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Genshin's new characters for Sumeru (Middle Eastern, South Asian inspired regions) still feature mostly light skinned characters

Chairmanchuck (另一个我)

Chairmanchuck (另一个我)

Teyvat Traveler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,094
China
So mostly leaks for Genshin 3.0 are being released and with 3.0 the new region that seems to be based around Middle Eastern and South American countries (Region is described as a region with lots of deserts and rainforests), the new characters are all light skinned.
Most of the NPCs of that region also have names commonly found in ME like Sayid, Hosseini, Al Haitham etc.
Here are some examples:

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9o5xp7pacj891.jpg


67k2n15oxi891.jpg


Yi-gLpVML1f4h3oLfjBpOXhqRGxFwQw8xRfTNoS6Xqg.jpg


It's kinda disappointing and I would have not expected many darker skinned characters for Sumeru, but like for now all newly leaked characters are light skinned. Not even one darker skinned one.

So currently it seems they first release the Forest portion, than maybe the desert part and they save the characters for that portion, but I wont believe it till I see it.
 
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PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,729
Zero diversity in body type, too. Tons of little girls and teenagers. Oh, Genshin. You have a formula and you seem completely incapable of breaking it.
 
Yuntu

Yuntu

Prophet of Regret
Member
Nov 7, 2019
10,690
Germany
Tighnari and Dori are fantastic designs tbh. But I think they should be or the the thread atleast marked with a spoiler warning. These are not officially announced yet.

And yea if they do any dark skinned chars they will likely tie them to the desert region (we have one they call "tall hydro lady" that goes in that direction, but they arent coming out anytime soon so no proper pics yet).
 
vixolus

vixolus

Prophet of Truth
Member
Sep 22, 2020
54,508
Expected light skinned to mean a lighter tan/brown.. not ghostly pale lol
 
Chumunga64

Chumunga64

Member
Jun 22, 2018
14,269
it's funny being south east asian and seeing the characters dress in my people's traditional clothes and they're even paler than my mom, who is pale as hell

even funnier that leaks confirmed a bunch of characters that have the appropriate skin tone for the region and instead of putting them in the spotlight to quell the backlash, mihoyo chose to showcase the mayo lords
 
Chumunga64

Chumunga64

Member
Jun 22, 2018
14,269
seeing the reactions from fans on social media is basically people coming to the realization that genshin character design is literally the most basic tier anime character design where everyone looks the same no matter how many crazy details the artists put on the characters

you compare genshin characters to let's say pokemon, where a majority of the characters follow the "elemental based" design that genshin does but they still look different. Crasher Wake, Nessa, Marlon, and Juan are all water guys but they all look distinct from each while still being obviously water types specialists while genshin is just "girls in blue"
 
samcastor

samcastor

Member
Apr 21, 2021
2,084
Chinese media has a completely different standard for this stuff and so does the general chinese population. Most games from actually diverse teams and countries (at least compared to China) still do not get this right, it is very unsurprising that Chinese devs are not prioritizing this or do not even think there is anything wrong with this.
 
dsosarod

dsosarod

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,353
PlanetSmasher said:
Zero diversity in body type, too. Tons of little girls and teenagers. Oh, Genshin. You have a formula and you seem completely incapable of breaking it.
Click to expand...
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Seeing as the main money maker seems to be the gacha system, yeah, don't expect that to ever change the target audience and the pontential whales and people willing to spend money on it are not craving diversity in body type.

Also given the audience no one should expect too much diversity in skin color. Just take a look at how some anime profile picture users react on Twitter when black people do cosplay, especially black women.

Mihoyo knows their audience and want to keep them happy.

F that game, F that company and F every single person that cannot deal with diversity.
 
dbcyber

dbcyber

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,407
UK
DragonSpear2462 said:
As you said, Sumeru will feature two major regions; Forest and Desert.

The leaked characters are reportedly all from the forest region.

Darker skinned ones will be introduced alongside the desert region (there is one semi-leak of one such character).
(https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks/comments/vmjdzz/hydro_tall_lady_appearance_info_syp/)
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Oook so I'll be coming back to Genshin when this region and character is made available.
 
Spinosaurus

Spinosaurus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,980
samcastor said:
Chinese media has a completely different standard for this stuff and so does the general chinese population. Most games from actually diverse teams and countries (at least compared to China) still do not get this right, it is very unsurprising that Chinese devs are not prioritizing this or do not even think there is anything wrong with this.
Click to expand...
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Dislyte is another Chinese gacha that's a lot better about this so I'm not entirely buying it.
 
deepFlaw

deepFlaw

Knights of Favonius World Tour '21
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,495
It sucks, though I'm not exactly surprised given what we'd seen in-game so far.

Chumunga64 said:
seeing the reactions from fans on social media is basically people coming to the realization that genshin character design is literally the most basic tier anime character design where everyone looks the same no matter how many crazy details the artists put on the characters

you compare genshin characters to let's say pokemon, where a majority of the characters follow the "elemental based" design that genshin does but they still look different. Crasher Wake, Nessa, Marlon, and Juan are all water guys but they all look distinct from each while still being obviously water types specialists while genshin is just "girls in blue"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, gotta say that Genshin's character design is pretty lackluster in general. You'd think that having less characters than the average gacha would make it easier for them to stick out more, too.
 
