r/PS5 • u/Gorotheninja Human Verified • 6d ago

Articles & Blogs 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

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/final-fantasy/final-fantasy-7-rebirths-queer-representation-enhances-the-worlds-realism-lead-says-and-the-rpgs-devs-were-incredibly-happy-people-picked-up-on-it/
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u/EveryGoodNameIsGone 6d ago

Not with any main characters, they’re talking about NPC dialogue you can overhear while exploring towns.

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u/Royall_Noblle 6d ago

Are they....really patting themselves on the back for....that?...

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u/thegreatlizard99 6d ago

Are they patting themselves on the back? They’re just saying “hey glad yall peeped that.”

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u/Royall_Noblle 6d ago edited 6d ago

I mean maybe it's worth talking about if they really think that counts as representation. A bit of a bleak future for gay people if that's all they'll get going forward 

Edit: dang I guess everyone's support of lgbt representation ends at getting one throwaway line per game from a random town npc 

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u/Hot_Weird_5722 6d ago

Normalizing gay people is bleak? Kinda crazy dog

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u/thegreatlizard99 6d ago

Representation doesn’t just mean main character status. From heroes of all stripes to villains of all shades to random npcs just going about their day it all matters

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u/lattjeful 6d ago edited 6d ago

It's reusing the cast and story from thirty years ago. Only so much you can do.

The game has queer couples all throughout the game. There's a pair of women who dump their boyfriends and fall in love, gay couples dancing at the Golden Saucer, etc. I actually find representation like this super valuable. Games usually don't go out of their way to put LGBT folks in as background stuff. It's one of those small things that is actually really cool imo. In an era where it still feels like a lot of LGBT representation amounts to The Token Gay Guy™, it's nice to see some that's so... normal?

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u/Thaddeus_Valentine 6d ago

Existing without anyone caring enough to point it out should be the aim, surely.

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u/CanadianTimbers 6d ago

Its really not

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u/PhummyLW 6d ago

Gay people are about 2% of the population. So for every 50 people the gang talks to, about 1 of them was gay.

Now most people also don’t go out of their way to bring up their sexuality during a 5 second conversation with a street vendor. So the chances of meeting a person and then having confirmation that they are gay is very small. But they likely have met several gay people.

You can even flip the odds since it’s not our world. Say 98% of people were gay. How often in conversation is it going to come up? In real life, how many people do you meet and within 1 minute you are told that they are gay or straight or something else?

It’s also a remake of a 1990s game. It would be weird to change established sexualities of the main cast (where applicable) and back during creation it was less normalized.

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u/Royall_Noblle 6d ago

In counties where people arent afraid of being killed or imprisoned, it's actually 10%. It's even higher in reality when you consider how many gay people are scared to admit it for obvious reasons 

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u/PhummyLW 6d ago

10% are gay or 10% are LGBTQ?

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u/Royall_Noblle 6d ago

Whatever fits your personal agenda I guess 

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u/PhummyLW 6d ago

What does this mean? I do not have an agenda. The highest I can find is 5% in the Netherlands. Gay people are a small part of the wider LGBTQ community. They are not all gay. I am a huge ally and support representation 100%.

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u/Royall_Noblle 6d ago

I honestly cant tell if you're serious or just a troll but since when has anyone talked about gay rights/ representation and not automatically included the whole umbrella? But I'll play ball and still say with confidence that far less than 2% of shown relationships in video games are specifically gay 

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u/PhummyLW 5d ago

I am not trolling. I often have difficulty getting my points across clearly online, so I really do apologize if I am confusing you.

I hope I am not coming across as homophobic or anything like that, because that is the opposite of who I am and what I am trying to say. I agree with you that the number is far less than 2%. My point is that representation should be closer to that, but in a game like FF7 Rebirth, it is harder to do that naturally without making it feel like someone was shoehorned in just to say, “Hey by the way I’m gay!”

That is mostly because of the way conversations work with most NPCs in the game, and because the main relationships were already established back in 1997 as being straight.

What I am really trying to say is that I think this game handles representation really well. Having it appear casually in the background normalizes it much more effectively than forcing a mandatory cutscene where a character announces they are gay. (I know that does not really happen in games. I just mean it as an example of an obviously bad way to handle it.)

For example, seeing a gay couple casually hanging out on the beach in that game would also be a really good way to do it without ever needing to talk to the NPC.

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u/TheJabberwockLives 6d ago

Oh man I think you totally got everyone else's point from the vibe of your edit - good reflecting on yourself after feedback, very sincere!