With the newest Natlan trailer, there have been talks about the characters we will be getting. These conversations revolve around the skin color of the latest units. Today we discuss the potential racism that might be taking place.
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Since this is starting to blow up a lot more, I would like to state my feelings and opinions more.
Thread below đđź
First things first. The argument of âwho cares itâs a Chinese game, no black people in China, there doesnât need to be dark skinned people, go play a different game, go make a different game, thereâs no reason to add dark skinned peopleâ is all bullshit. Please be a decent human for ONE second and realize that if you hold an opinion mentioned above then you are quite literally the problem.
Yes this is a fictional video game. HOWEVER representation still matters. People play video games for entertainment and also for an escape. Yes this is teyvat, a random fictional world, however hoyo uses REAL LIFE ethnic groups and cultures to shape their regions.
Natlan is quite literally supposed to be indigenous America/Latino/ African/ and other dark skinned ethnic groups in one setting. You can NOT sit there and say that itâs okay that these characters are all lighter than LOUIS GRIFFIN from family guy. The white ginger women from family guy is darker than the people who are literally supposed to be dark skinned.
Iâm honestly done sugarcoating this bc thereâs SO much racism and nasty people In these comments that have clearly never been educated properly or just flat out refuse to want change.
âOh well the sun in teyvat is fake and the sun isnât realâ đ be so deadass rn. There are countless voice lines where characters mention how hot the sun is in Sumeru so you canât even use that as an excuse.
Why is it such an issue for a dark skinned character to be just that? Dark skinned. Some of yâall are actually scared of đŤâźď¸ and itâs so sad.
Just because you are okay with the units being white, does not mean itâs valid that they are.
Hoyo puts HOURS into these new regions and designs. They know that these characters are supposed to be dark skinned. Stop being apart of the issue and grow as a human.
TLDR – these characters are supposed to be dark skinned as they are direct references and inspirations from dark skinned ethnic groups. If you can not get behind that then do not comment bc at this point your post WILL be deleted unless itâs respectful.
There might be somthing up but come Racism like I get the hate but nobody talking bout the other dark skins n Sumeru based in Egypt I think n atleast there dark skins I donât really remember seeing any in any Gacha game itâs like when I cop pulls over a drunk driver n gets called racist the genshin community been gay everyone knows dat but now they bringing Racist nowđđ
Nothing to do wit wuts going on but like when my baby girl Eula ppl tried to cancel her bc her Ancestors owned slaves when dat does have anything to do wit my Beauty đđ pathetic honestly but maby im just being stupid again
Thank God these people don't play F/GOđ
If they release dark characters like u said we gotta whale on those banners to make them keep doin it
I think the especially flagrant thing is these characters are literally named after specific African, Indigenous American, and Polynesian figures while looking nothing like the people who created these myths and some are from active living faiths. Olorun, the Yoruba capital G creator God, is still worshiped to this day in Nigeria and elsewhere. Having his in game stand in be some pasty Sasuke wannabe is a seriously bad look. On the flip side, if Hoyo had a Norse inspired region with a Thor, Odin, Freyja, etc all represented by black or brown characters, the same people trying to downplay players' legitimate concerns over the pale Natlan cast would flip their shit. It's just an incredible double standard that stands out worse in a region that cribs from multiple bipoc cultures without representing the people but hey they'll take the names and cultural "inspiration."
They also made a black character hate her skin and try to bleach it.
https://youtu.be/C3E5qjC-kUA?si=OF7QZ0eKw0_DbShM
Two Boycotts. One was taken noticed one is ignored and guess which issue is ignored.
do you guys even understand difference between inspired by and based on? Also 11:54 they did say its a work of fiction but didn't say they didn't use they said its "not related" meaning their work is seperated from real world events and people. You keep saying the regions are representation of our real world countries but i don't think so, I think they're more like inspirations to create a world, a Fictional World for a game to entertain not to focus on representation but to profit. Unlike the west, the chinese are more business wise meaning they focuse on what they profit from and that is focus on the majority who plays the game. If you think 70+k players are big enough that the petition would work? remember you're just a minor player base to a billion of people living on this planet, do not underestimate the population. And also I know what's happening you guys copying what happened in assassin's creed shadows where they claim to be historically accurate while this one doesn't claim to be related to real life and your forcing it to be related because of the similarities of the culture and aesthetics. The question is, are they located in the same place? are all landscapes the same? Is the continents shapes the same as our world? You have to widen your thinking, you have to critically think about these before claiming oh they clearly representing this and that, when its clearly inspired, even if you research it (not going to twitter). They're inspired by the real world culture and mythologies even Zelda Breath of the Wild to create a fictional world that has their own rules, a fictional game.
