Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[Magic-Mal]

This is not America, it is not japan, it is not France, it is Eorzea.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

Damn. I can hardly tell the difference

[Magic-Mal]

Damn. I can hardly tell the difference

Neither can I

I must say, conveniently forgetting feudal Japan? Clever move.

This game takes place in Kugane too.

[Iscah]

Taoism, from the glamour. Angels and devils, Christianity.

Unless they talk about those things in ways that clearly link them to their real-world origins, they exist in the game world, and it makes more sense to "explain them" as such. Otherwise everything in the game that also exists in the real world is a real-world reference!

I'll admit, naming the "Taoist" set seems like a direct reference, although you could theorise that the same philosophy exists in-world (just replace 'China' with Doma or Nagxia or wherever they want to set it).

The angel and demon sets are, to our perspective, based on stylised figures from Christianity, but that doesn't necessarily require the in-world creator of the costume to be aware of those concepts. Maybe there's a parallel concept somewhere in Eorzean religion, or maybe someone just said "hey, wouldn't it be cool to make a coat with giant bird wings on it?"

In any case, since they only exist as cash shop items, I don't feel like they necessarily even exist in game lore.

EDIT TO ADD: Having remembered that, of course, demons (ie. voidsent) do exist in-world, I went looking in the lorebook bestiary to see if there were any that particularly looked like the glamour designs. There's the Blackguard encountered in the Void Ark (a feather-winged knight) and also for the angelic side of things, the enchanted statue Kuribu, guardian of Amdapor. So records of the Amdapor-Mhach "War of the Magi" could serve as game-world inspiration for the costumes.

[image]

Yes, that's Kugane. In Hingashi. What's this Japan you're talking about? Nobody there has heard of it.

[Enla]

Yes, that's Kugane. In Hingashi. What's this Japan you're talking about? Nobody there has heard of it.

This. While think you'd be hard pressed not to link Kugane itself to Bakumatsu-Meiji era Japan with it's Shinsengumi analogue in the Sekiseigumi, closed port, and Meiji inspired building aesthetics in the diplomatic quarter - at the end of the day it's /not/ Japan. Japan never had airships. Japan never managed to keep it's autonomy in only having one port open and the rest of the country closed. Nor did it have turtle and fish people running around and causing a ruckus either. Kugane, Doma, and the Steppe all follow the self same tradition this MMO has of taking inspiration from other places and using it to influence the design of set pieces with inspiration from Japan, China, and Tibet as well as Mongolia on frank display. Yet that inspiration doesn't mean that they are precise analogues, anymore than Ul'dah is an analogue for the Middle East or Ishgard for Europe.

Just because some of the references are more overt does not mean that the lore that differentiates those places is any less important to consider. Especially since Final Fantasy has a history of taking real world places, mythology, and many more things and twisting it to suit it's purposes for the narrative and making it something entirely new.

[MaloraYuki]

Ya that doesn’t mean it’s Japan. Thats kugane it has its own lore. Funny how people can’t separate real life from a game.

[Skivvy]

Ya that doesn’t mean it’s Japan. Thats kugane it has its own lore. Funny how people can’t separate real life from a game.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that SE has taken some pretty big inspiration from Japan as well as Eastern culture in general with Stomblood. Of course the game has it's own lore, but then we see Japanese housing structures all over, kimonos, Vietnamese clothing / food options, and I'm sure plenty of other items I'm neglecting to mention.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that SE has taken some pretty big inspiration from Japan as well as Eastern culture in general with Stomblood. Of course the game has it's own lore, but then we see Japanese housing structures all over, kimonos, Vietnamese clothing / food options, and I'm sure plenty of other items I'm neglecting to mention.

While you’re right that Kugane and Hingan culture have derived inspirations from real-world Japan (and other Asian countries), that still doesn’t mean that those places ARE Japan, something people in this thread seem to be conflating. They’re part of a made-up realm, regardless of where they got their inspirations from. A lot of things in this game have taken inspirations from a myriad of different cultures, religions, mythologies, and folklores, but that doesn’t mean that they hold the same equivalence in the world of the game.

It’s incorrect to post screenshots of Kugane and say “This is Japan!” when it’s clearly not. Kugane may be inspired by aspects of Japanese and Asian culture, but it is far from Japan proper.

[Skivvy]

While you’re right that Kugane and Hingan culture have derived inspirations from real-world Japan (and other Asian countries), that still doesn’t mean that those places ARE Japan, something people in this thread seem to be conflating. They’re part of a made-up realm, regardless of where they got their inspirations from. A lot of things in this game have taken inspirations from a myriad of different cultures, religions, mythologies, and folklores, but that doesn’t mean that they hold the same equivalence in the world of the game.

