The latest video game in the long-running Final Fantasy series is facing attacks from the woke video game news site Kotaku. Its crime? Lack of diversity.
Final Fantasy XVI is set in European medieval setting, drawing inspiration from societies that were not ethnically or culturally diverse, a fact acknowledged by Kotaku, which nonetheless complains about the game’s “overwhelming whiteness.”
A shop attendant adjusts a tag on a PS5 bundled with Final Fantasy XVI, the latest version of the video game franchise Final Fantasy, developed and published by Square Enix, at a PlayStation pop up store in Seoul on June 22, 2023. (Photo by Anthony WALLACE / AFP) (Photo by ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images)
“If there’s a fault to be had, it’s in Valisthea’s lack of diversity,” wrote Kotaku reviewer Corey Plante. “Producer Naoki Yoshida told IGN in November 2022 that the design concept always focused on the “historical, cultural, political, and anthropological standards” of medieval Europe. In other words, these cultures are mostly different variations on familiar-looking white medieval patriarchies like Transylvania or England and represent only a small corner of this world. The game’s Dhalmekian Republic, admittedly, is coded as Middle-Eastern. Yet the Dhalmekian Dominant of Titan, Hugo Kupka, appears Caucasian. The core cast therefore becomes overwhelmingly homogenous.”
“A more meaningful approach to diversity does not seem too outlandish in a world where a little blonde boy can transform into a giant bird made of fire.”
“The overwhelming whiteness of the game’s world does make it feel somewhat detached from any such real-world concerns,” writes Plante earlier in the piece.
It’s no surprise that Kotaku, one of the most notoriously woke publications in video game journalism, is demanding more diversity in games. Previous headlines at the site include “Sorry, Your Cis White Woman Protagonist Isn’t Progressive,” and “Meet Magic: The Gathering’s First Trans Character” — an article published all the way back in 2015.
The site’s reputation for wokery is so strong that it provided the name for “KotakuInAction,” a Reddit community that monitors and mocks wokeness and political bias in the video game media.
But Kotaku is not the first, nor only site to attack medieval-themed games for being too white. Back in 2015, the Vox-owned publication Polygon complained that blockbuster title The Witcher 3, which drew inspiration from medieval Slavic and Norse mythology, was too white.
The Witcher 3 went on to become one of the most acclaimed and popular video games of all time.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election. Follow him on Twitter @AllumBokhari.