Among all the heroes in this game, only one (Shaarkot) is a black male figure. And with him, he is portrayed in a pretty stereotypical native African fashion. This seems strange due to the amount of heroes that exist.
Maybe even more egregious, if there is an Asian hero in the game, by default it is yellow. Yes, yellow. Li Xiu, Hu Tao, Chao, and Kenjiro are all obviously Asian by their looks, and Gan Ju, Wu Kong, Hikaru, Sha Ji, and Hou are Asian by name. All yellow.
Finally, the Sand heroes are Middle Eastern. Yes, Gafar, Arman, Rana and Yunan are…sand people. FREAKIN’ SAND PEOPLE!
Semi-related: Cyprian is obviously Michael Jackson, and Olaf is a Bottom Bear.
You forgot Kelile, but she isn’t, lets say, politically correct too, due to her native African look.
You got a point here, yes…was wondering about that too already.
But at least the yellow Asian heroes, will soon have a change, when the next purple Hotm will be released. She will probably be Asian and purple!
The thing is, that the game was middle age themed and was more about knights and castles and what so ever. Since there haven’t been much dark skinned knights, I guess that’s “OK”, even though many knights fought in crusades against “Saracens”, which could have been implemented as heroes too.
But for middle age games it’s not common to do that…the normally focus on the knights not on their enemies.
But now, with Season 2 out and with a different theme, they could and should have released more heroes from other ethnic groups I think.
Lets see what they do in future, before we contact the UN
I made mention that there is only one male black hero in Shaarkot. Kelile is female, which seems more acceptable as the female black heroes are sexualized.
This is the sort of response from people that do not acknowledge Black Lives Matter. Bunnies and Orcs are fictional. Black persons are real people. If you can legitimately take a stand opposed to this notion, I am open to hear it.
very honestly, I do not pay attention to the image of the heroes. I look especially at their characteristics. They can be of any color and any origin as long as they are good.
This is a fantasy game in a middle age fantasy setting. All heroes are fictional and not directly related to the real world. A Shaka style 5-star would fit in well, I suppose.
The white heroes are just as much stereotypes as those with color, and even the non human heroes are stereotypical. One could go as far as claim the art style of this game’s heroes is stereotypical. It’s consistent regardless of race.
I quite like it that particular factions of heroes are situated within a single domain. Orcs are “fire” in most of the game. Would be strange if they were spread everywhere.
It’s a bit strange for all those kungfu heroes to be situated within “holy” element, but I’m not that much of an rpg guy to go crazy because of it.
Oh, and I quite like it that heroes are very distinctive, and often following myths, real life heroes or actors (like Greek pantheon, Gandalf, Bruce Lee or even Ygritte).
There is a mix of fictional characters such as Orcs being Red, or Elves being Green. When you then mash up real life hero characters such as Asians being yellow or an absence of black male heroes anywhere, there is an issue.
Call it insensitivity all you want, but if you were a minority culture, you would feel this topic. There is like 0% of Spanish or Italian characters represented in this game’s heroes. Why is this when such a huge number of them comprise the world population, but an adverse population of Nordic, white (such as Thorne, Richard, King Arthur, etc.)
people play this game to escape this type of crap. let’s keep the game about puzzles, friends, and fun. I’m white but i wouldnt care if a single hero wasnt white, if you only play the game so you can get heros of a certain race, find a different game and let the rest of us enjoy ours. We don’t play the game to discuss racism, politics, or religion. save that for your break rooms at WORK
Oh ffs, stereotypical hero images? So what? Nobody cares. The art is pretty good, that’s all I care about. Honestly, some people will always find a way to bring racism and politics into everything.
Richard does not look even remotely Nordic, he, Rigrd, Colen or Tiburtus could easily be Italian or Spanish.
Don’t look for racism where there isn’t any. We have exotic looking characters like Joon, Bane, Shaarkot, Kailani, Kelile, Jahangir, Li Xiu or Chao, we get elves, orcs, mermaids, zombies and re animated skeletons, and we like them all. No stereotypical portrayals are meant to offend, the are supposed to be homage to mythology, pirate stories, movies, books, computer games or anime. It is fun, and anyone in the world can find their favourite characters. Perpetual desire to find racism in everything and anything is not going to move us anywhere.
I’d love to agree, but this is all too easy for us to say. We’ve had our table set and bed made from birth, with our white skins. We’ve never had to deal with prejudice and racism simply because our skin is colored. There’s nothing holding us back to enjoy our fantasy game in regards to our skin color, as whites.
For people of color it’s different because they’ve had to deal with racism in their real life. How do you expect them to just lay that aside and enjoy the fantasy, if in this fantasy setting they still can’t evade the simple fact that there are only so few black heroes?
That’s the insensitivity, right there. This is still a fantasy game, but the fantasy isn’t as easy to get into for everyone. SG would be wise to at least take note, or even better do something about it.
