@slimmmeiske2 this is for u

ERIC...YOU'RE SO GREY...??? Has he become a zombie after Ralph drained his Existence Energy??
I was afraid that that'd be the case, i really don't like him > _>
also, the only darker-skinned character being the evil / sketchy looking one? Color me surprised!
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but i won't complain much about that lol. it's not like it isn't an rpg maker trope or anything. Complaining in this thread will do absolutely nothing other than create animosity XD
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At least Erik was a breath of fresh air.
In light of greyness, I think this deserves a proper breakdown, because this is actually also a bugbear of mine. While it's timely to seriously consider race, this is years of :/ feelings. MV is
absolutely the worst of it with the only real Dark person being the sexy belly dancer exotic elf woman

And the only other overtly and unsubtly darker-skinned characters being the 2 Evildude villains

And lest we forget, the generator literally makes creating dark-skinned OCs difficult because there's this hideous blotchy smear across their damn faces. I've tried my hand at my own facesets before; I know for a fact its because when the face was adjusted, through blurring or some unblended definition, there was zero regard for how it would look with a higher contrast with a rich base colour. Like no one even thought to test them to be sure? You just shipped it like that?
handheld has the best track record with DS's whopping
11 dark-skinned characters! 10 of which are heroic, and 8 of which look like Hero's Party members. There may even be 12 characters if you count the slight tint of Actor 12. Of course, they were all copy-pastes of each other; if you have
160 individual characters to work with, what's a little...6% of the cast. Oh.
And every single one of them are white in their sprites. Oopsie! ♥♥♥
Speaking of DLCs based on consoles, I know its a lot of characters, but FES was an improvement by have a huge and diverse cast of dark-skinned characters where - while there are some lily white sprites - has anyone who is a shade under tan show as dark-skinned in the sprites! And then also had an actually somewhat okay (if, once again, proportionally minuscule. Just, teensy weensy population) selection of roles for these characters, and then those sprites...are crudely x2 upscaled so you can't use them in anything that isn't a retro pack. Classy. At least it had the good sense to come with tilesets.
So, VX Ace championed the first non-peachy hero, with a tan character to compare him with on the same facesheet so you know for Realsies that he's
definitely brown & not just Picrew Tanned, yet Eric's sprite - in an RTP that
isn't a mass copy-paste of hueshifted assets, the
main actor of VX Ace mind you - is
literally also lily-white. It's not even corrected in the DLC pack.
I know that it's not official, but that skit video, Eric's putrid rotten flesh colour on top of
all of that....
I think that this is such a consistent pattern contributes enough ill will to be at
least something to think about with the new release. RPG Maker 95 being better about skin tones with their 2 caricature characters than a modern release with their heroes is seriously.....
um. Even the very dark-skinned thieves in 2000 kept their rich skintone & "part of the hero's party" aesthetic through to the portrait redraws in 2003, and the sprites retained that info. A hell of a lot better than Sexy Exotic Belly Dancer (1).
I don't know if this is lack of communication (like MV's Actor2 having blond hair despite every single other piece of material featuring her having brown hair) or just yet another faction of people who believe sprites simply don't matter in a game despite it being the 1 thing the player will be staring at the entire duration, but...you know...

oopsiiieeee ♥
[Fun data for people who love to be miserable; these are the 2 darkest characters of all 160 you get. Of the 11.5 characters who don't have light skin, 1.25% of the cast are actually dark. And they get those peachy sprites!]
Whew! That's a lot to chew, and I trimmed FES and skipped XP entirely. I feel like the granular details of all this & how we engage with it should be in its own thread, but to reduce the conversation as much as possible to MZ
specifically;
1. Of the 120 characters [or 60 characters and their isekai counterparts?] is the racial makeup still this bleak?
2. Of the dark-skinned characters, do the sprites reflect the characters?
3. Is there even curly hair in the generator? Not even
coily styles, any
curls at all?