The Elder Scrolls Arena let you play as a black woman in 1992. Name another game that did that.
Pretty much every game has offered a world where both races and sexes participate equally, and no one really cares (Morrowind’s racism is always made alien and upsetting thematically).
In Morrowind you can’t be a lesbian with Ahnassi (although the guy who wrote The Lusty Argonian Maid is an equal opportunity HR disaster). One of the rare characters Oblivion bothers to spend time on in a faction quest line is very clearly gay. Skyrim everyone is pan.
And a lot of this is just the same in Adventure Construction Set a series Howard explicitly took inspiration from. The game doesn’t really give that much of a shit about what you look like. It’s far more effort to code in racism, when you start with that kind of open world model.
No shade on ur whole thesis but “Wheel of Fortune” for the Sega Genesis did let u play as a black woman and also came out in 1992.
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But that’s a neat TIL
It’d take another 7 years before we got Urban Chaos with its black female lead
Not really though. A lot of the positive representation in the player is incidental to providing a lot of options in character creation. All of the NPCs are essentially asexual, and the few you can marry are panromantic, but thats just easier to code so they dont have to check for gender or record different lines for rejecting you based on gender.
All of the elder scrolls games are still very rooted in amatonormativity and heteronormativity. They sort of skirt the issue by just never addressing it. Divorce is impossible in Skyrim without killing your spouse. You can only marry and live with one partner at a time. In terms of romance it’s basically the shallowest possible nuclear family simulator, with the player always in the role of the master of the house and the partner in the role of caregiver/house maintainer/slave. Any representation of queer relationships is only accidental, which for me gives them zero points. They just didn’t bother enforcing straight relationships.
Additionally they force a biological sex based gender selection. Theres no way to be trans or nonbinary, even in the sexless world of Skyrim. You choose the male body you’re he/him, you choose the female body you’re she/her. No women with facial hair, no men with boobs, no short kings or tall queens, no androgyny at all.
I agree with your complaints about Skyrim - it’s a lazily made game and the romance is pathetic. It’s possible to have well written romance in the series with the present game mechanics - see companion Vilja and the spectacular Ruined Tail’s Tale mod series (for Oblivion).
But there’s gotta be something notable in that since 1992, if you wanted to play a black female character, any mainline Elder Scrolls game has had that option, and it’s always been no big deal. Heck, one of the few games that forces you to play a set character, Redguard, despite being mechanically shit has some of the best character writing in the series and fully fleshed Cyrus out!
I’m not arguing it’s perfect. Morrowind’s bisexual character was originally only intended to harass female characters, but when they discovered they had messed up during play testing, they left it in because they thought it was fun.
The kinds of representation you are wanting are things I’ve only really seen in the Sims or indie games (as a trans guy, I think I cried on the character selection in Dream Daddy).
You are right in that it’s nice to have more representation of different bodies, but the games have always been able to adjust to that with mods. Not that Bethesda should get credit for modders work - they do tend to rest on unpaid volunteers fixing their games for them - but there has always been a community of people making those games represent and include them.
I think the Elder Scrolls and Sims series both have some of the most diverse fandoms of any game series for a lot of these reasons. A lot of my initial exploration of my gender identity personally was in those games - allowing myself to play as a male protagonist in Morrowind was my first time that I allowed myself to think of myself that way.
Elder Scrolls is one of the most racist worlds there is. Every race hates each other. They enslave each other, kill, war against, just because of race. Hell one race even changed thier skin color.
But to your point, there’s already one example of a playable black woman in the comments. I’m sure there’s more. Don’t forget ES lore was written before Howard showed up to remove features. So don’t give him credit where he didn’t earn it.
The worlds might be racist, but the game doesn’t really punish the player for being any race. Thematically the racism is always shown to be wrong.
I’m sure there’s more.
You’d be surprised. I think there is like one fighting game character and that’s it. I invite anyone to share if they know more for sure. I think there’s also clearly something special about being able to play a black character as a protagonist in a first person roleplaying game versus a random game show tie in game.
It’s an interesting question. I searched a little bit and found mostly 2000 onward. Theres some 90s though, like the Matrix game. But yeah, i get ya.
Thumbs up
The game doesn’t punish you for being any race
Have you never played Morrowind as a Khajit or Argonian?
They can’t wear shoes or helmets. So they are mechanically punished by not having two armor slots available to them that every other race has. /s
I’m okay with a mechanical tax on furries. /s
Admittedly, one of my favorite ways to play Morrowind is to use a combination of slavery and farming mods to create an agricultural plantation empire, dozens of farms with hundreds of slaves.
Depicting racism is not racist.
You’re painting a picture of a constant churning racewar, which is just not true. Elves have an elven supremacy bent that’s not universe and portrayed as a flaw. There’s other depictions of racism that again are not universal traits. Dark elves have the most of it, but dark elves are traditionally the evil elves - though in ES dunmer are more complicated than that.
People from different cultures and species regularly get along even as nations war with each other.
Depicting racism is not racist.
Very true and i shoul know better
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