Guns wrote...
Thief-of-Hearts wrote...
By 3 I mean NPCs that had legitamate "dark" skin, and not just tans. Of those three, two had bright orange hair so I don't really consider them PoC representations because it is extremely unlikely for a hispanic person or black person to have bright orange hair naturally (I'm not even talking Auburn, it's straight up carrot top color for both). So that would really leave 1.
Because there are no ethnicities in Thedas that have all the same features as a pure Hispanic/Black.
That's it. Why is the discussion still going on?
"Why aren't there people similar to X and Y in the game?"
"Because Thedas is based a lot on a period of Europe where X and Y weren't very prevelant. They don't exist in the universe/lore."
"Oh, well I want them."
"Create and/or download a mod then."
The end.
As it's been stated many times, we do have writers who have confirmed that there are black and hispanic ethnicities, or the equivalent in game.
Isabela is black. Duncan was mixed.
As a console user, I do not have the benefit of using or creating mods.
The dragon age universe is LOOSELY based off of medeival europe; cherry picking ethnic backgrounds on a
loose representation is in poor taste imo. Women are in every sense equal to men, and are even the religious figureheads. Templars are allowed to have wives and are presumeably not chaste. Homosexuality is not viewed with digust. Why are we drawing the line at the inclusion of more PoC?
"Because it's not like Europe!" That's irrational. Thedas is NOT Europe. It borrows some things but not
everything. Europe has also never been homogenous. It's part of history, regardless of how many wish for it to be otherwise. A simple Google search of "black people in Europe" would easily prove this. Asians were also present in Medeival Europe (seriously, does nobody know about the Mongol invasion? They had campaigns as far as Austria before having to withdraw).
If we are going to sit here and say that the Dragon Age universe should only be influenced by the parts and times of Europe that were strictly caucasian, that is.....questionable, politely put. That and it wouldn't given the team much to work with.
The features are already in the character creator, the OP is just asking for improvements to it. If it can be made in the character creator, then there should be NPCs to reflect those options somewhere in the game as well, instead of having 98% of the NPCs just usethe same variants of the sliders. Having duplicate NPCs (i noticed quite a few of these in DA2) is more immersion breaking than having an NPC with kinky hair or single eyelid.
Unless, you know, there is some kind of lore to explain why Kirkwall has an unnaturally high amount of twins and triplets.
First of all, "hispanic" and "black" people do not exist in Thedas. With "Hispanics", who have a vastly wide-ranging phenotypes due to being more of a grouping of peoples who simply share a history and language and who are typically varying combinations of European, African and different kinds of Native American, and the lack of lighter hair colors amongst hispanics is typically due to the influence of their Native American or African genes- that being said, there are a bucketload of "Hispanics", especially in South America with light hair: there are a lot of people on the Chilean side of my family that have Blonde hair. But beyond that: the people who may look "Hispanic" in this setting come primarily from Antiva and Tevinter, and the most prominent Antivan in the game, Zevran, already has blonde hair along with his tan skin. You're imposing real-world peoples' phenotypes onto completely different ethnicities. Saying they "don't count" as being a "PoC" because they have auburn hair makes as much sense as saying a Melanesian doesn't count because he may be blonde.
I don't understand why people keep saying that there are no races in the DA universe outside of caucasian. It's already been stated by the writers that there ARE. The specific post was even linked a couple of times in this thread.
Secondly I specifically pointed out RED hair, not blond. Red hair is much more rare than "blond" (which isn't really rare at all) and is one of the most recessive genes. To have it expressed in combination with some of the most dominant genes is HIGHLY unlikely (Melanesians are the only known group of people to have
light colored hair that are not of European descent and their hair colors come from an entirely different gene).
And those NPCs
don't have Auburn, which is "reddish"-brown. As I clearly stated, they were straight up
bright orange, which are two different colors entirely. I'm well aware that Hispanic, Black people, and yes even Asians can naturally have blond (and blue eyes too fyi, incase you want to question that later) hair. I live in a tourist area so seeing PoC with natural
blond hair isn't that strange. If there had been NPCs with those features, I would have picked them out too, except there weren't.
Considering that red hair is rare even amongst caucasians (something like 2%-6%) it DID strike me as odd, especially since there were two of them. It made as much sense to me as having purple or green hair. But you know what, I'll concede and say it was me nit picking (even if I disagree). That still leaves only THREE NPCs.
My family is ridiculously mixed, so I'm well aware of why different kinds of genes can be expressed in a gene melting pot. Of course people who are of one ethnicity or mixed can look like a different race all together (Darren Criss is a good example; he's a hapa but he looks white). That's not what we are arguing or asking.
Essentially what you are saying is any NPC with a skin tone above "pasty white" (because even hispanic and black people can be "light skinned") MIGHT be a PoC, even if they have features traditionally considered caucasian.
I'm calling BS. If that's the case why are PoC only represented by NPCs that strongly represent caucasain features (previous posters user the term "white washed")? Why can't we have NPCs the represent PoC in the tradional sense? And regardless of that, why are there so few of them?
Regarding Kirkwall and the Free Marches: The Free Marches draw most of their historical influence from Germany during its years as the Holy Roman Empire, where it was mostly a variety of free states and city-states with very, very nominal allegiance to the crown. "Germany", historically, has been more of a geographic expression to describe a people with similar culture and language in the same way you might refer to "The Middle East" nowadays. Furthermore, Kirkwall is not the central authority of Chantry power in Thedas, that would be Val Royeaux: a city where I do expect to see a lot more people from different ethnicities since it's the most important city on the planet. Kirkwall isn't even the most important city in the Marches (that would be Starkhaven), and it's pretty far south compared to the places and climates that darker-skinned people originate in. If Val Royeaux is New York (my home city, and someone with my particular mish-mash of ethnic ancestors could not have arisen anywhere else), Kirkwall is like... Atlanta, maybe. A regionally important city with one or two predominant ethnic groups due to geography (in Kirkwall that would be Marchers and Fereldens from just across the Waking Sea).
You know I could have swore one of the slides in game said Kirkwall was the Templar capital while my screen was loading. I'll have to try to snag a picture of that next time i see it. In anycase I'm gald you brought up the Holy Roman Empire since they did some skirmirshes with the Mongol Empire, and as you said also had influence from the Middle East. It's for the people saying that the only significant influence in Medeival Europe is from caucasains.
And I'm going to leave the comparisons between real life cities and in game ones alone. Simply because, by your description, we have extremely different views on the importance and make up of the cities. Sufficite it to say, as far as real life cities go, I also disagree, so the analogy is lost on me. I appreciate you taking the time to explain that to me thought - I'll have to brush up on my codexes the next time I run through the game.
Retour en haut
I have to laugh to stop the facepalming. 
pretty far to the south and far from Antiva. There are more Antivans than Rivainis in Kirkwall, but they still don't comprise a disproportionately large immigrant or expatriot community, which makes sense
