Barret's voice in the remake of Final Fantasy 7 worries fans

Yesterday, a new teaser for the Final Fantasy VII Remake was removed and players were able to see and hear more characters as they appeared in the new game. For the most part, the reaction is positive. In the case of Barret Wallace, the reaction was mixed.

I have never played Final Fantasy VIIand because of that, I am interested in the remake. When it came out, the PlayStation was the console of my older brother and I was not allowed to touch it because he feared (rightly) that I break it or spoil his backups. Finally, I was old enough that I was told not to destroy a console, but at that point, the game was much harder to find. At the time I was in high school, my friends had already told me that this game had an emotional impact on them as well. I learned that Barret was a rather obscure stereotype of darkness long after I internalized the idea that my video game fandom was incomplete if I had not played. Final Fantasy VII.

Barret is a stereotype of a gruff black man in the English translation of the original game. In Kotaku In his analysis of the translation, video director Tim Rogers explains how the English translation, which was done by one person in two weeks, inserted this characterization after the fact. Barret's characterization in this version involves an exaggerated black dialect, and his re-translated dialogue also puts emphasis on the Americanized ideals of masculinity. In what Tim describes as "the most important text box in the history of English translation in Japanese RPGs," the game misrepresents Barret's empathy with a depressed Cloud. Instead of telling Cloud that everyone is depressed, as he did in the Japanese text, Barret says that people are only so long as they do not know "what's going on". The fact that this line is preceded by the line "Yo, I think about it … How many people in the world do you really understand?" Still reinforces Barret as a hyper-masculine cartoon. person fully realized, but a facsimile of Mr. T full of good, weak words.This representation is part of the racist assumptions that people make about black men: do not see them as people in their own right, but as imposing muscle masses that sometimes provide folk wisdom.

In the trailer of Final Fantasy VII, the acting voice for Barret really relies on this characterization of Mr. T. This is something that some fans had hoped to see changed in the process of redesigning the game, and they are frustrated at not having done so.

Kotaku Video producer Paul Tamayo summarized the situation in a tweet:

I asked Paul how he tried to modernize the character and he said it was something he was thinking about all the time. "Especially as an animated viewer on the occasion, and whenever a black character appears on the screen with his problematic features and his overall behaviors – I often wonder how the Japanese describe black characters in general. In the case of Barret, I feel I do not have to resort to this as a soft, smooth "accent" that could have been much better dealt with by the writer and the artist. he said, "When you think about it a little more, I honestly think they could have done without this direction … I'm just wondering how many black producers / writers / directors are involved (the case when these characters are created or transformed. how they could have been "modernized" responsibly in good hands. "

Many fans were hoping for a modernization of Barret with this remake. The actor of Barret's voice, Beau Billingslea, is a wonderful actor, best known for playing Jett in the English dub of Cowboy Bebop. In the trailer of FFVII remake, however, he seems to be about to start speaking in church language. Yes Lawd!

In the reactions I've seen, fans do not want to censor or remove Barret from the game; they just hoped to see a better portrait of his character this time around. Many are frustrated, annoyed, make fun of the character rather than with him or say that they simply want the creative team to have a different call. There are very few viral tweets on this subject, but the feeling is there, quietly. A fan tweeted the trailer with the following comment: "I wish they had the voice of Dead the Mr. T." Another said that the trailer was superb, but that the voice put them uncomfortable. The most aggressive reviews I've seen came from Brandon Dixon, the creator of the next RPG on the table. Swordsfall, which is located in a Afro-Futurist nation. "A game can it, for a fuck, make the black is NORMAL. Why is there a MTV cliché about what black men think? He wrote on Twitter. "Make [they] Have you ever talked to PoC? At all?"

Dixon's frustration is apparent in his tweet, but advocacy is fundamentally simple and understandable. Black people want to see themselves in games – not as a stereotype that others think they are, but as they really are. As people.

We all know that Beau Billingslea is able to handle this character. He had a role career proving he is an empathic interpreter. There is still so much unknown about this remake. Many things about this game, including dubbing, could still change. If they insist on keeping this iteration of Billingslea's performance, I hope however that they will let me call the Holy Ghost in action. Hallelu.