Why do all of the Scions of the 7th Dawn have white/blonde hair?!

[Cleretic]

Haha i was wondering this too. It would be cool if there was more visual diversity among the scions. Not only hair color (all white or almost white?) but they are also all really light skinned/v pale, even Lyse who is the representative of the desert nation lmao. what gives

With Lyse it's because female Highlanders didn't exist at the time she was designed, and 1.0 clearly wasn't thinking super hard about Ala Mhigo or its presentation anyway. The pair of groups in 1.0 that merged to become the Scions did have a bit more skin color diversity; the Path of the Twelve had the darker-skinned Hermit of the Wood, Percevains and Satzfloh, at least two of which did have non-white hair colors, while the Circle of Knowing had Louisoix and Rammbroes (who's now with the Sons of Saint Coinach). Lot of white-haired people, but that was partially credited to a complement of old people.

With everyone else it probably just mostly comes down to individual design sensibilities; this design makes sense for what this character's history and personality is. And then once they had the Scions largely out of stitching together existing characters that made sense and were fairly prominent, nobody really raised 'hey, this lineup is super white'--or if they did, they didn't have the capacity to do anything about it, because all these characters were already there.

[Avenger]

White hair denotes a character as being particularly important or powerful without being unnatural, particularly if they're still youthful.

Ironically, the most powerful mage among the Scions (Papalymo) was blonde. The other two blondes, Minfilia and Yda (Lyse), don't have much magical aptitude.

Blond(e) spoiler:

Papalymo my friend, you deserved more than 5 quests. But we'll always have 1.0.

[primadonna_lovestory]

With Lyse it's because female Highlanders didn't exist at the time she was designed, and 1.0 clearly wasn't thinking super hard about Ala Mhigo or its presentation anyway. The pair of groups in 1.0 that merged to become the Scions did have a bit more skin color diversity; the Path of the Twelve had the darker-skinned Hermit of the Wood, Percevains and Satzfloh, at least two of which did have non-white hair colors, while the Circle of Knowing had Louisoix and Rammbroes (who's now with the Sons of Saint Coinach). Lot of white-haired people, but that was partially credited to a complement of old people.

With everyone else it probably just mostly comes down to individual design sensibilities; this design makes sense for what this character's history and personality is. And then once they had the Scions largely out of stitching together existing characters that made sense and were fairly prominent, nobody really raised 'hey, this lineup is super white'--or if they did, they didn't have the capacity to do anything about it, because all these characters were already there.

Hmm I can kind of see your thought process but I'm not very convinced haha

[diamondedge83]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that protagonists having white hair in Final Fantasy has always been a thing. All of Amano's artwork depicts the protagonists with white hair, then during developement the character designers choose to change it or keep it; in some cases the character design and sprites were made first, but he still depicted the characters with white hair. Cecil in FFIV kept the white hair, Bartz in FFV changed to Brown, while Lenna went pink and Faris went purple, Terra in FFVI has green hair while Celes is blonde, but the Amano artwork that came after the character design/sprites depicted them both with white hair that the developers colored in to match their sprites. FFVII Cloud went blonde while Tifa went brunette; but almost all of the main character artwork depicts them with white hair.

[Magikazam]

White hair is just a popular design overall in Japan since it represents ''pureness''. This is why you often get white-haired protagonists that are ''pure of heart'' or something of the like.

I would add to that hair just don't look that good in the game and usually, just putting playable char model hair a strong flashy colors (Like white, black, pink) usually just kinda hides the low-quality hair texture and look better.

[Carin-Eri]

All of the scions have white, and Near White hair! What gives?! Even Cid! Moenbryda even had white! Ysale! This can't be a coincidence! Estinien?!

Are the devs trying to say paragons all have white hair or blonde!?

Moenbryda's hair was more grey/silver than white and her online descriptions tend to say this too.

[kaynide]

White hair is just a popular design overall in Japan since it represents ''pureness''. This is why you often get white-haired protagonists that are ''pure of heart'' or something of the like.

I would add to that hair just don't look that good in the game and usually, just putting playable char model hair a strong flashy colors (Like white, black, pink) usually just kinda hides the low-quality hair texture and look better.

I mean, also since we're talking Amano and his art style, it means not wasting time coloring in a large swath of space. His art tends to mimic old style Japanese/wood block print, which means minimal colors. Typically black, white then a major color and maybe 2 minor colors. Typically Yellows, Reds and blues/purples. It is rare his art has more than like, 6 colors or even all the minor colors except as highlighting.


For example, Black/White, then yellow/red/purple.

More often though his art is more:

With Black/White, then the minor colors as highlights.

[Cleretic]

I mean, also since we're talking Amano and his art style, it means not wasting time coloring in a large swath of space. His art tends to mimic old style Japanese/wood block print, which means minimal colors. Typically black, white then a major color and maybe 2 minor colors. Typically Yellows, Reds and blues/purples. It is rare his art has more than like, 6 colors or even all the minor colors except as highlighting.


For example, Black/White, then yellow/red/purple.

More often though his art is more:

With Black/White, then the minor colors as highlights.

It's also worth factoring in the art of Akihiko Yoshida, who did a lot of the artwork for FFXIV in 1.0 and ARR. The game's overall direction on this tracks for his approach to hair colors, too: mostly white and blonde (especially among leads), but not exclusively, there's a decent amount of diversity.

[FinalUser]

Not all of them, but its usually a trait for heroes