It’s incorrect to post screenshots of Kugane and say “This is Japan!” when it’s clearly not. Kugane may be inspired by aspects of Japanese and Asian culture, but it is far from Japan proper.

I think it's fairly common for a lot of games, books, movies, etc to pull inspiration from RL places and things, blend with their own ideas, and voila! A new world! I do agree that you can't just state Kugane = Japan, because it's not. Heavily inspired perhaps, but no. But on the flip side of this, many people have been clamoring in this thread that there is no reason to bring RL into the game. That argument just makes me scratch my head as there are SO many things inspired from real world things (not just in Stormblood), but heaven help you if you're asking for slightly more diverse character creation options as that is obviously stepping over the line.

And just to addresss the thoroughly beaten horse before it gets mentioned again (not saying by you, Hyomin, just in general!), yes, OP could have phrased several responses better/not gone on the attack with some responses - and maybe picked a non-clickbait title. However, OP hasn't been in the thread for ages now, no need to just rehash that mess constantly. Conversations flow and shift as time goes on, and there's no need to be bickering over something from the first few pages. :X

Weeee, 51 pages of outrage culture.

Only 13 for me. Gogo max posts per page!

[kikix12]

But on the flip side of this, many people have been clamoring in this thread that there is no reason to bring RL into the game. That argument just makes me scratch my head as there are SO many things inspired from real world things (not just in Stormblood), but heaven help you if you're asking for slightly more diverse character creation options as that is obviously stepping over the line.

You see, there's a slight difference in these two things. Namely...who draws the inspiration.

In the case of Kugane and other in-game stuff, it was the developers drawing inspirations to match their story, its aesthetics.
In the case of skin color, it's the people that want to implement THEIR OWN aesthetics into the story.

Now, there is nothing wrong with suggestion whatsoever. The game is a business. We're being told painfully clearly that this game is not made for any reason other than to earn a buck by all sorts of things, sometimes more directly. As such, following clients suggestions that increase their satisfaction without really harming much at all is reasonable.

However, one needs to still remember that the aesthetics of the story are a significant part of it. The reason why we don't have these options may be because of technical difficulties, a result of cutting on budget or because they don't really match the story in its makers opinion. Then there are also options like them simply not thinking there would be demand for it, forgetting about it or thinking that the currently available options would have been satisfying.


So it's not the problem with the suggestion, but with the form. Clients simply don't have the right to demand real-world inspirations and existence of such in a story is no excuse.

I won't name the game, but I guess most everyone will know. There was a game that was aiming for a significant realism of a certain part of history of a region of the world that, at the time presented, had virtually no non-white people. Like, if there WERE any, they were so few that majority of the region wouldn't ever come across them (heck, living pretty close to that region now, having nearly 30 years, I saw maybe a handful of non-white people with my own eyes in real life where I live!). And organizations of "people of color" were literally clamoring about the studio being racist because there are no non-white people in the game. They demanded a significant presence.

Ironic, really. What does "people of color" really mean?! Seriously, "black" is lack of color, while "white" is a compilation of all colors in one. That phrase itself seems to be more racist than most of the stuff that many of the people crying "discrimination" claim, seeing as it suggest that white people are "colorless", from which one can derive "empty". Now, do you see how that works? Should I now make demands that I want this or that because I'm in the minority of the world (it appears that Caucasian people constitute about 33% of the world, while Mongoloids about 31% of the world...then there are other in-between etc.)?
Of course...the offense part is an add-on, but I really do have issues with the term "people of color".


In other words...As I said before, if someone wants new variations of face structures and skin tones, no one would have any issue with those suggestions (except possibly saying that the developers time would be better spent elsewhere, which is what pops-up with basically any glamour suggestion ever made). Yet no one seems to be interested in making such a thread. One that is strictly about the essence of the suggestion.

This one will NOT work. It will die out very quickly or random people will pop-up and bring up the racial stuff once again. It's natural. People will NOT care that it was hammered for 50+ pages. Most will read only the original post and maybe few past that (some don't even read past that) and it'll be good if few of the last posts. They will skip all that was said before and will bring the tone back to the flames.


Remember. We pay, but we are not entitled to demands. Square Enix offers a product, not their servitude. Customers don't hire Square Enix, we pay them for a product that comes as-is. Any thread or post made needs to reflect that fact.