Because I saw that SEGA tweeted its support for the black community, I felt compelled to make this post. I, like quite a few others here, played the original PSO. And I was incredibly impressed by the world it presented. A wide variety of people from different walks of life all worked together in pursuit of making a profit on Ragol amidst the turmoil. Each version included strong figures such as Sue, Natasha, and Sil'fer. The level of inclusion was astounding compared any other game I can think of at the time, and still is impressive to this day.
When I began playing PSO2, I was hoping to relive that experience. But by the time Elder appeared, I knew I was in for the exact opposite. This level of regression actually made me embarrassed to talk about PSO2 to many of my close friends. And there are no strong people of color in the setting to counter balance that embarrassment.
I'm quite aware of the technical challenges to update the corrupted human Falz models to something more kosher and that episode six is the final chapter, so I don't expect to see change in this game outside of NA exclusive event NPCs. But I would like the developers to keep this in mind for future games if the company is serious about this objective.
On a much lighter note, I want to end by praising PSO2 for its character creator. It's a huge improvement over the previous titles, as I can now make dark skinned characters of any race. PSO2 is one of the few online games that allows this. And I've already seen an incredibly diverse player base that almost makes up for the canonical denizens of the Oracle Fleet.