I'm playing through Valkyria Chronicles, an enjoyable, if weirdly conceived, turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy WWII. There is a subplot in the game wherein a bunch of your squad members are bullying another squad member because she's Darcsen - some ethnic minority nobody likes. I've not finished the game yet, but presumably there will be some life lessons wherein everyone overcomes their differences through teamwork or whatever.
Anyway, what makes this subplot weird is how the racism is presented in the game in the first place; Darcsen people are literally identical to everyone else in the squad, except for having dark hair. If she dyed her hair, she could pass for any one of the gang. Come to think of it, even though there are dozens and dozens of characters, all of them have the same generic anime white skin (outside a couple with greyish tans) and there are no other distinguishable races. So my issue is this: how could the game developers come to the decision to talk about racism in a game with apparently only one race? Did they not think it was odd when they were designing the characters?
This is pretty much the exact same problem with the Witcher 3, in that the devs went to the trouble of depicting racial discrimination in their setting, but their setting is one where everyone is a white. There seems to be this weird hypocrisy behind criticising racism whilst excluding every other race from your game. How does this even happen?
Anyway, what makes this subplot weird is how the racism is presented in the game in the first place; Darcsen people are literally identical to everyone else in the squad, except for having dark hair. If she dyed her hair, she could pass for any one of the gang. Come to think of it, even though there are dozens and dozens of characters, all of them have the same generic anime white skin (outside a couple with greyish tans) and there are no other distinguishable races. So my issue is this: how could the game developers come to the decision to talk about racism in a game with apparently only one race? Did they not think it was odd when they were designing the characters?
This is pretty much the exact same problem with the Witcher 3, in that the devs went to the trouble of depicting racial discrimination in their setting, but their setting is one where everyone is a white. There seems to be this weird hypocrisy behind criticising racism whilst excluding every other race from your game. How does this even happen?