body types instead of gender,
I really hate this. Who asked for this?
Non-binaries.
They dislike being associated with a "Gender" so we get "Body Type A and Body Type B"
It's one of the things that companies do to facilitate minorities. Alongside stuff like being able to use male voices on a female character or a female voice on a male character, as well as the option for either genital on either body type - Things for the trans players who want representation (Though I still find it curious, as I was under the impression that trans people simply identified as the other gender and want to be seen as their "True" gender, rather than identifying as a mix of both genders that is the reality of the imperfections of sex change procedures... But apparently that's not the case for everyone)
Companies did this because it's cheaper and easier to implement.
Old game (cRPGs) didn't do it because, usually, no voiced line that use the word his/her.
There will be extra cost to record extra line exclusively for another gender.
It's cheaper and smarter just streamlined dialogue lines into one, instead of recording twice just to call you him/her, so they use "them" or avoid using it altogether because #somebody always going to notice when it used "them" too often.
Historically in cRPG, gender never matters, what matters is your background or skills, that define your character.
AFAIK action adventure "role playing game" like mass effect, AC etc. prioritize selecting gender because they lack literally everything else. Your background in Baldur's Gate 3 stays relevant the entire game, your background in Mass Effect matters once or twice at most in the entire trilogy.
So yes, as avid cRPG player I'm going to advocate to use gender neutral dialogue but it must comes with more dialogue and more choices on top of background which actually define your character not just flavor text.
Last edited by Dext. Paladin; 15 hours ago.
