Final Fantasy XVI Suffers From Its Superficial Handling Of Slavery
Final Fantasy XVI Suffers From Its Superficial Handling Of Slavery
In Square Enix's latest epic RPG, the moral monstrosity of slavery is effectively reduced to window dressing
Do we have to make everything political now? Can't we just enjoy the game?
Art is “political.” It’s not being “made political” if the game brings up a heavy topic and then blinks. The game made itself “political” by making slavery an element of the world.
I don't know how a Final Fantasy game of all things is not going to be political. I don't think I have played a single one that wasn't profoundly political. They are always dealing with war, oppression, exploitation, power struggles and often use metaphors for other issues.
The beloved Final Fantasy 7 is blatant with its environmentalist and anti-corporate themes. All the Ivalice games (FF12, FFT and Vagrant Story) pretty much breathe politics, and while I didn't go too far into Final Fantasy 14, that also seemed pretty political.
I've not played enough of the other FF games since 7 to say with certainty, but FF7,12,14, and 15 were extremely explicit political dramas. That was their entire plots
Your presence here on Lemmy is political
Judging by the replies: yes and no, respectively. No fun allowed, there's offense to be taken!
If you don't want to engage with political issues, don't bring up political topics. Using oppression for flavor text instead of confronting it as a major issue in your story is tacky. Star Wars suffers from the same problem.
I admit, not having a PS5 I haven't played FFXVI yet, but sometimes these things are world building around a more personal story which is what I understand the game to be from other people talking about it, just because something features in a world, doesn't mean it needs to be further explored if that's not the story that's been written. Just because thats am element that interests Kotaku writers more due to there nationality and politics, doesn't mean it was the story the writers set out to tell.
Thing is, and I haven’t played it either, but I know this from conversations I’ve seen about it, your character is a slave. Or, rather, is from the caste of people that is enslaved because they have magic. That means it’s something that can’t just be background, because it quite literally influences how everyone in the world interacts with Clive.
There was a really good Jimquisition on how being a “bearer” is treated in the world, and how SE just kind of overdid it with a lack of subtlety (jump to about the 4 minute mark to start, because there’s a lot of faff at the beginning before the video starts talking about the game). https://youtu.be/sgjqXTvHaLk?si=9EQqqsA4x2HEOmqc
Your character is not a slave. (Spoilers limited to promotional materials) Player character is the oldest son of the ruler of one of the major countries in the game world, so a prince. Ability to wield (very specific) magic is quickly explained that some of the nobles of that family can do. He somewhat is a slave at some point, but this is a very brief story moment (tbf at the very beginning, you meet your character as a slave before he goes into childhood memory where he is a prince). When relevant, NPCs do interact with character as with slave, but its rarely relevant. So it is very much a background theme, even if a major one.
Yeah, I did see Steph Stirling's video and I do get the arguments, but personally I don't agree that just because it's an element in the world building and the backstory of the main character it has to be a driving element of the plot.
Look at it like X-Men, being feared and hunted by humanity is sort of X-Men lore, but it isn't the driving force of every story. Sometimes they're just off having adventures in space or whatever.
Kotaku has been releasing quality write-ups on FFXVI since launch, and from most of the spaces I have seen them shared, Kotaku has only received hate for sharing many of the same sentiments I have regarding this game.
People are still hanging on to silly gamergate-era hate of Kotaku and get angry just seeing the name, and will go out of their way to argue why anything Kotaku says must be stupid and wrong. It’s wild.
The few times I post a Kotaku article, regardless of what it’s about, far too many folks just completely lose it screaming “click bait!” or completely blow off any points they might be making.
I was talking with a friend of mine who played the whole game last night, and they completely agreed with the idea that FF16 really had issues with how they handled slavery.
But oh wait, I forgot I can’t have an opinion because I didn’t play the game myself, as someone in here told me.
And people have said it to me too, but move the goalpost to requiring completion to critique. I stopped playing because it wasn't enjoyable for me, and trust that I would hate it more if I had to deal with it longer than I did.
Frankly, YoshiP's comments have only ever made me feel like he's some out-of-touch edgelord, so this doesn't surprise me.
I avoid his stuff like the plague since he feels diversity (apparently slavery as well, lol) is nothing more than window dressing as opposed to a fact of life & history.
Enjoy the disappointing sales Square! I know you lost at least one Final Fantasy fan with this clown at the helm.
I feel like the “disappointing sales” are more on SE than anything else, though. Like, they decided to only release on PS5 despite initially saying it would be PS5 and PC (and I’m just going to be charitable and ignore YoshiP telling someone asking about the PC release to just get a PS5, when PS5s were still damn near impossible to get in Japan), and even though PS5s had a really small install base (especially here in Japan - PS5s have recently become readily available, and even then, stock is limited - the electronics store near me is so completely out of stock of the digital version that they took down the display for that version and only have the disc drive version for sale).
I feel like SE has been making a lot of missteps lately.
And I’m not even going to touch the mess that is YoshiP’s reasoning for why his fantasy Europe was so dang un-melanated. That is a whole other issue. I’m just gonna say that as a non-white American living in Japan, a lot of folks in Japan have a very limited view of what an 欧米人 (European and American) is.
That’s how we treat it in America….
The quest where you help the girl find her "pet" and you find out at the end that it's a bearer who was petrified is super fucked up. The whole time you think this girl is talking about a dog or cat. It really hits home how normalized treating bearers as less than is in this world.
OP couldn't be more wrong.
Unlike OP I have played the game and have to say I diaagree completely with the article. You see the deeper implications of the slavery wherever you go. Sure the violence is the biggest factor but so many side quests show the emotional toll the slavery has on the people. Even just walking in those areas is gut wrenching. I dont know how a final fantasy could portray it better. It is hard to handle already.
…why are you bringing me into this?
You post a lot. I see your name come up non-stop. That is great! It is really appreciated. I'm certainly not doing that work.
You also post quite a bit of inflammatory clickbait without having any personal knowledge to back it up. That's a bit confounding. At the bare minimum, you need to be prepared to accept criticism for that.
I can personally say this is the second time you've posted a FF16 ragebait article and gotten offended when prodded about the fact that you yourself haven't even played it. Why are you spreading information that you don't even have the ability to evaluate?