Saints Row's Latest Trailer Plays Up The Same Harmful Latino Stereotypes

thegamer.com:

The narrator of the latest Saints Row trailer is Latino. If you couldn't tell that from the accent, he helps you out by slipping a few Spanish words in every now and then. Well, more like every goddamn sentence. This has long been an issue with Latin portrayals in mass media in general, but it's a particular scourge on video games, which for all the medium has advanced at the highest level over the last decade, still has the weakest writing when taken at the median. Video games tend to go for the lowest common denominator and rarely trust their audience, constantly needing to sell to them and eternally relying on established tropes to cut corners. Forspoken's trailer recently underlined this, but there's more at play than just 'bad writing' here. It's yet another way gaming Others people of colour even as it tries to include them.

Bilingual people do occasionally flit between languages, it's true. Language is a complex beast and English is harder to tame than most, especially once you get into idioms. But when bilingual people lean on their native tongue, it is usually for foodstuffs or other cultural nouns, or certain phrases or concepts that don't have a one to one translation. That's not what happens in the Saints Row trailer. That's not what happens in The Last of Us. That's not what happens in Far Cry. That's not what happens in video games. Some games have done Latino characters justice (Miles Morales celebrates this Black-Latino heritage without resorting to stereotype or caricature), but with so much representation for Latin people in the video game space, it's staggering to realise how little of it is positive, and how much is tinged with tropes of crime, spiciness, and a penchant for Spanish curse words.

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