It's very strange to see people equating "high fantasy adventure" with "predominating ingrained racial tension and glorified racism". That certainly hasn't been a notable part of the last twenty years of my fantasy reading OR gameplay. What games were you playing?
Mostly games prior to 20 years ago. The good ones that were interesting with natural racial tensions that come from strong cultural differences of people living in close proximity to one another that equally value land and other valuable resources.
Arne says it perfectly:
Fantasy stories become interesting because of differences in cultures, species, powers. If everyone is the same, then there is no discussion, no conflict and no reason to read a story, watch a movie or play a game.
It's the differences that make things interesting; for better or worse. Instead of drawing on the cultural differences of the party members who clearly come from all walks of life, we're presented with a couple of boring women and straw men set sail on an endless sea of teen angst. This is a wasted opportunity that could have been used to teach the player about the lore of their people.
I shouldn't have to be Googling why the new red peoples with horns cowering in fear from a handful of goblins are different from the old red peoples with horns that were only just recently trying to kill me.
This is just bad storytelling.
