There was a fairly hostile reaction to Far Cry 4’s official cover art when it was revealed last month, with accusations of racism and cultural stereotyping.
Speaking with Eurogamer, creative director Alex Hutchinson has criticised several articles for ”jumping to conclusions”, and called elements of the general reaction ”uncomfortable”.
The box art shows a fair-skinned man, main villain Pagan Min, resting his hand on the head of a native soldier. Many found the image an unsettlingly imperialist one, mainly due to the fact that they assumed that Pagan Min was white. Hutchinson took to Twitter to clarify that he wasn’t the player character, and indeed wasn’t Caucasian.
“It’s funny when there’s one picture out there and there are so many articles jumping to conclusions,” said Hutchinson. ”It would have been interesting for someone to ring us up. That would have been cool. For someone to say, ‘Hello. We think this. What’s actually happening?’”
”That’s why I jumped on Twitter and was like, ‘He’s not white. That’s not the player. It’s more complex than that.’ So it’s been fun to see now that the video is out and more gameplay is out people are like, ‘Oh, okay. No big deal then.’”
The director also suggest that those who reacted negatively may have been guilty of stereotyping themselves. ”As much as people want diversity, the weird crossovers are uncomfortable. People were like, ‘Well he can’t be Asian because he has blond hair.’ It’s like, ‘Have you ever been to Korea?’”
I can understand the backlash, especially since Far Cry 3 wasn’t the most racially sensitive game, but it does seem like the team behind Far Cry 4 should have been given an opportunity to explain things before people kicked off at them. What do you think?
