It's really strange how the same users will defend every social misstep brought up about a wide variety of games but the people raising those issues changes dramatically. Very strange

And by strange I mean completely expected and not at all surprising.

@bananasfoster: Yes, that's it, generalise an entire nation of 125 million people, good idea!

No no, I asked about Eddie Murphy and Wesley Snipes from Blade because you said that movies only celebrate the worst things in black culture, Im not asking about that characters that are based on them.

It's a mystery to you why dumb clownish black man and angry violent black man celebrate negative stereotypes in black culture?

Charging Japan with being racist is like charging america with being wasteful. It may be a blanket statement, but it's a blanket that's not hard to stand by as evidence and studies drastically support the premise.

Are you saying that Blade the half VAMPIRE!!!!!!! is racist because that character is black and violent?

Also I think its harsh and incredibly demeaning to bemoan Eddy Murphys film career as dumb clownish black man.

Speaking of studies, a recent one found that 1 in 50 newborn Japanese babies are mixed race, 20,000 babies a year, and the trend is increasing over time. Not to mention that a mixed race (Black/Japanese) woman just won Miss Japan. Maybe if you got off your high horse and you'd see that your stereotyping is just as bad those you are faulting.

Did you...did you play beyond the first three chapters of FF13? Sazh doesn't bumble around. At the start he expresses how silly and ridiculous it is and how too old for the shit he is, but he spends the first half of the game absolutely NOT bumbling around on his personal mission to rescue his son. He's a loving and devoted father trying to keep optimistic in a situation that keeps getting more and more fucked. He's shown to be competent at his field, being a pilot, is just as capable a fighter as the rest of the party, and is generally the most liked character specifically BECAUSE he isn't all mopey and pessimistic the entire time.

What situation does he stupidly fall into? He follows Lightning but soon enough goes off and does his own thing with Vanille, leading up to the emotional moment at the amusement park, before meeting back up with the rest of the party. Th only situation he falls into is when he literally falls off the road at the start or when he walks into a trap that was placed specifically for him to walk into.

Just because he has the funny lines doesn't make him a jokey, negative stereotype. And I say this as someone who is African American: dude's inoffensive as fuck.

That's absolutely what I'm saying. Blade was invented as a black character in the 1970s and thusly he was a typical "blaxploitation" character. The character's own creator says, "The early Blade dialogue was cliche 'Marvel Black' dialogue. Later on, I tried to make him more real. But it took growing up as a writer."

Blade isn't an angry black man because he's a vampire, he's an angry black man because he's an angry black man. He's just the same as Powerman and other angry black characters of the time.

"Barrets just angry becuase he's had a traumatic life"

"Blade is just angry because he's a vampire"

"Powerman is just angry because he's taking back the streets"

"John Stewart is just angry because he was in the millitary."

How many angry black men characters do you have before it ceases being about their contrived circumstances and starts being about media contantly putting black people in roles of being "angry black men" because they enjoy that stereotype?

Barret is the only person in Midgar who speaks the way he does. Barret is the only person from his home town who speaks the way he does. This isn't a regional dialect or something. It isn't a matter of world building. His daughter doesn't even speak the way he does. So that really isn't a fair comparison. If Irvine from FFVIII is the example that you are referencing in your hypothetical, his accent is weirdly out of place as well.

I think you're right to some extent, I think Japan thinks Ving Rhames is cool and likes to put Ving Rhames in their games as much as possible. I wonder, though, if the few black characters who appear in Japanese games have to be middle class and well spoken, what characters ever will "talk black", as you say? In the desire to make sure people understand that not all black people sound like urban, working class black people it seems like no one is allowed to sound like urban, working class black people.

I'm amazed this line of thinking got worse under Obama rather than better.

I wish you wouldn't make the slippery slope argument when the current state of black characters in games is what it is. There are more Big Bos, Cole Trains, and Barrets than there are Lee Everettes and Jacobs (from Mass Effect 2). You are arguing in favor of stereotypes by using some sort of non-existent, homogenized dystopia as the looming threat. That is so far from the current state of game writing that I don't even know what to do with it.

But you know what, Big Bo and Cole Train are badass and memorable characters. Lee Everette and Jacobs are not. Both Lee Everette and Jacobs were annoying as hell. Stereotypical characters are far more interesting than generic ones. Speaking as a minority, I would love for my people to be represented in an over the top way.

@grixxel: There are a ton of crazy PC people on the internet. But in reality, in real life, they are an extremely small minority. In fact, the more PC people get, it seems like people I know are swinging the complete opposite way. Political Correctness stifles conversation and creativity. The PC police want everybody to be portrayed as if they are middle and lower class white people from the United States. It's typical left-wing American ethnocentrism and narcissism.

