Final Fantasy Rebirth: Let Us Kiss Barret, You Cowards
Image; Square Enix
I recently played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024) and found it to be a fun treat. The Final Fantasy series has always had a campy aesthetic detached from reality that I genuinely love, and Rebirth is camp on overdrive. Players can ride giant birds called Chocobos, transform themselves into frogs, and perform as characters in a theatrical Shakespearean play.
The game continues Square Enix’s 2020 Final Fantasy VII Remake, in which a splinter group of eco-terrorists try to stop the monopolistic Shinra Electric Power Company from draining the planet dry. This time, the main protagonist, the mercenary Cloud Strife (Takahiro Sakurai/Cody Christian), an ex-Shinra soldier and genetic experiment, is traveling the world with his environmentalist friends to try to stop the misanthropic and narcissistic alien-hybrid Sephiroth (Toshiyuki Morikawa/Tyler Hoechlin) from destroying the world. Rebirth is a profoundly political text that often has challenging conversations on environmental activism, capitalist exploitation, and the role violence plays in revolution.
There is a lot of good here. And yet, while I did love this game, I was frustrated by its dating mechanic, which I felt went out of its way to ensure we knew that the protagonist was totally “not” gay.
Briefly examining queerness in Final Fantasy Rebirth
First and foremost, it needs to be noted that there were queer non-playable characters in this game — although, with the exception of the fabulous Andrea Rhodea (Tomokazu Sugita/Trevor Devall), they were not prominent. Many viewers have also written about an alleged queer subtext surrounding our lead characters. For example, Cat Bussell in TechRadar argued:
“Rebirth makes it very easy to form a homoromantic reading of Cloud and Sephiroth’s relationship. Cloud’s thoughts, intrusive or otherwise, are consistently occupied by Sephiroth. Tracking him down to prevent his plan to destroy the world makes for the main crux of Rebirth’s story, after all. However, the intimate body language and conversations between the two are consistently loaded with subtext.
In a scene toward the end of the game which is teased in a trailer, Cloud charges at Sephiroth, only for the silver-haired villain to pull our protagonist close and embrace him, cradling him in his arms in a manner that’s somehow both tender and deeply sinister. While Sephiroth’s actions are undoubtedly controlling and creepy, they starkly challenge traditional gender norms about how two male characters interact. Cloud and Sephiroth’s relationship is consistently colored in this way, infused with this transgressive closeness.”
And yet, it must be emphasized that despite the game’s queer background characters and its campy aesthetic, none of the leads are textually LGBTQIA+. As in, there is no spoken dialogue, direct romantic or intimate actions such as kissing, or written text that tells us that Bussell’s interpretation, and the many like it, are anything more than headcanons (i.e., what a viewer believes or wants to be true about a work that is not “officially” confirmed by its creators).
This non-queerness with our lead characters would be fine — I don’t think every game has to have LGBTQIA+ leads — if not for a strange dating mechanic that goes out of its way for Cloud to go on several “non-date” dates with its male characters.
The femme dates
Throughout Rebirth, the lead, Cloud, can interact with his other compatriots during key plot points, which contributes to a hidden scoring system that allows him to eventually go on a date with one of five characters (or a fabulous boys’ night that is entirely platonic) near the climax of the game. Cloud returns to the Golden Saucer — a Disney World spoof — to have a romantic evening of attending a show of the play Loveless and, finally, a ride for two on the Skywheel.
Three of the characters you can take on this date are femme-presenting: Yuffie Kisaragi (Yumi Kakazu/Suzie Yeung), the Wutai revolutionary and ninja who wants to find materia to save her people; Aerith Gainsborough (Maaya Sakamoto/Briana White), the last-of-her-kind sorceress with a heart of gold; and Cloud’s childhood friend Tifa (Ayumi Ito/Britt Baron), who is a kickass fighter committed to ending Shinra. These characters all have nuanced backstories that I think were written adequately.
When it comes to their character models, they are “traditionally attractive.” They are skinny, pretty, and beautiful in all the ways that would appeal to the white supremacist, cisgendered, heteronormative gaze.
Two of these femme dates are romantic and arguably the most rewarding from a courtship perspective. The highlight of Aerith’s arc is the Loveless minigame, where her character sings a beautiful solo (No Promises To Keep, sung by Loren Allred), and depending on how high your score is with her, you either end the night with her head on Cloud’s shoulder or holding his hand. Tifa is even more explicit with either a passionate hug or kiss.
Even Yuffi gives Cloud a peck on the cheek on the Skywheel and appears as the love interest in the Loveless minigame, where she comes into your cell to rescue you.
