Final Fantasy 16 producer claims medieval Europe setting placed constraints on character diversity

videogameschronicle.com:

Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has said the game’s medieval Europe setting placed constraints on the range of characters that could ‘realistically’ be included in the RPG.

Discussing the “difficult question” of character diversity in an interview with IGN, Yoshida acknowledged his comments might be “disappointing” for some readers.

Trailers released for the game to date have mostly featured white characters, and Yoshida was asked whether fans can expect to see a more diverse cast including Black characters, or people of colour, in the final game.

“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,” he responded.

“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 isolated nature of the game’s setting (Valisthea), Yoshida claimed it couldn’t realistically be as diverse as the real world, or even other Final Fantasy games that play out across a variety of locations.

“Ultimately, we felt that while incorporating ethnic diversity into Valisthea was important, an over-incorporation into this single corner of a much larger world could end up causing a violation of those narrative boundaries we originally set for ourselves. The story we are telling is fantasy, yes, but it is also rooted in reality.”

Because the game enables players to