We don't know how many noticed, but certainly for some players the lack of black actors for Final Fantasy 16 has not gone unnoticed. To answer why all the characters are white, the director of the game thought about it, Hiroshi Takai, in an interview published by IGN.
Let's start with the numbers: out of 13 single player games (we're only talking about the main chapters), the black characters included in it are only four. For Final Fantasy 16, however, the problem in inserting a black character is the historical context of the title. “I think I might hurt someone, but for some reasons Valisthea would never have been as different as the planet it is today,” Takai's words declared during the interview.
Not only. Takai went on, explaining that the inclusion of characters other than those present in the Middle Ages (historical era from which the setting of the game takes its inspiration) would have violated the narrative ties that Square Enix had decided. “The story we tell is obviously fantastic, but it has its roots in reality”, Takai's words. A decidedly clear explanation, which however we are sure will not be able to convince everyone.
Beyond the correctness of integrating characters of various ethnic groups (because everyone must feel represented), c'it should also be emphasized that it is not possible to insert the characters in question at random. The risk is that the work suffers in terms of quality. A good story always starts from the foundations, which obviously cannot be distorted. Different speech, however, for further games such as The Last of Us Part 2, which told not only the story of a world destroyed by a terrible threat but also the growth, both physical and personal, of the characters who animate the production of Naughty Dog . Keep following Tom's Hardware for all the news and upcoming announcements from the world of video games.
