“

Yes. I’ve said this since Honest Hearts came out, but the tribes in that DLC were not meant to actually “look” ethnically Native American. They were supposed to be descendants of a broad cross-section of Americans of different ethnic backgrounds (including Native American) and European tourists (in my own trips through the American Southwest, I’ve encountered many French, Swiss, Dutch, and German tourists). We had prepared different skin colors to show that breadth, but we found out that when it was combined with the body art (which was intentionally not based on existing NA body art designs), we blew up the texture memory, which was already really limited on the PS3. The solution was to have just one skin tone, a mid-tone, which had the obvious, unfortunate side effect of just making them all look kind of Native American.

I think the naming and speech patterns could use another pass to avoid falling into negative tropes.

I’ve also said before that Daniel was supposed to be Asian, but for whatever weird reason, somehow his data was switched over to Caucasian (which, in that engine, automatically flips a bunch of face and skin data). This was again done to avoid having it be “two white guys saving Native Americans”. But that’s exactly what it looked like in execution.

The core plot of Honest Hearts was based on Lawrence of Arabia and The Mission. I think it cleaves too tightly to the inspirational material in making the outsiders be the main drivers of the native groups’ destinies. As a result, the native groups feel sidelined in importance/voice.

Finally, I think involving Native American consultants, especially from the American SW, at some stage would have been a good idea.

I take responsibility for the bad representation in HH. I think we did a better job in Deadfire because we did ask Asian devs within the studio to look at the Huana and Rauatai characters and their representation, but we should have also hired some Māori consultants specifically to look at the Huana. The Huana aren’t really Māori (just like the Rauatai aren’t really Japanese), but even a fictional culture that’s only “inspired by” a mix of real world cultures can still get into uncomfortable or outright bad territory.

A few Pacific Islanders have contacted me to tell me that they appreciate that Deadfire deals with PI-type cultures and colonial themes. I’m genuinely glad for that, but we could have very easily done something incredibly shitty through pure ignorance. It never hurts to ask ahead of time.