[Kotaku] Fans are Concerned about Barret's Voice in Final Fantasy 7 remake. A "hyper-masculine cartoon" and a "Mr. T facsimile"

[Deleted member 27471]

Representation in videogames wasn't as hot a topic 22 years ago as it is today. You could have racist caricatures and there wasn't a mechanism for people like me and other people of color to voice our opinions. Also, people like me who grew up playing games like FF7 didn't have the language or knowledge to express why Barret was such a problematic character. I just knew it made me feel like shit having a character that was making fun of people who looked like me as I was playing it.

22 years later and a lot of the people who grew up with FF7 are now part of the target audience for the remake, and now a lot of us have the life experience, knowledge, language, history, research, and literature to explain how Barret could be better representation

Gamers are constantly showing me that representation doesn't matter as long as they get theirs, so I'm not surprised by takes like yours. Why don't you read the article, some of the opinions in the thread, and form an opinion for yourself instead of thinking an opinion is trying to make you believe something. They write pieces like this to make you think, maybe so that you'll go do some research and gain more knowledge. What you do with the information is on you.

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I also wish people took the time to understand the difference with the Japanese version of Barret. Everyone is so focused on a localization of stereotypical Barret and not taking the time to understand the origins in the development process of his character and what he was and how he was originally represented.

I took the time to create a thread that is even time stamped to the exact phrase this article sites to give people an idea of how Japanese Barret is handled in comparison to the English one. And by the lack of activity in that thread that is there to educate people, it goes to show nobody gives a shit.

Though I think it's to soon to jump to conclusions, I think it's fair for people to discuss what could be a problematic in the Remake. I personally dont care for the voice, and also wish Barret actually had less European features. Not every black character has to be whitened up a bit to make them likable.

 

[Merc_]

My main takeaway here is that a bunch of you have never actually listened to Mr. T speak before. Even though a number of his interviews have been posted y'all still refuse to listen. Even though people have repeated said that this shit wasn't in the original Japanese ya'll still refuse to listen. I guess some of you just get a thrill out of having the one black guy in the party act a racial stereotype.

 

[skillzilla81]

I also wish people took the time to understand the difference with the Japanese version of Barret. Everyone is so focused on a localization of stereotypical Barret and not taking the time to understand the origins in the development process of his character and what he was and how he was originally represented.

I took the time to create a thread that is even time stamped to the exact phrase this article sites to give people an idea of how Japanese Barret is handled in comparison to the English one. And by the lack of activity in that thread that is there to educate people, it goes to show nobody gives a shit.

Though I think it's to soon to jump to conclusions, I think it's fair for people to discuss what could be a problematic in the Remake. I personally dont care for the voice, and also wish Barret actually had less European features. Not every black character has to be whitened up a bit to make them likable.

Click to shrink...

Could you link to that thread? I must have missed it.

And yeah, I'm going to give SE some time. I think it's good to raise concern given the character's history, but I'm not passing judgment on just a few lines of dialogue.

 

[Deleted member 27471]

Could you link to that thread? I must have missed it.

And yeah, I'm going to give SE some time. I think it's good to raise concern given the character's history, but I'm not passing judgment on just a few lines of dialogue.

Click to shrink...

Here ya go. Hope you got 6 hours lol. The video in the OP is time stamped to good example of Barret. It's about 10 minutes of Tim Roger's discussing J Barret.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/th...ke-to-see-in-the-remake.116874/#post-20770204