Final Fantasy XVI Suffers From Its Superficial Handling Of Slavery
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to 
kotaku.com
In Square Enix's latest epic RPG, the moral monstrosity of slavery is effectively reduced to window dressing
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stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to
Your character is not a slave. (Spoilers limited to promotional materials) Player character is the oldest son of the ruler of one of the major countries in the game world, so a prince. Ability to wield (very specific) magic is quickly explained that some of the nobles of that family can do. He somewhat is a slave at some point, but this is a very brief story moment (tbf at the very beginning, you meet your character as a slave before he goes into childhood memory where he is a prince). When relevant, NPCs do interact with character as with slave, but its rarely relevant. So it is very much a background theme, even if a major one.
That's why the phrasing was "from the caste of people" in the clarification. It was just a cultural difference: his home treated him as honorable and other cultures don't.
When he is briefly enslaved, it wasn't because they mistook him for being the kind of person you get to do that to, it's because he was that kind of person and simply hadn't been treated that way before.
Not the point of the story, when NPCs get to know who the character is theirs opinion changes
That is actually almost what happened. If he was not a mage, that story point would change little.
The "mages are slaves" thing is more akin to FF6's "there is no magic in this world", like it is a somewhat big deal that Terra is mage, but game doesn't spend much time there since it is not a point.