Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/rebeccamwrites.bsky.social/post/3m6a62btty226
Here's the dataset and their website if you are interested, there's more games beyond Final Fantasy that they've looked at.
Main findings
- 35% of words were spoken by female characters.
- 29% of characters were female, which suggests the imbalance is driven by a lack of female characters.
- 94% of games had more male dialogue than female dialogue.
And you're not allowed to progress past ~~Locke's~~ Setzer's flashback sequence until you can beat ~~Rachel~~ Darill in ~~a podrace~~ an airship race, and she's basically movie-Sebulba
The whole flashback includes about 12 hours of Gran Turismo-esque tuning for your airship as you go around ~~looting and pillaging dead people's belongings~~ treasure-hunting to fund your airship modification journey, including "stage 3 weight reduction" which is literally just throwing out the casino staff and the roulette tables
Edit: I just 100% fucking conflated Locke and Setzer, didn't I
And that's purely "optional" side content you gotta do to reach the true ending. Mayne throw in some ass creed X being a deadbeat dad dogfather for shadow, Splatoon or Passpartout for relm, magicka or mage arena for Stragos, WWE for Sabin, satisfactory, that "Like a Dragon" mini game involving talking to women but failing every time but as an FMV CYOA with someone famous like Chris Carmack playing Edgar getting clowned on nonstop.
What else should be done for the other characters?
Edgar dodging Epstein allegations in court a la Phoenix Wright
Recettear minigame for a random merchant NPC in South Figaro
Dynasty Warriors sequence for Cyan's battle against General Leo
Terra's esper form turns combat into Child of Eden