Darks Souls: Japanese Game but still as white as ever


The Dark Souls game series, created by From Software, has been primarily known for its high difficulty and learning curb. The first in this series of games being released on September 22, 2011 to high praise for challenging but fair difficulty and unique combat that rewarded skill but didn't overly punish mistakes.  However once one stops to explore the world they will find the series burrows not only its aesthetic from poplar interpretations of the Middle Ages but many of its habits as well. From the being of the game one can choose their characters appearance, class and starting item but upon quick inspection of the presets one can find a very unflattering design called the Jubliant Catarain. This is shown to be the only example of a darker skinned character and are described as "Jovial" and their land is known for "festivity and drink". Implying those with dark skin only party and drink.

This incredibly rough start is somewhat hidden throughout the games due to the fact that most of the major characters are completely covered in full armor that both hides their appearances, only revealing their gender through their voice acting this giving a balance to gender as regardless of a characters odd armor design it is shown to have an equal representation on how much armor one wears. However those that do reveal their appearance throughout the entire series are pure white, except for a merchant Maughlin, in Dark Souls 2, who grows in arrogance once you spend a certain amount of souls in his shop.  Even after people began to go into the game files to remove armor to find what these characters looked like they still are shown to be defaulted white, this being true for a character named Siegmeyer as well, who despite hailing from Cataria is defaulted to white as it remains the games default aesthetics.
Maughlin from Dark Souls 2

Lucatiel from Dark Souls 2

This world is heavily shaped by the gods that despite shaping it to be similar to that of a fantasy medieval Europe, are inspired by the Gods of Greek and Roman Myhtlolgy, with a fantasy touch. The King of the Gods, Gwyn, being the strongest and controlling lighting itself, similar to Jupiter. His daughter, Gwynevere being heavily inspired by Venus and Nito the god of the dead much like Pluto. As a few examples of the many gods that appear throughout  the series (most of which you kill). Even the city they reside in, Anor Londo, having architecture similar parts of its city modeled after medieval Europe with its many churches and castles . With the dominant religion going against the undead that plague that world modeled much like the more Medieval version of the Catholic religion in the real world with the use of miracles, priests, clerics, and divine weapons despite these miracles being blessed by a Roman and Greek inspired gods. This leading to eventual cults formed around other gods such as Nito's who is only meant to spread death which despite going against Gwyn's morals is allowed to continue due to being old war buddies during the war of Gods and Dragons.
Anor Lando

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylFzJ3wRgHw
Despite this there are two characters who stands out in this very western styled world, those being the characters of Shiva of the East and his ninja bodyguard (who is never given a name). The character of Shiva haves an interest in exotic weapons and armor  then meets the player if they choose to join a group of forest bandits, which he one of their most successful members, upon inspection  his armor (called the Eastern set) and weapons show the  influence of middle eastern and Japanese in appearance. This character becomes a merchant to the player as he searches for the legendary sword in this land called the Chaos Blade. This being a quest line cut form the game where he would betray you for the blade and you would have to hunt him down to reclaim it. Though this was cut from the game many of the white characters still express their mistrust of Shiva thinking him as an outsider and violent. Which is amazing due to some of these characters backstabbing the player when they feel the time is right depending on player choices. Despite this game series being created by a Japanese company it still contains many of the flaws and influences that other medieval fantasy games contain with their overabundance of whiteness and general idea of how other races are viewed by the heavily Roman inspired Christian people of the world of Lordran.
Shiva of the East


Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 5, 2018 at 5:47 PM

    The idea of having race determine your skills or your value as a warrior is a very poor way to express power or someone’s will-power as humans or a creature. Titles have meaning as this video game has, “Dark Souls” yet it’s sad to see how the meaning can change when give context. The game as you state has many similar aspects of Middle-Earth, but it also shares many habits as well. They have a term as you stated “Jovial’ which refer to those with dark skin, but this also implies they are drunks and arty animals. Which is a stereotype in the real world.

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  2. Caroline OgdenMarch 6, 2018 at 8:57 AM

    It's really fascinating to see yet another example of how the fantasy genre maintains its tropes and euro-centrism even when produced outside of the West. It was particularly damning to read about how all fully armored characters were still white underneath. While we could consider this a mere laziness in avoiding a color pallet swap given the characters are fully armored, we have to remember that the default is still white. And of course the "jovial" preset as explained in the above comment and the post itself is certainly a continuation of stereotypes.

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