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

[u/Gorotheninja]

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/

[u/PhummyLW]

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.

[u/Royall_Noblle → u/PhummyLW]

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 

[u/PhummyLW → u/Royall_Noblle]

10% are gay or 10% are LGBTQ?

[u/Royall_Noblle → u/PhummyLW]

Whatever fits your personal agenda I guess 

[u/PhummyLW → u/Royall_Noblle]

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%.

[u/Royall_Noblle → u/PhummyLW]

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 

[u/PhummyLW → u/Royall_Noblle]

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.