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Controversy in games is something we see daily, and the latest one to join the fray on this is HoYoverse’s latest gacha title. If you didn’t know, the long-awaited version 2.0 launched recently and was mostly seen as a win for the company. I say mostly because one particular character has taken the spotlight for the wrong reasons. Sparkle, who debuted in Honkai Star Rail‘s latest main story quests, made some offensive comments to a certain character based on a real-life culture, making gamers believe she is racist. Sadly, instead of talking about this in a peaceful way, players have shown their toxicity once more.
Honkai Star Rail’s Sparkle Regarded as Racist Due to Certain Dialogues with Aventurine
First, I want to clarify that this isn’t the first time a HoYoverse game is under the spotlight due to racism controversy. If you didn’t know, players were furious back when Sumeru launched in Genshin Impact due to the lack of NPCs with different skin tones. Ultimately, this region took a lot of inspiration from the Middle East, and having NPCs with white skin only seemed off. However, that fight was against a whole region. In this case, Honkai Star Rail players are angry at Sparkle’s alleged racist comments, and instead of taking it to the developers, they’ve begun targeting the voice actor.
Initially, the controversy surfaced because Sparkle said offensive things to Aventurine in the game’s latest main story quests. For the unaware, Aventurine seems to take a lot of inspiration from the Romani culture, so the offensive comments from Sparkle seem racist. But heck, that isn’t a reason to send death threats to the voice actor of Sparkle. Sadly, this just shows that the gaming community can’t even have a normal dialogue with the developers and instead targets someone who has nothing to do with it.
The Case of HoYoverse’s Lack of Diversity
Now, this is a sensitive topic, but something that we see in games often. We have seen many recent games lacking any sort of cultural diversity, and ultimately, it can be justified by saying, “It is a fantasy world.” But that isn’t always right. When a certain area for a videogame takes inspiration from a real-life culture, a bit of representation is welcome. Honestly, I’m afraid about how Natlan will look in Genshin Impact. If you didn’t know, that region seems to take inspiration from South America, and as a Latino, yeah, I fear it won’t nail down the details. But that will never justify me or anyone else threatening the developers or actors of a game.
On the one hand, I can understand the anger of some players. Imagine seeing a small representation of your culture in your favorite game for the first time, just for a character to say offensive things, yes, it is normal to feel angry. On the other hand, there are ways to complain peacefully to make a change, and threats will never be the way to go. Hopefully, HoYoverse will tackle this racist situation with Sparkle in Honkai Star Rail before it blows out of proportion. I mean, the company has fixed things in the past. It did it with the Eula situation in Genshin Impact, so here’s hoping for the developers addressing this controversy soon.
