There's nothing too graphic or detailed in this post, but just as a warning, it mentions some pretty heavy stuff related to America's colonization.

Sorry to be That Person, but it's probably better to poke krin and fai about this now than wait for them to accidentally screw up really badly.

(Note - when I say "humanoid" here, I'm referring to characters using the Avatar bases, rather than simply having human characteristics, because it's shorter. I know the Shal'Orok are indeed humanoid, as well as Kowlla, ents, etc., but it's easier to use one word.)

Sylestia doesn't have a lot of racial diversity in its NPCs, which on its own I wouldn't really have too much of an issue with. Diversity is good, but it's not strictly necessary. The problem with having just a little bit of diversity, though, is that what you do have can feel like it's supposed to represent the entire real-life group, even if that wasn't intended.

I combed through the NPC guide and the Sylestia Walkthrough to refresh my memory, along with just looking through the NPCs that were available to me. For nonwhite humanoid NPCs (except skin colors like gray which straight up don't exist in real life), we have:
- Chef Botolli?
- Farmer Talris?
- Track Master Dennon?
- Master Smith Tal'gorth
- Some elites & named enemies
- Some randomly generated Nightfall Bandits & Woodsmen

I don't have much to say about Chef Botolli, Farmer Talris, and Track Master Dennon. Farmer Talris has a decent role in the storyline, so it would be pretty cool rep, but his race wouldn't make or break the story. Chef Botolli has barely more character than a randomly generated Nightfall Bandit, and Dennon is pretty much just The Tracker Hut Guy with little elaboration. Their races are ambiguous, though. Especially with Talris and Dennon, it's very possible that they were meant to be tan white people. I recall krin mentioning that one of the enemies was meant to have weather-beaten skin as opposed to being a person of color, so these three could be a similar situation. In a vacuum, their races would be completely inconsequential, but as I continue, bear in mind that they're three fourths of the potential neutral/good nonwhite humanoids in the entire game.

Next on the list, we've got Tal'gorth. He's a fourth good character! With a short backstory! This could be good! Except he's the only character in the Barracks explicitly stated to be foreign (I believe the only humanoid one in the game? I could be wrong on that one, though), and speaks in stereotypical broken English. It is difficult to learn new languages in adulthood, and obviously not everyone is going to speak them perfectly, and people shouldn't be looked down on for it. But Tal'gorth is the only one pointed out as non-Sylestian, and is also the only character in the Barracks to speak in broken English. He is othered. Again, if the sample size is too tiny, and something stereotypical shows up in that tiny sample, then you end up with a large percent of your [group X] characters being stereotyped, as opposed to showing how different they can really be. Honestly, even just having different Barracks members actually speak like different people would probably alleviate this a small bit. Right now, they all have the same manner of speech, formally describing the function of their building. Then Tal'gorth comes in as the glaring exception, and has a personality to boot. That being said, having more humanoid non-Sylestians and nonwhite characters is the best way to make Tal'gorth feel less like a stereotype. I am aware that the Shal'Orok aren't Sylestians, but they're a whole other can of worms that I'll get into later. They also don't use the humanoid bases while Tal'gorth does, making them look less connected than they really are. It makes the viewer compare Tal'gorth more with Sylestians than the Shal'Orok, because he looks like he should be more like the other humanoids you've met.

Aside from the above characters, there's just enemies that you fight. I mean, I guess it's cool that the Nightfall and Woodmen don't have job discrimination, but they're not really characters in any meaningful way. This includes bosses, unless krin and fai happen to be sitting on a storyline with Eleane or something. And there's also the whole "they're evil" thing. Making a character character that's evil be nonwhite, when there's barely any nonwhite characters to begin with, can fall under the previously discussed "Oh God, We Accidentally Stereotyped This Group Again" trap. But, just like Tal'gorth, it also wouldn't become an issue if there was just more representation to balance it out.

I'm going to point out that these very few examples are there in a sea of white characters. Characters in the storyline essentially enter and leave a revolving door, meaning you meet loads of them. And aside from the exceptions noted above, they're all either white, a fantasy skin color, or not using the humanoid bases at all. If Nightfall bandits can evidently be any race, then so can good-aligned Sylestians.

This is only the first part of what I wanted to talk about. The second is how the Lost Grove storyline handles its colonization allegory.

It's pretty unambiguous that the storyline of the Lost Grove mirrors the colonization of the Americas by Europeans. Unless someone knows absolutely nothing about American history, it's extremely obvious. But the way it's portrayed is... weird? I'm not quite sure how to describe it.