However, the two other characters, the masc ones, have no such romantic overtures— they are the villains of the play and utterly undateable.
Gay, non-date dates
When it comes to the two masc-presenting characters, the dates are not framed romantically within the text. One of the characters, Red XIII or Nanaki (Kappei Yamaguchi/Max Mittelman), is an anthropomorphic dog-like creature whose relationship is entirely friendly. In his scene with Cloud on the Skywheel, he talks about his concern for his friend Aerith. It’s not about him at all, and I am not sure how you can read anything more than an entirely platonic relationship from it.
The only other male character you can go on a date with is Barret Wallace (Masato Funaki/John Eric Bentley), the leader of a splinter cell of the eco-terrorist group Avalanche. Barret is a controversial and rich character whose backstory was extensively elaborated on in Rebirth. We learn about his modest roots from a coal mining town that Shinra economically ruined when the company’s power reactor melted down—a reactor he initially campaigned for, only to regret his decision years later. Barret is a complex character who, unlike Cloud, has emotional depth.
His date with Cloud begins sweetly. Barrett knocks on Cloud’s door, saying, almost flirtatiously, “Well, well, I wake baby from his nap?” Cloud, though, does not bite, acting thoroughly disinterested the entire time. “Are we really doing this?” he says, bored at one point in the night.
As we get to the minigame during the Loveless play, where Cloud must take on the persona of a Shakespearean-esque character, Barret is not portrayed as the love interest in the story, like the femme leads are. He is not dressed as a prince or even (subversively) as a princess, but rather, in every iteration of the minigame, he is depicted as the villainous Varvados, a man who calls your love a charade if you select him.
In fact, from what I can gather, when you go on your “date” with him, Aerith takes on the princess role every time in the minigame (though please correct me if your research says differently).
When Cloud and Barret go on the Skywheel, no hands are touching. There are no heads leaning on shoulders. No almost kisses or hugs. Instead, Barret takes the time to open up to Cloud in a heart-wrenching monologue about his former love interest, Myrna. He tells Cloud that “once you find your soulmate, you never let ’em go…” Yet Barrett, as the lack of action at that moment makes clear, is not this person. Barrett scolds Cloud for not being direct enough and passing up on his true soulmate, who is implied to be one of the other characters — i.e., Aerith or Tifa.
This scene frustrates me because I would have been okay with Cloud just dating Aerith or Tifa. I didn’t need a queer dating option, but the gendered way the game handles the femme and masc dates is strange. Why let us go on a date with a masc-presenting person only to harangue us for not choosing the femme people?
The original 1997 game also had these date scenes. Barret’s date was platonic then, too, and I would assert, unlike this adaptation, blatantly offensive. There’s a scene where they enter the event square, and the announcer claims they are the 100th couple to enter that day, only to see that both of them are men and say: “Oh, wait….no, you’re not.” The homoeroticism was played for laughs then, and I am glad that was left behind in this remake.
But now, 27 years later, I wanted more than not to be offended. I wanted to hold Barret’s hand. So much has been updated about the original game—why not this?
A fantastical conclusion
This gripe is especially prominent since I know these creators have no problem with queer inclusion. One of the things I loved about this game’s predecessor, Remake, is that they updated a cross-dressing subplot from the original Final Fantasy 7 that was utterly offensive and made it less so. As Matt Kamen says of that original quest:
“One of the more legitimate concerns surrounding the FFVII Remake was how it would update the notorious crossdressing subquest. In the PS1 original, players could complete a number of objectives in Wall Market — the red light district of the sprawling Midgar City setting — to gather items that would help Cloud masquerade as a girl, in order to trick crimelord Don Corneo and help rescue your ally, Tifa. In 1997, it was played as a gag, making Cloud a “trap” while also making the very idea of two men in a bedroom together a punchline.”
In Remake, however, we don’t get a retread of that homophobia and transphobia. Cloud dressing as a woman is not seen as an oddity or punchline but as a joyous expression of gender. “True beauty is an expression of the heart. A thing without shame, to which notions of gender don’t apply,” the character Andrea Rhodea says after a fantastic dance minigame.
We don’t quite reach that level of queer excellence again in Rebirth, but we could have — if only we had been able to kiss Barret.
All in all, I liked a lot about this game, especially with Barret. Unlike the 1997 game, he was a more fleshed-out person. Emotionally, it felt like he had range, showing us when he was in pain and crying when he felt sad. But not being able to show Barret affection bothered me. I was there, in the booth of the Skywheel, waiting for the moment to come when Cloud would realize that he was that person, the soul mate Barret was lecturing about, and it never came.
With a sequel on its way, hopefully, we don’t have to wait 27 years this time to get that.