Because they’re literally sick-mad, the antagonist lacks as much depth as Frey does, and the mystery of why Frey ended up in Asia and what happened to her parents will be exciting once revealed. (I’m not going to spoil it, but if you’ve consumed enough Chosen One stories, I’m sure you can guess. Abandoned‘s hub city, Cipal, to settle unresolved issues — with many of the same Frey and Cuff brawls, uncharacteristic at that point in the plot.
Throughout my playthrough, I was constantly waiting for some aspect of the game to fully immerse me, but it never came. The number of delays and the game’s failed marketing campaignwhich is not surprising, but still teeth For AAA game developers, it seems like a relatively easy problem to fix if not solvable. Luminous Productions and game studios as a whole need to hire better writers. Of course some of them should be black. (The writers of this game are not people of color.)
But it wasn’t all bad. did not do it Feel bland or insensitive. For example, in the game, women, including black women, take the lead (although all magical women turn evil and are murdered). It also provides space for black women to be unlikable, unwilling to sacrifice themselves for others and still be heroes.
And Frey’s well-timed “Fuck!” after being beaten up and watching some sort of bizarre fantasy bullshit made me laugh the most out of the dialogue. I love and have a lot of cats to pet!) But considering I’m a game director Balinska was characterized as having a “very hip-hop gait” during her motion capture performancethe game’s treatment of race (not to mention its portrayal of psychosis) raises the question of whether the representation offered by mainstream developers goes beyond window dressing.
Betraying the gaming industry’s irony of creating brown protagonists to “reflect our diverse audience” (As claimed by a Square Enix spokesperson during the December 2021 preview of the game.) without actually doing the work of fully forming that character and moving through the world like POC actually does. You can be black in ways the mainstream media deems authentic, like walking “very hip-hop”, collecting sneakers, stealing cars, and so on, but Frey does all of that, but no more drops. is not. I want to offend certain gamers.
To be fair, Frey is far from the worst video game protagonist I’ve come across, and Kotaku claims that Square Enix hired “many consultants with BIPOC backgrounds” to develop Frey’s character. Balinska also provided “passionate” feedback during the recording sessions. Frey’s bizarre “How are you, fellow kids?” funAfter all, that’s what we’ve come to expect from blockbusters. more The mere fact that the main character is a black woman is frustrating.
Rather, I am annoyed by the lack of effort by game developers to innovate on the richness of their characters, especially when those characters are people of color. It means that we need a large amount of wish fulfillment — we want to imagine ourselves. As The main characters are doing all the cool things our fingers and stories tell them to do. But if Frey Holland is a wish fulfillment, it is not a wish fulfillment for black women in general. It’s a fulfillment of a desire to glorify the struggles associated with poverty and systemic neglect, even if you don’t want to.
