Exclusive: Final Fantasy 16’s Developers Open Up About Game of Thrones Comparisons, Sidequests, and Representation - IGN
In an exclusive interview with IGN, four members of Final Fantasy 16's development team come together to talk about topics ranging from being the first M-rated Final Fantasy to representation for people of color in its world.
www.ign.com
Yoshi-P:IGN: In regards to diversity in the game, can we expect to see Black characters in Final Fantasy XVI, or people of color (non-white characters) in general? To clarify a bit more, there's been discussion around the trailers to date featuring mostly white characters, and I wanted to get clarity on whether we can expect the final game to be more diverse.
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Our design concept from the earliest stages of development has always heavily featured medieval Europe, incorporating historical, cultural, political, and anthropological standards that were prevalent at the time. When deciding on a setting that was best suited to the story we wanted to tell—the story of a land beset by the Blight—we felt that rather than create something on a global scale, it was necessary to limit the scope it to a single landmass — one geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world in an age without airplanes, television, or telephones.
Due to the underlying geographical, technological, and geopolitical constraints of this setting, Valisthea was never going to realistically be as diverse as say a modern-day Earth...or even Final Fantasy XIV that has an entire planet (and moon) worth of nations, races, and cultures at its disposal. The isolated nature of this realm, however, does end up playing a large part in the story and is one of the reasons Valisthea's fate is tied to the rest of the world.
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In the end, we simply want the focus to be less on the outward appearance of our characters and more on who they are as people—people who are complex and diverse in their natures, backgrounds, beliefs, personalities, and motivations. People whose stories we can resonate with. There is diversity in Valisthea. Diversity that, while not all-encompassing, is synergistic with the setting we've created and is true to the inspirations from which we are drawing.
Full response at the site, but it's not much better
To me, this sounds like an elaborate dodge of the question. The locations they've shown in the trailer are pretty diverse and different. They could've included more diverse people to their settings if they wanted to.
Not to mention the question asked was a straightforward "will there be black people" and we got several paragraphs.
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