neuvillette was nerf, and they claiming it was an unintended, so they fix it, but they fix him after 7 months?? and after he is getting his rerun, come on man, to sums it up the cn community rage, and hoyo decide to ''roll back'' the change + giving their playerbase 1600 primos. all of that is within 24 hours
so about this problem, go cry about it, hoyo doesnt care, u guys such a losers, imagine caring more about fictional character that doesnt even exist, the amount of people upset about just simple skin color is just insane the vocal minority is insane, they care about this problem more than the real world problem like tighnari VA. go cry about it guys, hoyo doesnt give a fk.
As a cn player, i support recoloring, i do believe black skin fits the characters and their culture in natlan. But i would say most cn player do not like that to happen. After ign posted this news, the public opinion on bilibili see this boycott as political correctness movement and anything relate to political correctness = western ideology plague = automatically bad. Especially by ign, ign slandered black myth wukong with sexism just recently, while people all around are still criticizing western liberals, genshin drama drops, chinese players reaction to genshin boycott is like "oh god, another one?". People expect mihoyo to not bend knees to western political correctness. If they do, the consequences is gonna be huge in chinađ , probably will destroy their reputation.
Another unfortunate thing is mihoyo already finalized their design, they got pv released, they have in game models done. Even if they went back to redesign, it will probably delay 5.0 few months. Imagine delay few months just to get roasted by the cn community. So i see this boycott extremely unlikely to succeed.
In addition, mihoyo is known for liking to pretend sleeping. They will just ignore everything unless you can catch them against laws.
The decline of Genshin main storyline:
Mondstacht&LiYue :War at city state level,NPC fighting in legion formation, traveller in war zone to win.
Inazuma&Sumeru: Battle in villages, no much combat scene for NPC, traveller in commando spearhead , raiding on it's own to win.
Fountain:A high school bully story in theater, barely combat scene for all, traveller a bystander, watching and doing mostly nothing.
The Emerging Natlan: The state of warfare is becoming the Olympic Game Center for kindergarden…WTF??
ah shit here we go again
Queer coding isn't real.
Devilâs advocate:
1. Darker skin tones make it harder for the design team to get details to pop.
2. They make even the white characters SO pale that they glow in the dark like the moon, so they are âjust scaling up the brightness.â
3. When taking inspiration from real cultures for a fictional setting, the creator has every right to decide how much of the culture theyâll take.
That over with, hereâs my issues with the colorism in Genshin.
1. GOOD designers can absolutely make details pop even on very dark-skinned characters.
2. I already hate how glowy the white characters are, the darker characters are literally a relief to my retinas.
3. With a world that is so openly stated as being filled with diverse cultures and peoples, and with how the in-game dialogue talks about how different all these peoples are supposed to be, adding a more diverse skin palette would GREATLY aid in getting that point across. From a story design standpoint, making more characters with âradicallyâ different skin tones just makes sense in the setting.
I started actually caring about the issue in Sumeruâs release. Iâve never liked when fan artists on Twitter and in the gaming community âfixâ entirely fictional casts by making their headcanon poc characters much darker skinned. In MOST of these instances, it is literally just artists mad that the creators envisioned a cast that wasnât the race the artist cared about. There IS a LOT of anti-white racism (not reverse-racism, racism has nothing to do with power, it is and has always been race-based prejudice, power just makes it more pernicious) on Twitter and in the art community.
But what Genshin has been doing since Sumeru IS DIFFERENT.
⢠Candace is supposed to be Kandake; for those of you who donât know that sheâs based of a legendary BLACK African character. Out of all the Sumeru characters, Kandakeâs treatment is by far the most egregious, as they even Anglicized her name. They give so many characters inspirationally-accurate or even honestly weird names, but they canât even let Kandake be âKandake???â
⢠Deyha and the other Eremites are very clearly stand-ins for the Abrahamic tribal peoples of Jewish and Arabic lineages, who would absolutely have been mostly VERY brown, if for NO other reason than the amount of time spent in the sun. And there is a LOT of Deyhaâs skin showing, so she should at LEAST be VERY tanned. One of her darker-skinned fanarts is legitimately in my top-5 fanarts of ALL TIME, so yes her design absolutely works with her being Middle-eastern coded.
