4 réponses à ce sujet

[ziloe]

I've found it odd in that most RPGs I've played, there's rarely an interesting black character. I know a lot of people weren't crazy about Jacob, but at least he proved that in the future, black people still existed. Even if this character came from an entirely different nation and culture, it's something I'd like to see added to the DA franchise, and not just as some dude you talk to once, but as a full on awesome party member. 

((Discuss))

[Mary Kirby]

Tootles FTW wrote...

I don't know why black/dark skin looked so wrong in Dragon Age, when the same intended skin tone looks completely normal in Mass Effect.

Because they had completely different engines. Dragon Age was made with Eclipse, and Mass Effect with Unreal. The Eclipse engine couldn't render dark skin very well. The darker the skin, the more it started to look like an overcompressed jpeg with jagged, pixelated lines where gradations of color occurred. We are hopeful that we can have a much wider range of skin colors (particularly darker ones) in Inquisition thanks to Frostbite.

[David Gaider]

Arcane Warrior Mage Hawke wrote...
And frankly I think if people are looking for evidence of real life  ethnic groups in a fantasy game I think they're the ones with the problem.

I don't think that's exactly fair.

What if the shoe was on the other foot, and a game you really liked was populated by nothing but black characters? You might be upset, or you might say "it's great that exists, but it's really not for me." And that'd be fine, as it would be a pretty unique game. But what if all such games had all-black casts, always? You don't think you would find yourself feeling thoughtlessly excluded and rendered invisible for no good reason? If your answer is no, I'd venture to say it's probably because you've never found yourself in that position.

It's perfectly reasonable for players to ask for more black characters in a world that has black people in it... if not for the sake of diversity alone, how about using the color palette we've chosen for ourselves? I, for one, look forward to being able to use the new engine to render a wider array of skin tones. I previously said that greater variety in races is something we would do where it's appropriate... and there are places where it's appropriate. So it'd be nice to go to some of them. "Human", after all, is a race that doesn't only come in one flavor.

[David Gaider]

Vandicus wrote...
Well, speaking from the PoV of a person of mixed descent(at least in the sense of modern ethnicities, ignoring the fact that many older ethnic groups are now merged together into these much broader categories), I suppose I'm a full on example of a person whose "race" is not really represented much either in video gaming(half-"insert non-human race here" exists, but I don't think that can be considered a legitimate replacement any more than elf for Asians, or dwarves for Hispanics). I can honestly say I've never been bothered by it, or by race in general and it simply doesn't occur to me to question whether the absence of explicitly mixed-race characters is somehow racist. I would also observe that Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans are represented even less frequently than Blacks in quite a few gaming genres from my personal experience. People don't often seem to request additional characters of those races. Not saying that there's anything wrong with such requests, just stating my observations.

Completely fair. I'm not saying you *should* feel that way, but obviously some do... and it'd be pretty presumptuous of someone who's already part of a group that is well-represented to say they shouldn't. In this particular case, a culture which is predominantly black is already part of Thedas... so it's hardly beyond the pale to ask that we see more representatives of that culture, or that they be slightly more conspicuous than "tan" (which, as we've said, was a limitation of the engine).

With regards to Asians or other ethnicities, those can be a little harder to justify if they aren't represented by a culture on the Thedas continent... but that certainly shouldn't prevent lone travelers from faraway lands from appearing, or even a follower (especially a follower, perhaps, as they get to be all sorts of special snowflakes). That could be kind of cool, and certainly there's no harm in the asking.

[Allan Schumacher]

If they're going to extend the effort to include one ethnic group they should do the same for others.

I don't think a new race/population should be introduced specifically for the goal of mirroring Earth's ethnic diversity.

If there's plans to make a new race for lore reasons, then it's not really much of an issue.