About That Locker

[Ephremjlm]

I'd say it's a mixed bag. Players can get gay married but canon LGBT NPCs are pretty few and far between, and sometimes it feels like the explicit or more strongly implied NPCs are the butt of a joke. To be fair the MSQ in particular doesn't focus much on romantic relationships, but when it does they're almost always if not always straight.

I mean heres the thing though, you don't want to force those things. This comes down to the writers ability to even write this in a good way (not confident about that currently), cultural norms in Japan (I think it's accepted but I don't live there so I won't say by how much), and also statistically if they are just a company trying to keep it safe and the game "for everyone" the stats ar like 3-5% of the world is actually gay. LGBTQ+ seems a lot higher, but I don't think I've seen any concrete data on that that doesn't eventually have a bias or skew conservative or liberal.

Honestly I would say for the writing alone they should hold off until someone can actually tell a good tale so the inclusion feels natural and isn't butchered, and in turn cause it's own backlash.

[Halivel]

cultural norms in Japan (I think it's accepted but I don't live there so I won't say by how much), and also statistically if they are just a company trying to keep it safe and the game "for everyone"

It's kind of "whatever" in media, in Japan, and for the actual community it's a hit or miss. There's no violent prejudice, but a lot of families and corporations have a "what people will say" reputational thing going on. Basically, it's not horrible, but it's very nuanced.

The game, however, is on global market, and they have to keep in mind that it's also played by people from countries where these kind of topics are heavily tabooed, and making open announcements might be putting the game at risk of being banned there. As result, the ambiguous writing we have right now (and which they're arguably good at) is most likely the most we'll ever have, which has its pros and cons.