Sylestians found a portal to an unknown realm (Europeans "discovering" the Americas). The land seems to be uninhabited, except for some pesky monsters and pretty native fauna (By the time a lot of Europeans arrived, much of the indigenous population had already died from diseases brought over by earlier Europeans. They were also unpleasantly surprised to find out that wolves weren't extinct in America, but pleasantly surprised by all the fluffy things they could kill for fancy clothes). There are native inhabitants, as it turns out, and they're not happy about what we're doing to their home. We pass on diseases, but unlike the Europeans, manage to avoid mass death resulting from the sickness. Also unlike the Europeans, we don't commit genocide or enslave the indigenous population.

All that said, we can draw two conclusions right off the bat:
1. The player character and other Sylestians take on the role of European colonizers, with notable alterations to the story
2. The Shal'Orok take on the role of Native Americans

My issue is mostly how it's all framed. We are the colonizers, we rarely ever listen to the natives, and we're still the good guys. While Rue and Mozzi are depicted as friendly and welcoming, Rok'tar is portrayed as a grumpy old man who, in Rue's words, "has always been skeptical of newcomers" for not immediately trusting us. Whether those newcomers are seriously jacking up the place seems to be irrelevant. As of Stage 12, every time we manage to fix something we've done to the Shal'Orok, we wind up messing up something else. While the narrative does acknowledge that we've done harm to the Shal'Orok, and that we need to rectify it, it never lets you or anyone else admit that we might have earned Rok'tar's disdain. The most we get is Rylak in the beginning saying that if he was in Rok'tar's position, he would also be suspicious.

The story closely mirrors America's colonization for a while, then takes a sharp turn because we have to be good. It feels like it wants to explore the consequences, but doing so in depth would make your character less pristine for contributing, so it settles for showing some negative effects and swiftly fixing them before they can have lasting effects on, well, anything. In my opinion, the fluctuating fidelity to history makes going through the story feel as though it's constantly saying "The Europeans did some bad stuff to Native Americans, sure, but..."

I know that this wasn't what they were going for, but that doesn't change how the story itself comes off. I don't think there's an easy fix for this, and I'm not going to propose scrapping the Grove or major overhauls to the Grove storyline at this point. All I can really suggest is to be more aware of the messages and themes that the game gives. At least this is the beta, so writing changes moving forward are easier.

If anyone wants to add onto this or correct me on anything, please do.

I definitely agree with the colonization point - I'm not sure if it mirrors America's colonization exactly, but it does mirror colonization and imperialism *itself* quite a bit. I've seen other players point out in region chat that the Shal'Orok honestly have very good reason to not trust us, let alone let us continue pretty much trashing their home. I think there's also an issue with the idea of us coming in and "saving" them from what would be their natural enemies - perpetuates this idea that the colonizing power (sylestians in this case) are superior to the native people there. Again, I don't think it was done intentionally or anything - it is a very common story beat, but it has some unfortunate implications (as you said). Personally unsure how this would be fixed - and fully understand as well that editing story details isn't a priority right now, but I think it should be addressed in the future (and certainly as the game progresses).

(Sorry for taking so long to respond to this)

I agree that the parallel isn't exact, and many of them apply to colonization and imperialism in general. The thing that most jumped out at me as likely directly inspired by America's colonization is the sickness plot point, and the other aspects of the story also applied, so I read it as a sort of allegory. This is probably also because I'm American, and it's the example that I'm most familiar with, so my brain immediately linked it to that particular case.

I do think that most of the parallels were unintentional, though it's hard for me to believe that the Shal'Orok's sickness was completely uninspired by the diseases brought to the Americas by Europeans. At least in the US, it's probably the most well known example of isolated populations suddenly being exposed to new diseases. Krin and fai are also American, and probably drew on that event at least somewhat, even if it was just something like, "Oh yeah, when this sort of thing happened here, people got really sick, so we should add that."

Something else that I only recently noticed, so isn't in the original post, is that the Shal'Orok are the ones that learn our language instead of the other way around, despite us being the outsiders coming into their home. This is another very common thing for colonizing powers. I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't manage to notice this earlier, but at least I can bring it up now.

In regards to literally everything in Sylestia that is lore/story wise, absolutely none of it is meant to be based on real life. Not only for immersion reasons, but also because, for me personally, Sylestia is meant to be an escape from reality and a place of pure fantasy. All lore characters, places, races, etc are meant to be entirely fantasy based and not based on anything at all anchored in real life. The only exceptions to this are the pop culture pun names I give random Named or certain Avatar Items and those are done purely just for fun.

Obviously, a lot can be traced to "real life" things, especially with Avatar Items. But again, there is not meant to be any actual direct correlation to anything specific tying the real world to Sylestia's fantasy world. We just rely on basic themes because it's generally a lot easier to be interested in something that you can relate to or something that you are familiar with. Again though, this mostly applies to just Avatar Items.