I'm sure there were some black people who are super offended by Cole Train. Just as there are Jews that were super offended by the portrayal of the Jewish characters in Inglorious Basterds. But you know what, those aren't the majority, not by a long shot.

@horseman6: I'm glad you like Cole and Big Bo. I feel the exact opposite way about everything you just said, but I can see where you would like them and not like Lee and Jacob. I think Lee and Jacob are complex an thoughtful characters that feel like people I could meet. I think you would agree that games tend to lean into the stereotypical interpretations more often than they go for more nuanced performances.

Speaking as a minority, I would love for my people to be represented in an over the top way.

Speaking as an Italian, I would love for my people to not be represented entirely by mobsters and Mario. The problem isn't with one or two stereotypical characters,its when that's all you get that it becomes a problem.

@likeassur: Okay, I was done discussing this but this defense is just so tired and nonsensical.

Let's look at a hypothetical situation. Let's say I was making a forum post about some new game and I said "this game controls like shit, the combat feels terrible and the control scheme is completely unintuitive."

And then let's say your response was "the developer should not have to change their game because you don't like it." That is an insane way to respond to someone criticizing a game, right?

No one is saying Square HAS to change anything. They can very easily and likely will say "nah, fuck you, we're keeping it how it is." But using that to try to dismiss someone else's criticism of a game because you don't agree with it is just lazy.

You also have Ezio.

Actually there's plenty of games where black characters don't act boisterous or blue collar. I think your entire premise is corrupt on that angle. This argument only appears when a character acts 'black', and I think obsessively labeling cultural signifiers as stereotypical (and thus flaws that must be expunged) is extremely unhelpful when it comes to fostering respect and cultural exchange. This whole thing strikes me as the same orthodox claptrap that wags a reproachful finger at black football players every time they don't act like good little toy soldiers and dare to whoop out of turn.

I don't know how far you'll get implying that Cole Train is an inauthentic black person.

Speaking as an Italian, I would love for my people to not be represented entirely by mobsters and Mario. The problem isn't with one or two stereotypical characters,its when that's all you get that it becomes a problem.

I think you need to broaden your horizons. There are more stories out there of more depth and complexity than you or I will ever know, and publicly airing that you have only seen a small fraction of them says less about everyone else than you might think.

who are the "PC police"? are the an offical group? were do I sign up? do they have a website?

where are the people in here saying they want "everybody to be portrayed as if they are middle and lower class white people from the United States"

I'm not american and would rather not have to deal with negative stereotypes, racism and sexism in my media. I also wouldn't consider myself "left-wing".

the point im making is grouping people and making assumptions/blanket statement on what they want is a bad way to have a conversation. debate points rather than a fight against a group of people that doesn't exist.

there are extremes on all sides but its good to remember they are extremes.

once again I don't really find to much issues with the issues stated in this game when you factor in its orign ,time and the purpose of the segemnt (humour).

I for one think the cross-dressing portion is a little bit sketchy, since it's played mostly as a joke, and that's not even to mention the Honey Bee Inn's treatment of its characters. I don't think you can necessarily change the game; it is what it is.

I will, however, defend Barrett. Barrett is a bro. Setting aside the fact that he talks like Mr. T, Barrett is a man who wants to defend the planet, stands by you from the beginning of the game to the end, supports everyone no matter what they're doing, and even does the right thing in that town below the Golden Saucer, opting to deal with it himself, for honor. And let's not forget the fact that Barrett is willing to let things go, while Cid, on the other hand, lets everything eat him up inside. He's one of the more positive characters in the game.

Not to mention the fact that Barrett is a good father. How is that stereotypical?

@brodehouse said:

Stereotypical and inauthentic are not synonyms. A stereotype can speak to an authentic experience; however, a stereotype implies that an entire category of people share that experience or personality. So Cole Train is emblematic of some football players, but not all of them. Like I said, its when the dominant way of portraying a group of people is through the lens of a stereotype that there's a problem. You counteract stereotypes by giving different experiences some voice instead of adding another to the choir.

So do you think that I can't talk about my experiences until I've consumed the whole of available media? Do I need to have a certain number of games played before I can speak about how I haven't seen many non-mobster Italians in my lifetime of playing games? Do I need to pretend that I'm an expert on Italians in games before my opinion matters?

I'm curious, do you think there is ever a justified case for social critique?

That part you set aside "he talks like Mr. T," that's the part about him that's stereotypical. I don't see too many people critiquing him beyond the fact that his attitude and vocabulary is cribbed from people like Mr.T. The character development you mention is all good and unrelated to the part people object to.

@thatpinguino: I brought up Mr. T because other people brought up Mr. T, I suppose because Barrett kind of looks like him. If I said he talks like John Travolta out of Grease, I'd also be correct. He doesn't use Ebonics, he uses slang and foul language like a street tough punk might.

