The White Hair Conundrum

[Thighland]

What is up with so many important characters having white / silver hair in this game?

We've got:

• Louisoix
• Y'shtola
• Alphinaud
• Alisaie
• Thancred
• Urianger
• Estinien
• Hades
• Venat
• Elidibus

And these are just on top of my head

Do the devs like whitish hair really that much?

[Rannie]

White hair=Master race End discussion <.<>.>

[Hysterior]

Forgot the best character: ME

[LathyrusLoon]

it's fantasy brown hair.

[Lelila38]

I remember reading once that haircolors have special meaning in Anime. White hair marking an especially strong character or a character with "otherworldly" traits.

[Enkidoh]

You also forgot Papabrea...

Serious answer though, is it's probably a cultural thing about white/grey hair being a symbol of maturity and thus wisdom - no surprises then that most if not all characters in that list are scholary/diplomatic or mage types. Of course reality is different, but this game isn't meant to be reality - it's fantasy.

[Thighland]

I remember reading once that haircolors have special meaning in Anime. White hair marking an especially strong character or a character with "otherworldly" traits.

True, but when the vast majority of the main cast has white hair, it gets kinda silly

[Lelila38]

True, but when the vast majority of the main cast has white hair, it gets kinda silly

I don't disagree with you. I just thought that might have been the reason for the design choice. Just a cultural thing I guess.

[MikkoAkure]

It’s not as much a “cultural” or “anime” thing as it is a weird coincidence and it came up in an interview.

Q: Why do the scions have so many white/grey
haired members?

A: Difficult question. You are right, there are many characters with those features and we do have it in mind all the time. In the original version, we already had Thancred and Yshtola, we hadn't planned on adding Urianger to the Scions at first, but it just turned out that way. Estinien was originally designed to be part of the DRG job quests, we hadn't imagined him to play such a huge role during the HW story and in 6.0 he
became part of the scions.... A lot of coincidences. Sometimes we discuss if we should give some chars a make over, but the impressions are too strong at this point and we decided to keep it like this. I personally am not a fan of pure colours, like green for example and that's why new characters tend to be a bit simple in this regard. We will try to
balance it a little better from now on.

On the OP’s list, every single character except for the twins and those 3 Ancients debuted in 1.0.


My (current) character has white hair because I’m a Viera purist. This post will age like a banana when I eventually fantasia back to my Hyur after I get bored.

[Necrotica]

Sick of white hair and sharlayans. I am usually the last one to hop on the 'diversity' wagon but this is getting ridiculous.