these wonderful ideas on the backburner. They're just benching them "because lore".