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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Final Fantasy 7 Remake: A less stereotyped change for Barret?

At E3 this year the long awaited high-definition remake for Final Fantasy 7 was announced.




I didn't think much about it, until I saw an article from Kotaku (here) that the game wouldn't be just an HD remake and it would have some changes.  Then another article (here) touching on how some scenes and components may be hard to pull off in HD without the "cartoony" look of the original.  The cross-dressing scene and slap-fight scene are two that come to mind that may be hard to do in HD.

It then occurred to me there was one component of the game that might get changed a lot.

Final Fantasy 7's Barret has been charged by some as racist (see wikipedia & article from kotaku).  It's been at least 15 years since I played the game, so I cannot remember everything about it.  I do recall Barret as the only character that cursed.  I also remember at times he used broken English/street slang while the other characters didn't.  Why?  I guess that's why they're called stereotypes.

Obviously, the game is now almost 20 years old and the world has changed a lot, and that includes in Final Fantasy games.  Final Fantasy XII's Fran (if she counts as Black, she is technically part of a half-rabbit race of people in the game) and Final Fantasy XIII's Sazh were quite normal.

So I'm wondering if a less "Mr. T" like character will be portrayed in the game.  We'll see.


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