It’s weird. On the one hand I feel like we have a good discussion here and I want to keep adding to it, but on the other it seems like regardless the devs aren’t open to changing it anyway so there’s no reason to discus anything.
1 Like
I emailed the SuperBestFriendCast what they thought, but alas my question was not picked. Maybe someday…
2 Likes
I think it’s baloney that PoC can’t get a neat option just so we can try to baby racists gamers. Different skin tones isn’t encouraging racism and not having it isn’t going stop racist from being racist.
Ideally there’d be a change to the defaults to have better representation. Its not unprecedented or crazy
That said, I’ll respect that these are a person’s designs that had a lot of work put in. I’m sure there’s a sense of pride and attachment to these characters. I’d feel a little weird about people telling me to change my creative work .
I’m going to be honest. If this were a big published game Id be louder about this. But this is indie and small and personally I’m super biased and just want this game to be completed.
Priorities.
I think it’s been reasonably well explained so far that the reason for the lack of naturally darker skinned characters is due to anime influence. None of the characters are of a specific nationality (though some like Setsuki do have other cultural elements) and I’m fine with that.
The issue, and the reason that this discussion has come up, is that nonspecific race, try as it might, can’t incorporate the appearance of both dark and light skin. It’s traditionally lighter and has probably stayed that way because it caters to more groups. Nonspecific asian or european covers more bases than nonspecific afrocaribbean.
Of course, this does mean that a significant portion of the population has their natural colour pallet very much underrepresented but adding in a specific race can draw attention in an unnatural way when everyone else is or was a nonentity.
I don’t think these things are quite as simple as they might appear but I will say this:
Dark skinned Setsuki looks pretty good and the skin tone definitely fits the rest of that colour pallet. Unlike Geiger who, to my eyes, looks like they just slapped a skin tone onto an otherwise white fighter.
More of the former and less of the latter would be cool with me but it’s hard to pin down exactly what makes that difference and, if the first post is anything to go by, it’s quite subjective.
I honestly wouldn’t mind that being Setsuki’s default costume, even, were the rest of the cast of clearly varied ethnicity enough that it wouldn’t feel out of place.
I don’t agree that having nondescript races mean you can’t have both nondescript dark and nondescript light skin characters. There’s lore in this world, cities, etc. Simply saying these dark skinned characters come from X-city is enough. Like, in Full Metal Alchemist they did this, all dark-skin red-eyed people came from Ishval.
That said, dark skin palettes need no lore or in-game explanation because all alternate palette are non-canon.
[quote]Dark skinned Setsuki looks pretty good and the skin tone definitely fits the rest of that colour pallet. Unlike Geiger who, to my eyes, looks like they just slapped a skin tone onto an otherwise white fighter.
More of the former and less of the latter would be cool with me but it’s hard to pin down exactly what makes that difference and, if the first post is anything to go by, it’s quite subjective.[/quote]
I think the issue with Geiger is a combination of the sheen on his face and the tones of his suit. Neither compliment his skin very well, I think it looks like that because they did just slap it together. It’s a joke color, some inside joke about black Guile I didn’t get.
Setsuki looks great because both the yellow and black compliment her skin well. It’s actually an old Ibuki alt that she has, her skin’s just way darker.
2 Likes
Sorry, I may have been a little unclear there. I meant that nonspecific race, as a single race, can’t incorporate both. Yes, you can have two nonspecific races but that still (IMO at least) means either a racial balance must be struck or an in universe reason needs to exist.
In the case of FMA Brotherhood (I’ve not seen the original), there was a fairly huge focus on his ethnicity and the surrounding racism, heavy handed nazi allegory included. There was actual backstory and plot relevance to it, as well as a clear explanation for the low number of Ishbalan characters.
None of that needs to be as explicit as it was in FMA but I do think that a sole ethnic minority character would feel odd without lore. Could be in game lore, could lean on real world lore but, as mentioned before, that latter then makes “what ethnicity are these other characters” a legitimate one.
Dark skinned palettes are, indeed, non-canon but they also mean that the character was inherently designed without that palette in mind. They don’t always work out as well, as, IMO, Geiger proves.
1 Like
Specific or nonspecific, I don’t understand why multiple skin tones can’t exist for one ethnic group. Latinx come in the whole range of skin tones. And for sure there are other ethnicities where that’s case as well.
1 Like
Ah, I understand. I still don’t agree.
I really don’t think it’s stated that all the characters in Fantasy Strike are all one nondescript race to begin with, they’re all just currently vaguely white-asian. In the card game, they’ve gone further and added POC characters (seen above), so in-universe there’s I guess minimum 2 or 3 human races if you really want to define it.
I also really don’t think there’s any need to justify a character being dark skinned in-universe, tbh. It has never been an issue in anything I’ve ever read/watched/played, and there’s very rarely (if ever) a perfect racial balance in anything.
[quote]Dark skinned palettes are, indeed, non-canon but they also mean that the character was inherently designed without that palette in mind. They don’t always work out as well, as, IMO, Geiger proves.
[/quote]
Assuming Geiger’s dark-skin palette is terrible, it’s not terrible because he has dark-skin. It’s terrible because the colors weren’t put together pleasingly. They could easily replace it with one that looked better and still has dark skin.
I don’t understand what “a character wasn’t designed to be black” has to do with anything tbh. I could list a bunch of characters in various fighting games that weren’t designed to be different races that have varying skin tones that work well.
3 Likes
I hadn’t even noticed River, Calamandra or Bigby were dark-skinned until I read it mentioned (not here, back during the Codex Kickstarter). In Bigby’s case it may have been lack of attention or interest, but the other two were new female characters, so I certainly paid attention… just not to that.
I have no idea what that means, or whether it’s relevant to the discussion.
I just found out that there would be enough characters for a third pack of 10s, but first let’s concentrate on the second one.
Mah mistress needs me.
First, SaSSolino. First pack of ten.
1 Like
I count the first one as the characters that are already confirmed.