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.
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.
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.
Very true and i shoul know better
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.
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
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.