I dunno I see the same sort of divide, but I think there’s a lot more to it than that.
The first problem as I see it is simple lack of consideration. For the most part when fantasy worlds don’t include non-European people or cultures its because its just never occurs to them to do so. Whether because of lack of interest/skill, or because they’ve embraced (lazily or otherwise) certain social biases or media tropes. The whole “its more historically accurate thing” is an after the fact justification. Because while the prevalence of non-whites in medieval Europe is a bit invisible, the large amount of contact between diverse people at the national and cultural level is impossible to ignore. In fact it makes up a large portion of the History you’re supposedly trying to be accurate to.
But the lack of consideration kind of goes two ways, and I think this plays into some of the ways the characters of color in the new Dragon age don’t quite work. A bigger problem, for me, is that the people creating these worlds often don’t bother contextualizing or fleshing out the lack or presence of other cultures or POC in their game world. So ok there’s no POC in your world, not immediately a bad thing. Its the prevelance of that depiction, and not neccisarily any single example that’s the problem. But like you said why? How? What’s the history. Maybe there’s reletively little contact between the culture you’re depicting and outside people. And there are fears of plague or cultural invasion. So their are people of color but where we’re viewing things, they are few and limited to quarantined ports. That’s way more interesting, inclusive etc than just ignoring the whole thing, and you aren’t even required to depict more diverse people to do so.
So here’s where DA:I’s problem comes in. If you do take the (admittedly better) approach of depicting diverse humans (or peoples/species whatever) then you still kind of need that context. The non-human species get the dignity of backstory and history, as do the major (European inspired) nations and cultures we deal with. But for their part there doesn’t seem to be much of that done for your various non-white humans. Where do they come from, where do they stand in Thedas society, or even just the Kingdoms we’re dealing with. Maybe you go the Star Trek route. And Humans in Thedas have relative racial harmony within themselves. But you need to tell us why, how it came about, are there hold outs? It all just craves context whichever route you go. The failure to provide that context is part and parcel of the same approach that leads to exclusionary depictions in the first place.
Which I think is sort of what you were getting at anyway. Set in the right direction, but not there yet.
The other significant thing I see going on is that with Fantasy there’s a big tradition of going at issues of identity politics, race more specifically, international politics etc through the metaphor of non-human races. A lot of the issues about depiction, roles of various societies are sort of shunted off to the elves and dwarves or whatever. So there seems to be a lazy tendency to assume since you’re already dealing with that stuff, you don’t have to deal with it in terms of the real world, or the humans you depict. You get that first “lack of consideration” thing coming back. Since you’re already dealing with race, colonialism whatever by having green people you can just depict “regular” humans (with the racist/socially reinforced idea that regular = white assumed).
In terms of Dragon Age this actually makes the lack of context for human cultures a little more uncomfortable. Because its a series that explicitly deals with identity and social issues. Usually through the lens of non-human species, and an increasing inclusion of LGBT issues. But it apparently these things are important to deal with but not important enough to deal with using characters who actually human? And actually in situations that match up with real world conceptions of race?
The whole dynamic makes things rather confused. Like the article in question names both Zavran and Sten as people of color. So Sten might be depicted with certain features that resemble a person of color, but he’s explicitly not human. Zavran is even thornier. Sure he’s got a tan and an accent, but the nation he hails from is (IIRC) intended to represent Italy. So aside from not being human, he isn’t neccisarily intended to represent a non-white human culture. So are they POC? Are all the non-human characters POC (honestly I think if these two count then yeah)? Are there Elves of Color? Do these depictions obviate the need to address similar concerns within the human cultures? Or issues of this sort within non-human cultures? Isn’t this whole edifice of non-human species (termed races) a bit weird, and implicitly tied to some really wacky old racial theories from the real world.
It just seems all of it could be avoided by just fleshing out your characters and worlds more. And refusing to ignore/engage with the tendency to limit the cultures and people you depict to existing lazy tropes.
