On the discussion of Barrett, here is my two cents....

I don't know if anyone else in here is Black, but I am and some Black people absolutely do talk like that. When you look at Barrett's basic design aesthetic he is very clearly based on Square at the time's limited view of what Black people are like. That view was obviously formed by Mr T videos LOL.

The thing about Stereotypes such as him, they are not wrong, they are just not always right. He could have been seen as offensive then, but in reality he is a pretty endearing character. Thats what I always got out of him in the original game. He was THE first Black character I ever played as growing up and that alone got me super excited about him.

He is a character built within an arch type no different than the typical brooding teenager or Damsel in distress types. He is a foil for Big Bro machismo, a counter balance to Cloud's cool disinterested demeanor.

His voice, while hit with a twinge of bad translation(thats the price of Japanese dictacting English diction and overthinking their own language nuance) is actually very appropriate as well.

I am very curious is Square Enix will have the courage to answer a timeless curiousity I have always had for Barrett. The idea that the game with many jabbed jokes leads me to believe he is gay/bi. Usually it was done in some reference of Cloud and Barrett together. Reminded me SOOOOOO much of the way Kanji is depicted in Persona 4. The idea they make Barrett of all male characters a romance choice on several occasions such as the Gondola Ride. The overthetop nature of his bravado is blatantly demonstrated to be his defense mechanism. We find that he is actually a very big softy. His relationship with Dyne, the man whose Daughter he adopted always struck me as.......hmmm. Do I even need to mention the fishnet shirt he wears in Advent Children?

Maybe was just wishful thinking on my part, but we shall find out soon enough.

Not to take this thread in too far of a direction away, but after watching Cyberpunk 2077's recent trailer, the quality of voice acting in the FF7 trailers to me doesn't seem that far off from that.  

Maybe it was just the writing in general, or it's probably the context, but something I felt was off in the 2077 trailer recently released. At least in terms of being convincing.  "We didn't need all this cock sucking attention dammit"  I couldn't help but think of the oldschool wrestling fan at that moment: "It's still real to me dammit!" with dammit sounding so forced in there.  And with the exception of one or two lines, V came off too generic for me, and at one point it sounded like he was imitating Jesse Pinkman.

Overall better VA in 2077, but not nearly as far off as I think some people might try to push it.  The FF7R trailers recently had the basics down.  They're just not 100 percent organic; which for the sake of cultural and language differences the FF7R should get some leniency on as the original source material isn't being translated from English, but Japanese.  English to Japanese and vice versa is actually one of the toughest translations to do as information tends to get lost or doesn't carry over so well.