@bernard_bernoulli: Sure other tough street punks might, but the other tough street punks in FFVII don't. He is the only person who sounds the way he does. So the "he just sounds like a street dude" argument doesn't hold up. He uses slang that is out of place based on the world he lives in and so that's where the stereotype argument comes from. Barret's language only makes sense when viewed through a larger cultural lens. Now if you want to argue that that's a world building mistake and not a deviation into stereotype I can kinda see that argument, but from what I've heard about the Japanese version Barret doesn't speak the same way in Japanese. So I think his particular slang was the result of bad localization playing into existing stereotypes.

@carryboy:

+1

Ehhh, I think there's a pretty clear difference between technical/mechanical changes and content/narrative changes. I wouldn't say "this game's controls are offensive because they're not representative of my ethnicity," because that would be fucking crazy. They're different sorts of issues that illicit different sorts of criticisms which are then subject to different sorts of scrutiny.

I dunno, it seems like a well developed character with some depth that goes beyond, and even runs antithetical to, the implications of the stereotype, would strip away the character himself being considered a stereotype. Targeting the way he talks as specifically problematic in spite of that context comes across as a bit of a narrow criticism.

I personally like it when a character that seems to be a stereotype is explored more deeply and transcends that notion. It's a good bait 'n switch that can actually work towards breaking down the stereotype itself.

It's one of the reasons I keep wanting to go back to FF13. There's a scene in one of the trailers where Vanille is telling Sazh to shoot her and he scolds her for how she seems to behave, and it all looks like it might run squarely against how she seems to come across otherwise (twee, bubbly, naive). I think stuff like that can often make for some compelling storytelling.

@likeassur: I had this exact same conversation on these forums not that long ago but no, it's not as simple as factually improving a game's controls. You may like the way Dark Souls controls, I may hate it. You may like Barret's character, I may think it's a lazy stereotype. Neither one of us are objectively wrong.

And just because something is "history" doesn't mean it's immune to criticisms. You may think that Square has some sort of obligation to keep Barret the same because of history but people still have every right to say the character sucks, if that's how they feel.

And yes, you just saying "they don't need to change for you" to those criticisms IS lazy.

@theht: OK how about these technical criticisms, "This UI is unusable to me because I'm nearsighted and the test is too small on my TV" or " this puzzle game is unplayable because I'm colorblind"? That isn't objective at all. Or what about games with semantically similar mechanics, but different goals? Dark Souls and DMC are both third person action games, but they have wildly different feels that can appeal to different people. The mechanical side of games is not as divorced from social norms or personal opinion as you say.

Except I didn't say that. At all. :\

I think that Final Fantasy VII should be viewed and received as a product of its time. Just as we do not like it when people try to censor old books (Huckleberry Finn) I also believe that FF7 should be untouchable.

I hope they leave in the "are sick" line just for shits and giggles.

@theht: Sorry I hit reply to the wrong person. Stupid mobile version of the site.

When it comes to Barret I'll go back to my central point. The part where he seems stereotypical is in the way he talks. He uses vocabulary that literally no one else does and it doesn't fit with the rest of the world. It only fits in the context of him being a Mr.T lookalike. All of the parts of his character beyond that surface level incongruity are fine by me. If you want to set up a stereotype and break it down that is great, but I don't think that is what Barret does. I think he is a deep and nuanced character that is unfortunately burdened with also playing the role of Mr.T at the same time.

@paulwade1984: The FFVII remake isn't the same as a third party going back to censor Huckleberry Finn. It would be like Mark Twain deciding to rewrite or translate the book to try and sell it again to a new audience. The original isn't getting touched here, just a completely new edition that is an interpretation of the original work.

@paulwade1984: Even ignoring how laughable it is that you compared the n-word being removed from a satire of the antebellum South to a jokey, plot-irrelevant cross-dressing scene from a sci-fi RPG, this is a false equivalency of the highest order. There's absolutely no reason a game being remade should be untouchable, because otherwise why remake it if you have to slavishly reproduce an old, flawed thing? If you want that original experience, play the original; it's playable on practically everything at this point.

@thatpinguino: Ah, but there are also other black characters in the game who do not speak like Barrett. It's a slippery slope, I guess. If there were ten Hispanic characters and one spoke like Speedy Gonzalez, that would be offensive. but what if there were ten black characters and one spoke like Morgan Freeman? Would that be offensive?

I'm genuinely asking, by the way. I don't know if it would be. I just don't see Mr. T as being stereotypically black. He's more like a superhero.

