how well did SE represent your cultures in dawntrail?

[IvoryHawk]

Meracydia is going to be weird. So far what we know of it is Africa mixed with Australia since it’s got west African masks, which doctors, Egyptian pyramids, Anubis monsters, and hippopotamuses. But it also has kangaroos.

Hey maybe we will have an influx of Aboriginal people, SE might make it their expac

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Cultural representation should not be this important in a completely fantasy setting, at least not in the way most people seem to be thinking about it. They of course should use inspiration from real cultures to be able to build a realistic-sounding one, to know how they developed through their struggles and what usually comes from it, how the people behave based on their environment and development, NOT to make the players "feel represented", not to match the real world 1:1 like it is. The more they try to make this close to reality and borrow directly from real world settings, the harder it is for them to get it right. In Dawntrail, it feels like they were focusing on the wrong details of it.
It should be a world-building resource for a good story setting.

Also, I don't think they were worried about the exact positions of the countries in the map when they first planned Eorzea?

In a complete fantasy setting? No. But this is the game with Not Medieval France, Not Texas and Not India x2. The developers decided this. Not the players.

[AurisNix]

Fellow Urqopacha resident here (South America Andean Mountains) (Bolivia - Peru) if anything it felt cliche as hell I do understand what they were trying to do but its super cliche, specifically about the Pelu Pelu and their merchant tactics is not often seen in my country they are more common in other south america countries I was lucky enough to visit and they are not seen with good eyes either (they are sometimes depicted as annoying and scammers). If anything I would have love to see more depth in the representation, I think only Kozama Uka (Brasil) had the best representation compared with the others

Idk much about India but I felt Radz At Han had way more depth and was very well depicted in a general way, anyways at the end of the day is just a game but I think that DT had the diversity as one of their main pillars and they should have done a way better job in culture representation instead of just tourist cliche stuff

[ApolloGenX]

Fellow Urqopacha resident here (South America Andean Mountains) (Bolivia - Peru) if anything it felt cliche as hell I do understand what they were trying to do but its super cliche, specifically about the Pelu Pelu and their merchant tactics is not often seen in my country they are more common in other south america countries I was lucky enough to visit and they are not seen with good eyes either (they are sometimes depicted as annoying and scammers). If anything I would have love to see more depth in the representation, I think only Kozama Uka (Brasil) had the best representation compared with the others

Idk much about India but I felt Radz At Han had way more depth and was very well depicted in a general way, anyways at the end of the day is just a game but the I think that DT had the diversity as one of their main pillars and they should have done a way better job in culture representation instead of just tourist cliche stuff

Yes, I felt like Radz At Han was more respectful in the presentation of many cultural aspects and DT was like going to a cheesy SA restaurant in Japan....

[chizLemons]

In a complete fantasy setting? No. But this is the game with Not Medieval France, Not Texas and Not India x2. The developers decided this. Not the players.

I don't think they had the same mindset with "Not Medieval France". Ishgard is a perfect example of how the focus was on world-building instead of cultural representation.
It very clearly borrows from real life locations and history, but it's much more focused on making them believable. It shows us how the people live, how they think and behave, how they interact with the rest of the world. It feels like a much more real place than Not-whatever-is-in-Dawntrail. The architecture, food, clothing etc, we noticed naturally while interacting with the people, and that made it believable and not forced.
Dawntrail's focus was to show us very direct, tangible paralels to the real world counterpart. It almost feels like a school field trip that wanted me to teach that there are alpacas, mezcal and mate in Urqopatcha, but the people are very badly represented as one-dimensional traders, making it feel very stereotypical and shallow. They also shy away from showing not-so-great aspects of their people or any inner conflict, while every culture from Eorzea before that was complex and layered, and it mirrored their real-life inspiration counterparts, while not trying to make it a obvious 1:1 comparison of "we are trying hard to represent this culture".

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I don't think they had the same mindset with "Not Medieval France". Ishgard is a perfect example of how the focus was on world-building instead of cultural representation.
It very clearly borrows from real life locations and history, but it's much more focused on making them believable. It shows us how the people live, how they think and behave, how they interact with the rest of the world. It feels like a much more real place than Not-whatever-is-in-Dawntrail. The architecture, food, clothing etc, we noticed naturally while interacting with the people, and that made it believable and not forced.
Dawntrail's focus was to show us very direct, tangible paralels to the real world counterpart. It almost feels like a school field trip that wanted me to teach that there are alpacas, mezcal and mate in Urqopatcha, but the people are very badly represented as one-dimensional traders, making it feel very stereotypical and shallow. They also shy away from showing not-so-great aspects of their people or any inner conflict, while every culture from Eorzea before that was complex and layered, and it mirrored their real-life inspiration counterparts, while not trying to make it a obvious 1:1 comparison of "we are trying hard to represent this culture".

But was that due to their attempt at representation or the horrifically bad writing? Nothing felt like a real life version of anything, especially the characters. People don't act this way. Societies aren't run this way. Nations aren't built this way. That would have all be true whether there were tacos or not. Like maybe they were so afraid of making South America look bad that they had a guy conquer two continents of warring tribes with banana leaves and vibes, but they were fine making Not Japan pretty chill about sex trafficking. I honestly don't know what happened.

[Kaecilius]

I'm South American but from a part of Yok Tural that hasn't been visited yet, so can't really talk about specifics. I had some fun hearing accents that I recognize (even if the distribution made little sense; People from the same area would have different accents), and I'm really amused by the idea that most people are going to immediately mispronounce mate. Other than that, I appreciate that at least someone recognized the concept that Latin America is a ton of different cultures instead of one amorphous blob that speaks Spanish.

And thaaaat's about it with the positives. Cultures felt shallow and undercooked. Not surprising, considering they wanted to shove so many different cultures in one expansion, so it all came out as a Planet of the Hats trope. You're a Pelu Pelu? You care about trade, alpacas and mezcal and you WILL dress like absolutely everyone else, except for the one NPC that is color-coded different so we can recognize her. You're a Hanu Hanu? REEDS.

They understood that a continent will have different cultures, but they didn't understand that a culture will have different interests within the citizenship, or they didn't have the time/resources to go in-depth on them.

[Cyllia]

Some people really have nothing better to do lmao
Why do you or anyone care about this lol could just play the game and be like cool and idk just ignore it.

I don't remember any zone names, do you know why? It's because this is a gear grind, treadmill game mixed with memorizing patterns and rotations.

Nobody cares who represents what or how a zone looks lol pretty sad if you do. Get gear, get ilvl, kill boss forever and ever. At the end of the road you live in DF or PF anyways at the end game hub until next epac. But yes let's worry about something nobody cares about when they log in, useless thread

[Skyclaw726]

All I want from the next expansion is for the main villain to have a really thick Welsh accent. I would die for that, they could mess up the rest of Welsh/Celtic/Galic culture for all I care just give me cosmic horror Rhod Gilbert.

[lolnotacat]

All I want from the next expansion is for the main villain to have a really thick Welsh accent. I would die for that, they could mess up the rest of Welsh/Celtic/Galic culture for all I care just give me cosmic horror Rhod Gilbert.

Listen, we had it bad enough with incomprehensible names with 7.0. We don't need it for 8.0 as well.