Wi-Philes

Now, God knows I loves me some RPG's. I can play for hours and hours, leveling up characters, fighting monsters that could only have leapt from the imagination of someone tripping on acid, or, you know, from a Japanese person. Regardless of the laziness of long-winded FMV sequences and impossibly outdated random battles, I'm a sucker for 60-hour jaunts into RPG territory.

I've recently been playing Final Fantasy XII and noticed something that has been bugging me for the longest time - something that has continued to bother me after playing through Final Fantasy after Dragon Quest after Kingdom Hearts.

There sure has been a shitload of white people.

Whiny, dramatic, gender-confused white people. Now, many of my Asian friends don't consider themselves "white", but I do, mostly because I'm ignorant and because the only difference between most Asian girls and most white girls is a pair of sunglasses.

Now, I don't have anything against white people. Without white people we wouldn't have golf programs on Saturday, hipster bullcrap like Juno or Hollister t-shirts. In fact, I think Cid Highwind is just the bees' knees with sugar on top. But after a while, I tire of seeing nothing but wide-eyed pretty white-skinned young people save the world. No, I don't give a shit if sometimes they have purple hair or bunny ears. I mean there's only so many prissy androgynous white boys I can take before I wish a gang of black breakdancers would show up and show these crackers what's up.

BUT BUT.. What about BARRETT!?, you may be asking. I have to say that I love Barrett. His painfully negro jive-speak made for a memorable FFVII experience. It's plain to see that game writers working for Squaresoft did all of their research on the "black experience" by spending a weekend watching random episodes of the A-Team and the epic motivational video Be Somebody... or Be Somebody's Fool!. For the record, I am NOT hating on Barrett - because anybody who has a machine gun for an arm deserves your immediate respect, and in Tifa's case, your virginity.

What I am saying is that RPG's have begun to bore me. In my younger years I may have thought it was totally awesome for a group of 15-year-old Asians to band together in saving the universe from another magical Asian. But after playing numerous role playing adventures, I'm wondering: Where all the brown people at? Do developers not like people with skin pigment who aren't aliens? Do game companies think that people of color are too busy sneaking across the Mexican border to notice they aren't being represented? You'd think there would be SOMEONE south of the equator in any Final Fantasy game who may have made it northward for perhaps a cameo of some sort?

Now I'm not expecting game developers to make an RPG out of What's Happening!! or for Edward James Olmos to show up in Xenosaga. But you'd think statistically SOMEONE on the planet would have the ability to use a sword AND have an afro?

I don't pretend to be an expert on RPG's or follow every title that comes out. I think I'd like to continue on this thought and start creating a roster of minority character RPG characters - so for all you console RPG'ers out there, send me your list and I'll get to seeing exactly what's going on here.

PS: By the way, gluing feathers onto Yuffie and making her a thief doesn't make her a minority in any way.

PPS: Black mages don't count either!