Summer 2023 is right around the corner, and the advent of Final Fantasy 16 is closer than expected. The next entry in the long-running JRPG series by Square Enix sees players play through one of the darkest entries in the series. Furthermore, the title will feature gameplay previously seen in Final Fantasy 15 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
With the release date slowly arriving at the finish line, Naoki Yoshida, producer of Final Fantasy 16, sat down with IGN to discuss character diversity. He acknowledged that his comments might disappoint some readers.
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Yoshida explains why the game does not have any POC characters. He says that their design concept for Final Fantasy 16 has featured medieval Europe. Yoshida said that they incorporated historical, cultural, political and anthropological standards prevalent for the time.
“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,” Yoshida said.
“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 aeroplanes, television, or telephones.”
Yoshida also claims that due to Valisthea’s isolated nature in Final Fantasy 16, they couldn’t be as diverse as the real world, or other titles in the series.
“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, but it is also rooted in reality.”
Final Fantasy 16 will launch in 2023 for PlayStation 5.
