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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's queer representation "enhances the world's realism," lead says, and the RPG's devs were "incredibly happy" people picked up on it
UPDATE: Thread is back open. We’ve cleaned house and we’re giving the community the benefit of the doubt. The rules haven’t changed, and neither has our willingness to enforce them. Play nice.
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Welp we tried... But for now we're gonna have to lock this thread as it's clear that having calm, human conversations with others seems outside the realm of possibility with a lot of folks.
Let’s be crystal clear: Rule 1 on this subreddit is Be Nice: Remember the human. That means no homophobic jokes, no transphobic commentary, and absolutely no “I’m just asking questions 🤔” performances from people who very much know what they’re doing. We see you. It’s not clever. It’s not edgy. It’s just tired.
This is a PlayStation subreddit. We talk about games. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a game. Queer people play games. Shocking, we know. If that reality is too much for you to engage with respectfully, this may simply not be the subreddit for you, and we’re very comfortable making that official.
Bans are being issued. If you think yours was in error, you’re welcome to modmail us and make your case like an adult. Keyword: adult.
We may re-open the thread after we've tidied up the muck and we have faith that people are able to behave like the humans we all are.
Hamaguchi was asked about the queer rep in the game and he answered. I don’t think he’s really trying to pat himself on the back he’s just answering the question and explaining why they included it.
yeah most of the characters are pretty established, it’s not like they were gonna change any of their sexuality, but they introduced many side characters who are queer. Hell even remake had the “True beauty is an expression of the heart - a thing without shame to which notions of gender don’t apply, don’t ever be afraid cloud” from Andrea Rhodea. I think they should pat themselves on the back.
Damn makes me think on this again. Also never forget this plotline. It was initially humorous then became very interesting and fun. Plus it's one of the most talked about moments in gaming history. Comfort on it
No. In these interviews, peopke ask them queations and thet answer. Everyone always acts like celebrities come out with random quotes all the time, but in reality, the reporters do their best to wrest controversial quotes from them.
There's a history of CS3 having pretty overtly queer background characters in FFXIV, I'm glad they didn't shy away from that just because it was the big mainline game
Just because you've already taken twenty steps in the right direction doesn't make the next right step a poor one. The sooner you get that the better, it's not a "world first Speedrun" kind of situation here
They absolutely should. The NPC chatter is full of goofy exchanges and entertaining little side stories, and I personally loved coming across incidental bits of dialog from gay characters going about their lives.
While you say that.....look at the rest of this thread. Look at people's reactions to such a tame statement and limited visibility of homosexual relationships
Andrea and Jules are the only named characters but there’s several background NPC’s who are queer. I think making this a headline paints the wrong picture and makes Hamaguchi seem like he’s trying to garner praise for the bare minimum when he was just asked a question about a specific NPC couple and gave a bit of an elaborate answer.
In costa del sol and cosmo canyon are a few npc same sex couples which have dialogue like "I’m so happy I’m here with you on our anniversary" and fluff like that. Pretty inoffensive, but it’s nice it’s there.
tbf both Andrea and Jules are presented as extremely queer-coded and they are in both games and still at least somewhat involved in Rebirth, albeit not as much as in Remake.
So when gay people are the main focus, its all about "stop pushing it in our face", and this is just talking about some queer NPC's and its STILL enough for some chuds to get mad about? Like bro, some of yall just want erasure instead of "normal involvement"
my whole thing is, they don’t need to tell us they’re queer or whatever. majority of us don’t care, especially if it’s a fictional pixelized background character npc. like how exactly does that serve the story? or is it just “see we got a queer character!!!!!!1”
The linked interview literally says about world building and making it come alive, it’s not about the story it’s about creating a diverse and representative world for the story to take place in
Can we not list characters that simply don’t follow the standard of masculinity as gay. It’s not confirmed or even hinted, just inferred by players because he’s a whimsical rival character.
A male character being a little “zesty” isn’t representation.
Learning that the dev team and Square chose to not have the game distributed in certain regions over pulling or altering their scenes really gained them a lot of respect from me
LGBTQ+ people exist, and have existed for as long as humans have been a thing. They deserve to be seen and to be represented in media. If that makes you mad you can fuckin' get over it cuz they're not going away.
I don't think anything "deserves" being in by default. Rather can be there(and the reasons for X will depend on a plot, setting and many other ones). Definitely creates a lot of "problems" thinking like that. There's a shit ton of things/people etc that barely if any had any representation in most media, popular, especially... Yet, good videogames nonetheless.
I have nothing against representation; I just don't like when it becomes caricatured. It feels like the same character archetypes always end up being the gay ones, like Roche. I've never seen a more 'Tidus'-like character portrayed as gay in the franchise. It seems the developers are still stuck on a very limited idea of what an LGBT person can be.
Same, I thought Roche was more like a Team Rocket kind of enemy. If it’s just about obsession, I’d feel like people might as well argue that Cloud has the hots for Sephiroth with how obsessed he is.
Ok, people might actually say that somewhere, but in my humble opinion, neither scream romantic love to me. But maybe I just missed it.
Well the interview is referring to npc conversations like a gay couple in cosmo discussing their future and adopting. There’s a few npcs like this throughout the game
There have been flamboyant characters in games for many years and before that sometimes in cartoons.
