Props

I'm not very good at modern video games, especially the big, "AAA" titles that sit at the top of the market. They require skills and reflexes that I no longer have, and lack the time to regain. Fortunately, I can get a sense of these games without having to play them myself, given the substantial number of people who hope to game their way into, if not internet stardom, a workable sideline by posting videos of themselves playing on YouTube.

And this is how I came to learn of Final Fantasy 16. It's an action-adventure game, that takes a lot of the elements that have found their way into the Final Fantasy franchise over the decades and seeks to tell a new, and somewhat mature, story with them.

One of the primary plot elements is a group of people (or non-people, really) termed "bearers." Bearers are, unlike the rest of the population, capable of using magic naturally, and as a result of this are despised and enslaved by the non-magical populace. (People born into the aristocracy often exempted, of course.) It's one of those design decisions that the cliché "bold choice" was specifically coined for.

The problem is that the delivery is about half as subtle and nuanced as carving "slavery and prejudice are bad" into an anvil and dropping it on someone's head would be. And it's not helped by the fact that model of slavery being presented is modeled on the practice of chattel slavery in the Americas, but without having any discernible basis in the economics of the setting.

The people I'm watching play the game have not finished it yet, so I don't know everything the designers have done with the story element, but, for the time being, the whole thing seems to be driven by the desires of national leaders at some point in the past. I'll be pleased if it turns out that there is some sensible reason that fits in with the world as they've built it, but I'm not expecting much change.

A common problem with including "difficult" topics in popular media is that people tend to forget that bad ideas didn't take hold because they were bad ideas; but because in the context in which they operated, they seemed like good ideas. Having the main characters of Final Fantasy 16 pushing back against a society that embraces slavery would likely work better if the slavery in question seemed to exist for any other reason than to have the characters fight against it; or for the audience to pat themselves on the back for being incensed by it.