⢠Tighnari is a descendant of desert refugees. It is entirely reasonable for the Genshin team to pick his color palette, him being light-skinned is fine, but goddamn his darker-skinned fanarts look INCREDIBLE, honestly far better than most examples of the âfixedâ Genshin fanarts.
⢠Kusanali/Nahida is, as an Archon, supposed to be a representative of her people, but more importantly a goddess whose purpose is to tend to the âtreeâ concept within the game. She is a goddess of earth and of plants. Making her of a warmer, browner tone would work SO PERFECTLY with her story.
⢠Cyno is another desert character, but one based largely in Egypt. And despite what many Twitter users and even a recent documentary might argue, Egyptians and the Pharaohs were likely not majority dark skinned. Definitely not WHITE, but largely Arabic and more northerly African. Cynoâs skin is probably the most acceptable of the darker skinned characters.
⢠The Academiya characters⌠theyâre fine. India, the Middle East, and Africa have a very even spread of skin color representation, so giving only half the cast a tone on the darker side of the palette is entirely reasonable.
And now in Natlan⌠The ENTIRE cast should have been of Cynoâs tint or darker. Design-wise, it would have echoed the extreme separation and difference of mundane reality between Natlan and the rest of Teyvat. Personally, I completely agree that Xilonen having vitiligo really WOULD be a PERFECT match for her leopard print feline-features. I love the designs, I just⌠I really liked what Genshin said they were trying to do with creating a whole and culturally diverse world. So seeing them consistently fail to represent that diversity in a section of the that would absolutely HELP get that point across is just heart-breaking. Genshin is one of my favorite games. I have so many other issues with it, but I still love it. But Natlanâs actual whitewashing really is making me question whether I should continue supporting it.
Hereâs the really frustrating thing. From what weâve seen with other situations concerning design, the Genshin design team very likely may be giving some of their characters darker skin tones, only for higher ups and even the CCP editorializing the game to be âmore appealingâ to Chinese sensibilities. And China is not known for their people of color.
Iâm very sad that I canât install mods on the game without risking my account. I donât want to change the way the game works, HoYo, I just want to have access to community-designed skins.
Rant over.
fun fact.. genshin said that itâs work of fiction.. idk god of other cultures just work of fiction đ˘đ˘
I think another reason why they wouldn't do it despite us wanting them too, is that they'd probably have to find new VAs, wouldn't make sense to have a darked skinned character with the voice of someone who doesn't match them, honestly if that were a reason I'd wait a bit more just to get all this fixed and give us the representation we all deserve
Natalan characters are = Himeko, Fu Xuan, Xiao, Clorinde and Dehya. F Hoyo stupid copy paste designs.
As for the colour issue. China is too sceptical about the western Culture in general. Maybe because the West was (and still invading the east and Asia??) but anyways , using black character or dark skin there would feel, awkward to them. not about being racist, they just purely don't like western culture. Don't believe that? go work there for few years and you will see what I mean… Their culture is their treasure and they don't want to mix it with western culture in general. I think they are scared to get Fed up like Japan, Taiwan and Phil.
Why doed he look so femine i cant be the only one to realise anyway w vid
May I ask where the info came from where these chars were supposed to be Latino /mayan ?
I want to be honest with you, well you're idiots.
In fact, the biggest markets for Genshin are still China and Japan, where East Asian aesthetics tend to prefer lighter skin tones. Don't say that many players in these two regions are outraged. From my experience living in mainland China, there are a significant number of racists targeting skin color here. And now, all of this is a choice Hoyoverse has made for profit.
Hoyo is a Chinese Game Company, and we all know what that means and we keep on talking about this when we have Ubisoft really rewriting Japanese History by adding a colored Samurai that has zero to no documentation. And China is like 60-70 percent of their revenue. And Western countries are only 10 percent. And normally gamers are not that sensitive to these things and just want to escape reality and play a good game.
This wokers would get an heart attack if they played fate grand order
People.