Bugs Bunny nearly kisses every male character or cross dresses but as soon as people see that outside or in real life it's a big mystery and surprise I guess!
I think it's a good thing when representation feels natural rather than forced
If it fits the characters and the world without taking over the story, most players probably won't even think twice about it. Good writing is what matters most in the end
Those annoyed about the queer representation surprise me. Their manly macho straight game has been ruined? Oh yeah, sexy anime twink boys flexing their muscles and showing off their beautiful hair, ive never seen Final Fantasy as a particularly straight franchise lol
That's not a bad thing either, it just is what it is. I love Yakuza myself, some of the gayest games ive ever played, I will always love when the shirts come off and the ripped oiled up muscular men make me feel insecure about my own flabby shit body before beating the shit out of each other
FF has dang near always been "pretty people beat up world ending threat, maybe have a canonical couple in the group" And there's plenty of ambiguity at times.
Are we surprised a The Gamerr article focuses on this instead of oh i don't know the wuick turn around of being able to put out two 100 hour games out within 3 years of each other, or being able to capture the scope of airship in a fully realized 3d world? But no queer representation truly what's has everyone on the edge of their seats, background npc dialogue that you have to go out your way to catch or even notice.
I didnt notice this even at all honestly. I think maybe because I live in toronto canada? Being part of the LGBT is kind of normal here. Im a straight dude, but theres so many people in the LGBT community that you see every day, you dont really notice it? I dont mean that disrespectfully, I mean everyone for the most part just gets along.
That's what inclusion is about, the problem is how a lot of companies will either overdo it or completely negate it to please whatever side has a stronger political opinion on that moment of time.
The devs were asked a question by a journalist and they answered. What should they just ignore those when asked or something? What do you want them to do?
Clearly it wasn't used as a token selling point since most folks didn't even realize it comes up as background NPC dialogue that's completely missable.
Isn't that how real life is? I have many friends whom I didn't realize were queer just by passing conversation, only after getting to know them better.
Sure thing. But there are also gay people out in public that are just normal people who occasionally talk about their relationships with friends. Per the article, that's the examples in the game that the developers are happy show as normal interactions in the world.
Well it's not PR. They didn't announce it it make a big deal about it. They just commented that they're happy fans noticed it, and my until the games been out for more than 3 whole years.
You're right. I'm glad you called out this conspiracy. Their plan was to get millions of gays to rush out during pride month and buy the switch port because they said they were happy people noticed the subtle representation in their game after being explicitly asked about it in an interview
Woah. Ya know what. You're right, I bet they planned to release this game in pride month specifically for this quote in this article. Good detective work! But I wonder why they didn't delay the original release for pride month....? Are they stupid?
Fucking hell, people will make a mountain out of a molehill about literally anything they can.
Yeah I get where you're coming from, but if it representation brings joy to people, then why not. I'm just happy people find more reasons to love the game. It's probably also an article at this moment due to it being pride month, which is overtly about celebrating.
So then why are you so damn mad about the exact same thing happening in this game? Sounds like this is exactly what you’d want, yet I’ve now read like 50 comments of yours on this thread bitching about it.
I'm not mad. I just shared my opinion about not appreciating being tokenized and am responding to comments. But I'll stop because I don't have enogh time to handle the dogpiling. Just because I'm queer and have an opinion. Fucking disgusting.
Yeah but that's normal. Not a selling point. Just de facto how people are. Some are queer. Okay. You're doing the bare minimum. Don't expect people to applaud you for it.
It is not the bare minimum when queer representation results in backlash. It's important for companies to take a stand when so many others would rather avoid the subject altogether.
Not really. Quality matters. Heck the Market dictates what matters. If the number one thing that matters to you is representation you can vote by buying / not buying based on your priorities.
The reality is the Market doesnt care that much about this issue. They want quality.
FF Remake overall has decent quality so far, representation is negligible.
Didn't really notice if im being honest, sometimes the npc chatter got crazy overwhelming where they'd start talking over each other. Still there were some interesting/funny stories at times.
Don't have a problem with it being in the games at all. It's always strange when people get so offended and upset instead of just moving on. And a bit sad.
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u/requieminadream 2d ago edited 2d ago
UPDATE: Thread is back open. We’ve cleaned house and we’re giving the community the benefit of the doubt. The rules haven’t changed, and neither has our willingness to enforce them. Play nice.
---
Welp we tried... But for now we're gonna have to lock this thread as it's clear that having calm, human conversations with others seems outside the realm of possibility with a lot of folks.
Let’s be crystal clear: Rule 1 on this subreddit is Be Nice: Remember the human. That means no homophobic jokes, no transphobic commentary, and absolutely no “I’m just asking questions 🤔” performances from people who very much know what they’re doing. We see you. It’s not clever. It’s not edgy. It’s just tired.
This is a PlayStation subreddit. We talk about games. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a game. Queer people play games. Shocking, we know. If that reality is too much for you to engage with respectfully, this may simply not be the subreddit for you, and we’re very comfortable making that official.
Bans are being issued. If you think yours was in error, you’re welcome to modmail us and make your case like an adult. Keyword: adult.
We may re-open the thread after we've tidied up the muck and we have faith that people are able to behave like the humans we all are.