In regards to general plot lines, human written history spans thousands of years across billions of people and countless civilizations. It's pretty hard to come up with anything that hasn't happened before at some point in real life. But we absolutely do not base any in game plot/lore on something specifically because it happened in real life. It literally is not meant to be like any real world events at all. No story/lore was written to mirror any real life events from any culture. It is literally 100% made up and written in specific ways. Certain races and locations exist because we started the story at ground zero and built it up 'naturally' from there to reach what the present day Sylestia is. It is not at all meant to parallel anything at all in the real world, American or otherwise. It is entirely 100% fiction.

Regarding races and such, the color of one's skin in Sylestia is not something people concern themselves with. While races in Sylestia may display prejudice against other races (say, elves and orcs hate each other purely because of each other's race), there are no examples anywhere in the game that I am aware of where someone is judged by the color of their skin. If you're a human, you're a human. If you're an elf, you're an elf. The color of one's skin in Sylestia is meant to only showcase biological differences. The only other judgments in Sylestia are coming from the judgment of one's character and actions within the world.

Now, I know that there's a lot of debate on the source of fantasy races where, say, elves are meant to be this specific group of people, dwarves are meant to be this, etc. But for Sylestia lore purposes, I do not think that way in the slightest and no Sylestia races are meant to parallel anything in the real world.

Additionally, there are specific reasons why most of the characters in the first 3 regions are mostly light skinned. The game just starts out and explores regions deeply rooted by races that are dominated with light skin for purely biological reasons. There are other races that we just have not encountered because the story hasn't progressed there yet. There are also other groups of humans, elves, etc who are dominated with dark skin that we have not encountered yet. In Sylestia, one's skin color changes to adapt to their environment. It has no other deeper meaning than that. A lot of this will be explored later on after the site is revamped and lore is explored more deeply.


Regarding the Lost Grove, there are quite a few things that I would like to clarify. Firstly, just to reiterate, it absolutely is not based on any real life events at all. Not a single one. No real event ever entered my mind when writing the lore that exists within the Lost Grove.

In addition to that, the reason the kingdom sought to enter the Lost Grove was because the denizens of the Lost Grove were coming through the mysterious portal into Astryl's Vale. In order to protect its people, the kingdom ordered their army through the portal to set up a base of operations and investigate with the goal of keeping its kingdom safe.

To this point, no colonization has occurred in anyway. Players built a barracks in a remote part of the jungle and solely operate from there. There are no cities being built. There are no towns. There are no citizens immigrating through the portal to live life in the Lost Grove.

Regarding the 'natives', the only civilization encountered has been the Shal'Orok tribe within the caves. No attempt to colonize them or steal their land has ever occurred. While Captain Rylak leads with a very military based mind, in the end, caution was exerted and the Legionnaires did what they could to protect the native people and assist them as much as they could.

Regarding the sickness, I honestly cannot remember why this specifically was chosen. It was not because of real life events. It literally could have just been because I had some mushroom assets left over to use, needed more stages to fill content with, and decided mushrooms = medicine = something is sick = there you go.

Overall, the Lost Grove is not canon. Once the site is revamped, it will be gone and no trace will be left of it outside of maybe a very subtle hint in a lore book somewhere just as an Easter egg. The Lost Grove was built as a technical testing grounds for new features to help us figure out how to best rebuild our exploration systems when the time comes.


All in all, I do understand where you are coming from in regards to a more fair representation of different cultures and people. In regards to our story and lore, as I've said, it is meant to be entirely its own fantasy universe completely separate from real life. Things are written and put forth in specific ways and we have barely even scratched the surface on that. We plan on massively expanding this once the site is revamped and finally moving forward.

Instead, we try and tackle this through things like our Avatar Items. We try very hard to release an immensely wide spread of different items for players to dress up as. We try and incorporate a lot of different themes and base things on all sorts of real life cultures/themes. This, however, comes almost entirely from non-lore standpoints, as these are almost always just Festival/Event based Avatar Items. But this is always done out of the utmost respect for said culture/theme. We do this because we realize we have players from all around the globe and from all sorts of different cultures and backgrounds, so we hope that we can have a good amount of items for players to dress themselves up and represent themselves as best as they want to.

Back to lore-wise, I do agree that we could probably do a better job of making main characters more diverse and it will be something we will try and pay attention to when things are revamped. However, as I said, there is very specific lore reasons for a lot of the characters and lore thus far.

I hope that this helps to clarify some misconceptions and provide more insight into lore-based decisions thus far.