@bernard_bernoulli: I think the fact that Barret is the only person who talks like Barret just makes his manner of speaking stand out as being out of place in the world. To me the issue with Barret is more a matter of poor writing than me being personally offended by him. I mostly just cringe at how out of place some of his lines sound. However, I'm not really the person who the stereotype is supposedly standing for. I will tell you that if there was a non-sports game with 10 Italian characters and only 1 was a mobbed up goon, it would be a huge improvement to what I'm used to seeing (barring the Assassin's Creed 2 sub franchise). However if there were 10 Italian characters and the only one who spoke was a mobbed up dude, that would be pretty annoying. So it is more about the exact execution than anything for me. These are complex issues and they need complex exploration.

@bananasfoster: Yep. Barret's dialog rubbed me the wrong way as a little black kid. Him looking like Mr. T didn't bother me, it was the sounding like a dumb thug that made me feel weird. I'm not going to make a tumblr about it and cry all day long, but it does make me sad when you see them go for that low hanging fruit.

Step forward to Sazh Katzroy and you can see Square grew up. He was still A BLACK DUDE! but he spoke proper english and wasn't cringeworthy at all. I would gladly go to a con and cosplay him or something.

I have faith that Square can remake Barret without too much trouble.

But that's just it. The part where he's a deep and nuanced character itself is incongruous with the idea that he's playing the role of Mr. T.

I think it's more a case of "this is just the way he talks, which doesn't determine his quality of character," which strikes me as a good thing. It discourages that sort of prejudgement based on a person's more surface level characteristics.

You know, this might all come down to more than just a few parts/tones of his dialogue. By changing that, you're not necessarily changing his personality. If he's got a hot-headed personality, wouldn't his dialogue reflect that, even if it were changed to exclude certain vocabulary? And obviously he'd still be black. Would that coupled with the fact that he's still a generally angry guy still make him problematic?

You yourself recognize that he's more than just a black guy that gets angry, so why disregard that depth of character conveyed through the narrative and take issue specifically with how he might seem to come across? I think that's putting the cart before the horse.

Taking issue with the way he talks purely because no one else talks like that, looking at it as a sort of world-building issue, I think is a more fair criticism. I don't expect everyone from the same world to talk exactly alike, and don't need his speech to be rationalized particularly by showing other people who talk like him, so it doesn't really bother me. I mean, if it was something like one of the blue aliens in Avatar talkin like some Texas oil baron, then yeah, that'd be real fuckin weird. But Midgar and the rest of the world of FF7 being as it is doesn't really support that comparison.

Just wanted to say that Ezio is not and, rightly so, feel not representative of italian culture and/or people. Or at least no more than you'd think Altair as representitve of people from that region of the Middle East. He's just a charismatic protagonist for modern audiences, he's not created to truly be a guy from renaissance Florence or represent italian people, that's not the reasoning behind him nor the focus. He could have been from Ulan Bator or Milwaukee and it would have not changed a thing :)

Ok I'll try to relate this to myself again. If there was a deep Italian character who just kept saying shit like Badabing! and mixed in crap about wacking people all the time, but also had a loving adoptive daughter and a troubled past, I would still be annoyed about the part where he sounds like a stereotypical mobster. The stereotypical part would still bother me because the character's depth is still couched in a stereotypical shell. The great parts can be overwhelmed by the distressingly stereotypical parts. I've had that stupid stereotype thrust on me enough in my life to not want to see it replicated again in a game, regardless of how cool the rest of the character is. I think the Italian version of Barret would make me conflicted and I can see where someone would object to his characterization, even if he contains more than just a stereotype. So that's where I'm coming from. I think the conversation is worth having.

Cloud was just exploring his sexuality and gender identity. Fucking haters.

I think I should clarify something in the Japanese version of FF7 Barret had a very aggressive and impolite way of talking but it had nothing to do with african american stereotypes. Most of what caused people to be offended was due to how it was translated.

Well it trivializes gender identity, or at least dressing in non-standard clothing based on cultural norms, and turns it into a joke for comedy relief. If I were transgendered or dressed in clothing not socially accepted for my gender I would feel like I'm being made fun of.

But from my perspective, I just consider it stupid and unnecessary.

Yeah, if I didn't think it was worth having I wouldn't be engaging with it.

Why do you feel the character's depth is couched in a stereotypical shell, rather than that depth diminishing the shell altogether? If someone is at the point where they can appreciate his depth of character but don't like the way he talks, that isn't a problem with his characterization. It's purely a problem with those elements of his dialogue they consider bad.

Where does the way he talks become more than just the way this particular character talks though? He isn't a stand-in, isn't a cipher for your own self or some huge swath of people. He's his own character. When you acknowledge that he's more than just a stereotype and is indeed his own complex and individual character, why doesn't the way he talks fall in with that individual identity as well?

@jasonr86 said:

Not that this is what's happening in the game, but are you saying that men shouldn't dress up like women just for fun? They should take a step back and consider the feelings of others before buttoning up that blouse?