I personally don’t care one way or the other. My problem is when limited character interaction is inhibited by these mechanics.
If we had a much larger base I wouldn’t care; however, this issue begins to creep into NPC design.
For example, let’s say Shadowheart is actually born male, but present herself as female? Mind you it would be annoying but funny as all get out to me to romance her and find extra parts during the romance scenes (not having a clue beforehand); however, that might not go all too well for a majority of paying customers. Not saying this is going to happen, but it may with others.
It’s the lack of romance options that would aggravate me. I am about as strait/cis as they come and would want a attractive feminine female to “romance” in the game. My wife is about as girly as you get and we have been married 28 years. Unfortunately when you go down the path of one NPC to romance you can’t back up and start another (yet).
Another example of where it goes to far in another game is from the latest Sims 4 patch. Each NPC now has a chance of being the standard strait/bi and now gay/les and asexual. You can’t find this out until you have spent a good amount of time building up friendship/romance status. Funny part is that you can marry an asexual and they will not have woohoo with your toon at all 😂. No kids in that line - time to cheat or adopt. The developers have said that you can’t change this or opt out as that’s how real life is. Last time I looked I play games to get out of real life. Their randomly generated gender identity seems skewed to equally assign each type (not like “real” world). I understand the political and inclusive motivation but there has to be a better way.
