cultural representation in games matters a lot to me. Your game should reflect the audience you want to cultivate, and that means giving people more chances to see themselves the hero, and giving the majority more chances to see others be the hero.

and it is awesome and cool to borrow monsters and iconography and cultural references to help broaden your game! it's incredibly exciting to see things you know from your culture and traditions show up in your hobbies.

but, and here's the part that trips folks up- do the homework before throwing stuff in willy-nilly. look up what you are adding to the game and understand what makes it iconic and representative, and look at how the people of the culture in question treat this object

Is it a thing of reverence? is it a thing you could conceivably find in a temple or place of respect? is it a major figure or just a side note from mythology?

and most important- how does the culture itself treat this thing in their own stories and pop culture? because remember, it's not just 2020 here, its 2020 everywhere, and other cultures kept growing and evolving and adapting their stories too

it's a lot of work! Ultimately, you have to be humble and accept that sometimes the answer is just going to be 'this is not a thing we can draw upon for our audience'.

and sometimes the answer might be 'the specific image or idea we want is off limits, but here are these amazingly cool derivations we can totally do that call back to the source in a way that invites folks to want to explore and learn and just enjoy the coolness of'

Oath of Ajani looking like an icon of Narasimha you'd see in a temple? Maybe not! Ajani jumping out of nowhere to save a follower or ally in a story reference pointing back to the Narasimha story? Hell yeah!

Hah, I meant to grab impeccable timing, but you get the point
https://talinthas.tumblr.com/post/150752641362/hah-they-said-they-werent-gonna-put-hinduism-in/amp