Final Fantasy 14 has gotten much more popular in the past couple of years and has fans waiting in great anticipation for its Endwalker expansion. During the 2021 Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival, a lot of new content was announced and Naoki Yoshida answered many questions fans had about the future of Final Fantasy 14. Among what he addressed included the fan concern about skin color changes in characters, who were fan-favorite members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, Y'shtola and Thancred.

Yoshida explained why this skin color change happened, and it mostly came down to the colorism being totally unintentional as they changed character costumes between expansions. Final Fantasy 14 is far from the first game to have these colorism issues, but Yoshida's response is a refreshing start to making a dialogue happen between fans and game creators about this delicate subject.

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Final Fantasy 14's History Of Colorism

Lyse in her red outfit.

Final Fantasy 14's alleged history of colorism has been the subject of player criticism. The main cast consists of mostly white characters and the darker-skinned characters got a little bit lighter with time. While it was Y'shotla and Thancred's skin color changes that Yoshida addressed, many fans actually had a bigger issue with Lyse's role in Stormblood as a white savior to her nation of colored people. Reddit forums have asked, "Why is Lyse the only white person from Ala Mhigo," and, "Shouldn't Lyse be darker?"

For many, it was in poor taste to have a blonde white woman lead the charge in a story about fighting back against colonialism. After Stormblood, many fans have said that they started to find Lyse annoying and sometimes this fact about her odd relationship to Ala Mhigo was listed as one of the reasons why. Most of the minor characters in Ala Mhigo are people of color, and it may have been better to get a character like Raubahn more involved as a leader in the rebellion than Lyse. In the end, though, Lyse and Stormblood were not what Yoshida drew attention to at the 2021 Fan Fest.

Yoshida's Response About Y'shtola's Skin Color

Y'shtola in Endwalker trailer.

In a Fanbyte interview that touched on Final Fantasy 14 and colorism, Yoshida explained that back in patch 1.0, Y'shtola's skin was lighter, then was darkened in Heavensward, as that was the time that Square Enix decided to give the Scions a costume change. At the time, the team decided to make Thancred and Y'shtola "sun-kissed" because Coerthas mostly takes place outside, but it also takes place in the snow. Essentially, the change was made in part so there would be a contrast between the characters and the setting.

Thancred and Y'shtola then paler in Shadowbringers because their bodies were seeing less light due to their coma. Square Enix wanted to give that little detail to show that the characters can change throughout the story based on what happens to them. So, Yoshida explained this and hoped that players would focus less on this unintentional colorism and more on having fun in the game. Yoshida added that the Final Fantasy 14 development team wants to be as considerate as possible and take the concerns of its fans seriously. "If there were any sort of misunderstandings, we do want to be mindful of that moving forward," he said.

Yoshida's response was incredibly careful and made all efforts to respect the Final Fantasy 14 players. While fans have discussed the matter of colorism in Final Fantasy 14 plenty before the Fan Fest, Yoshida's response has inspired mostly silence. This can be due to way more exciting things happening in the Fan Fest such as the announcement of Endwalker, its new Reaper class, and male Viera.

Final Fantasy 14 is available now on PC, PS3, PS4, and PS5.

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Source: Fanbyte