Rackham

Rackham

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
8,532
When I think Middle Eastern I think pale as fuck loli

edit: pretty glad I stopped playing this garbage. I was really on board when I first started playing because of the graphics and gameplay but the more you play the more in your face the grind is. The gameplay loop is all about getting new characters that are hard to level up if you play more than 3-4 characters. It's really not worth it. So far the three f2p games (warframe, genshin, diablo) I really got into have left a sour taste in my mouth. Too bad.
 
alexi52

alexi52

Member
Oct 28, 2017
18,935
These have to be re used character models, they look way too similar to what's already in the game
 
Dyle

Dyle

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
29,938
Those are genshin characters all right. The belly dancer/genie one looks like something a fake leaker would draw up
 
Vex

Vex

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,213
*opens thread expecting them to be a lighter shade brown*
*sees ghostly white pale lolis*

facepalm-crowd.gif
 
Soliloquy of a Dogge

Soliloquy of a Dogge

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,978
This game is so tiresome with its fear of brown or black skinned and ethnically diverse characters.

Didn't they go for the typical dark skin = evil trope for a previous antagonistic faction too? Racist as fuck. Entirely unsurprising.
 
Igniz12

Igniz12

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,441
We'll take you money but we dont want any of you fucking undesirables associated with our game. Sentiment most likely shared by much of its player base no doubt.
 
ventuno

ventuno

Member
Nov 11, 2019
1,983
I'm not surprised Mihoyo continues to fail to diversity their Genshin character designs. I think their character designs can be very detailed and colorful, but this dissipates when you realize that they're bound to a strict formula for their characters, especially for the female characters.

Mihoyo continuing to do the usual shouldn't surprise anyone, but it's unfortunate to see people dismissing those that raise concerns. Genshin sets out to represent different cultures and their regions and the reality of that diversity needs to be represented better than it is.
 
TetraGenesis

TetraGenesis

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,138
So sick of this shit. It's the #1 thing that drew me to Dislyte honestly. It shouldn't feel downright shocking to see POC characters well represented in a gacha game.
 
Aly

Aly

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,148
I told people this would happen. I dont Believe the forest/desert rumor either.
 
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psynergyadept

psynergyadept

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,634
😒😒😒🙄🙄🙄🤦🏿‍♂️🤦🏿‍♂️🤦🏿‍♂️


Shouldn't be a surprise it but it's bullshit nonetheless…
 
Yuuber

Yuuber

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,153
LMAO, paper white skin The whole lolicon love in the game is appalling, and yet, it makes billions of dollars.

I'm so out of touch with the recent gaming trends I guess...
 
Black_Stride

Black_Stride

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
7,389
PlanetSmasher said:
Zero diversity in body type, too. Tons of little girls and teenagers. Oh, Genshin. You have a formula and you seem completely incapable of breaking it.
Click to expand...
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Genshin Impact literally only has 5 body types.
When you extract the models they all share the same base mesh....people joke these characters are all reskins of each other.....but that is actually true.
  1. Tall Girl.
  2. Short Girl.
  3. Chibi Girl.
  4. Tall Boy.
  5. Short Boy.
Worst still they also all share the same run animations and a bunch of other animations.
For a AAA game Genshin can be really disappointing sometimes.....but it has Waifus and Whales so Genshin impact forever!


On Topic
What the fuck Mihoyo, these characters are lighter than Xinyan?
I mean the least they could have done is use the Xinyan shader on these characters....but nope, straight up porcelain.
Xinyan.full.3141527.jpg


And yes before you ask shes still very light in the actual game
Genshin-Impact-Xinyan.jpg
 
Shan

Shan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,956
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Navid

Navid

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,021
Not to defend Genshins character design, but as a Iranian (a lot of the current Sumeru character names in the game are Persian/Iranian in origin) it's also not great to come into this thread and see that people have this expectation that being Middle Eastern should come with the expectation of a brown or darker skin tone.
 
Spinosaurus

Spinosaurus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,980
Navid said:
Not to defend Genshins character design, but as a Iranian (a lot of the current Sumeru character names in the game are Persian/Iranian in origin) it's also not great to come into this thread and see that people have this expectation that being Middle Eastern should come with the expectation of a brown or darker skin tone.
Click to expand...
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No one is saying there aren't mid eastern people with pale skin, the problem is when that's ALL you have then it's just straight up colorism considering how diverse the region is.

I'm west asian, I'm brown, I want characters with my skin tone thanks lol.
 
Watchtower

Watchtower

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,652
Black_Stride said:
Genshin Impact literally only has 5 body types.
When you extract the models they all share the same base mesh....people joke these characters are all reskins of each other.....but that is actually true.
  1. Tall Girl.
  2. Short Girl.
  3. Chibi Girl.
  4. Tall Boy.
  5. Short Boy.
Worst still they also all share the same run animations and a bunch of other animations.
For a AAA game Genshin can be really disappointing sometimes.....but it has Waifus and Whales so Genshin impact forever!


On Topic
What the fuck Mihoyo, these characters are lighter than Xinyan?
I mean the least they could have done is use the Xinyan shader on these characters....but nope, straight up porcelain.
Xinyan.full.3141527.jpg


And yes before you ask shes still very light in the actual game
Genshin-Impact-Xinyan.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The game is literally whitewashing her if that art is any indication. She's actually brown in the art while the game is straight-up "gee it sure is hot today" mildly suntanned.

Bad enough seeing all that Pokemon Nessa fanart do it but to see it in an actual product is absolutely infuriating. Even from a gacha perspective it really is like god forbid we have some dark-skinned waifus to spice things up. What the absolute hell.
 
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