The gender politics have made the gaming industry a wretched place. Everything offends someone now and every major media outlet is ready to raze a company to the ground at a moment’s notice. Gamers are pissed. Companies are terrified. Media websites have sweaty-fingered clickbait artist ready and waiting at the keyboard with their spacebars cocked like a Texan with a .22 Remington at the Mexico border.

According to DualShockers, over on the blog Hachima Kikou, some snippets from an interview with Final Fantasy VII: Remake director Tetsuya Nomura surfaced, where a few details about the game were revealed. Some of these details Include this bit of information translated from the Esuteru piece…

“The date event will be fully voiced, but due to changes in the social situation certain scenes have to be implemented carefully, like the Honey Bee Inn.”

For those of you wondering, the Honey Bee Inn sees Cloud Strife ending up in a rather precarious situation involving some burly muscle men who try to have their way with him.

Cloud has to go on a series of quests that eventually involve cross-dressing in order to save Tifa at Corneo’s Mansion in the red light district of Midgard.

If it sounds like some kind of hanky panky is going on… well, it kind of is. Back in the day the graphics were so terrible that it was easy for the humor to play off the low-poly characters and the themes of the Honey Bee Inn. It basically sees Cloud getting manhandled by a bunch of gay guys, stripped naked and put into a tub where they all bath together. You can see the clip below from YouTuber MiloPro

Final Fantasy VII Walkthrough [013] – Honey Bee Inn & To Corneo’s Mansion Now we are in the Honey bee inn go to the group room then after that go to the room up ahead which is where you go to get your makeup on, then change into your dress and go to Corneo’s mansion.

The scene has Cloud saying “It hurts” as a bunch of the guys squeeze into the tub with him when they ask how it “feels”. They tell him to countdown from his age, and he does so. After getting out of the tub, the leader of the muscle men give Cloud a pair of bikini briefs for their “time together”.

Interestingly, the scene at the 4:12 mark makes it look as if Cloud is holding his butt — as if maybe it was a little too tight in that tub for his rear end.

Anyway, Crave Online tries to hand-wave away the issue, saying that altered scenes and censored content has always been a thing…

“the PlayStation classic’s version of the Honey Bee Inn also had a ton of altered/removed content, some of which was featured in the Japanese original, and some which was taken out of the game entirely. Still, the accusations of “SJW pandering” are already doing the rounds, despite no one having filed a complaint with Square Enix demanding that they alter the game, and also despite the developer literally overhauling pretty much every aspect of it already for its remake, from its visuals through its gameplay.”

They would have a point about the progressives if it just literally didn’t happen with a game called Tranny Gladiator, where Jim Sterling went off the panhandle on a game developer for making a game about cross-dressing gladiators. The creator eventually received a lot of support from #GamerGate and e-mails from actual trans gamers after getting attacked by Jim Sterling and crew. There are scattered bits about the event on Kotaku in Action, covering how Tranny Gladiator was removed from Steam after Jim Sterling attacked it; but the game is back on Steam now and Jim Sterling is placing the blame of the attacks on #GamerGate.

So, Crave is wrong where they mention in the article…

“[…] this ongoing concern that progressives on Twitter are somehow proving to be a decisive factor in the content featured in video games continues to prevail, despite all reasoned thought suggesting otherwise.”

Maybe Crave should check Twitter more often?

Final Fantasy VII: Remake is set for release on the PS4 first and will feature full voice acting and mini-games. More details on the release date won’t appear until after Kingdom Hearts 2.8 HD and World of Final Fantasy release in 2016.