First of all, this is going to be really awkward for you. I AM a POC. Mixed, to be exact. So I don't need to listen to other POC to validate or invalidate my opinion. Especially not in this case.
- You can criticize the plot point, which I do and did not like, but it has nothing to do with the skin color. It is just not well executed. Not even the death scene is that well done, but introducing TIlda and the most interesting story point 2 minutes later just ruins any possible emotional response.
Raising the emotional stakes is fine, because that is a VERY important theme for Aloy, who keeps on pushing people away. It just wasn't well executed.
Shepard's emotional state was never a big theme in the story, so that comparison is not the best.
Continuing, if they were adamant about killing a companion then why have it be Varl? Once you know that Varl is marked for death you can look back and see he was setup as the character to be killed. But they could have easily done this with any other character, it's not like Varl was some super fan favorite from the first game. He was a minor character, Erend had more screen time than him. Thus, it very easily could've been Erend that was made to be this nice guy that tried to keep everyone together that's impaled in front of you. Instead they foolishly chose Varl to die for the tropey reason outlined above.
Erend definitely does NOT have more screen time in HFW. In fact, he has probably the least screen time in this game (other than Sylens). You basically meet him drunk in the beginning, he is a very small part of the mission to rescue Beta and then he stays in the base for the last third of the game. He is almost nonexistent in this game (which is very weird imo).
Varl is used a lot more. The whole intro mission, the first battle when entering the west, the first cauldron and the whole arc with Zo and then his last mission.
EVERY character that dies in a story is set up early on. That's called writing. Whether it's in Game of Thrones, Sopranos, Red Dead Redemption or TLoU. You ALWAYS set up characters for actions later in the story.
Why Varl? Because he is obviously the closest to Aloy. Who else would elicit an emotional response?
Rost is already dead. Erend is drunk and annoyed without any really personality or goal. Just like in the first game. Zo is new and hasn't been established enough at that point. Sylens is somewhere behind-the-scenes and more of a bad guy. So Varl is the only logical choice - a man of honor who always supports Aloy (even when she pushes him away), the person most curious about the old world and motivated to learn by himself.
But to get to the most important point, narratives do not exist in a vacuum. You cannot divorce a narrative from the real world and the implications they arouse. There's a reason Detroit: Become Human is mocked with its whole "I Have A Dream" bullshit with its androids. You can't just tell a story about oppressed androids, one of whom is black and can quote MLK and not have people draw comparisons to the civil rights movement and how stupidly your metaphor doesn't work. Similarly, you can't just create a black character in a narrative and then go, "I don't see race" as you proceed to write their story which somehow manages to fall into the same racial tropes as most narratives.
Narrative does not exist in vacuum? First of all, this is a EUROPEAN game with those sensibilities. Janet judges it from the AMERICAN social vacuum, which does a disservice to the developers. Not everything resolves around the social issues and treatment of minorities in the US my friend.
And a comparison to Detroid: Become Human is ridiculous. That terribly written game is set in a not so distant future and has a clear goal of focusing on modern social issues and making some (half-assed and shallow commentary). All those terrible analogies about slavery, holocaust, MLK and other things should be criticized because it focuses on modern themes and wants to be a smart criticism of many societal issues...but miserably fails. So yes, you need to be aware about possible issues in writing about modern society, when those are your setting and main themes.
That's completely different from this case. You can write a black person like Varl, who has obvious motivations and is well fleshed-out and then let him die. A black person does not mean "black-american" and does not represent how black people are killed in American movies, shows or whatever. There are plenty of other black communities around the world that are represented differently. But I've noticed plenty of time that most American media is incapable to see anything outside their own country.
"The black guy dies," is a staple of not just horror fiction, but fiction in general. And when there are precious few leading black roles in Hollywood and even less in games, killing the black guy carries even more weight. You don't just get to go, "this is a fictional world where racism is abolished." That's great, we don't live in that world. This is the real world where racism exists and the black character dies 95% of the time in a fictional narrative while actually being cast maybe 5% of the time to appear in any narrative. So yes, it is a major concern that they should have thought about before deciding to make Varl the guy we want you to love just so we can kill him.
You could argue that not enough black protagonists exist in video games, which would definitely be true. I mean...damn... the only black protagonist that comes to mind is Colt from Deathloop...just shows you how much work still has to be done for African representation !
But criticizing a game and even saying that there is underlying racism by the developers because a great black character, which most people probably really enjoyed, gets killed is just silly. Especially when there are still other well written black characters in the game. I want stronger representation of black characters in my games (and media in general), but I won't stand for criticizing this. Black characters can die as long as they are still well written characters and respected. This was the case here.
The overall writing wasn't great (but that's an issue I have with every emotional arc in this game), but that has nothing to do with the skin color. By that logic, no other well written black character in any game should ever die again...! Sounds silly, doesn't it?
Would I have liked for someone useless like Erend to die instead of Varl, who I really enjoyed? 100%. But I am not going to insinuate that the writers/developers at Guerilla Games want to serve some racist stereotypes...
There's a reason Naughty Dog has similarly caught shit for their treatment of black characters. All of whom have died violent deaths, except for Nadine in UC who has their own problem of being voiced by a white woman. Now dumbass try and excuse those deaths as "the world of TLOU is just violent," but when every black character dies a super violent death, well we've got an issue.
I suggest you perhaps actually listen to the POC voices talking about this subject instead of having a knee jerk reaction to dismiss it and call it "dumb." If every POC has the same reaction, and you a non-POC keep saying it's fine. Well, what do you think that says?
