What if: Starting with Dawntrail, everyone starts referring to the WoL as they/them?

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Originally Posted by Casti_EL

(not sure if any VA cutscenes refer to our gender?).

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It's done pretty liberally throughout the entire story since swapping his/her, he/she, etc is a rather simple thing to seamlessly edit into the dialogue.

The VA question is more Interesting in regards to German and French.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

How would you react to your WoL being referred to with gender-neutral pronouns?

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I wouldn't care, because I refer to everyone as they/them anyway. I did this long before everyone was coming out with different pronouns. Why? Because I can't know what gender someone is over the internet.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I wouldn't care, because I refer to everyone as they/them anyway. I did this long before everyone was coming out with different pronouns. Why? Because I can't know what gender someone is over the internet.

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The difference here is, online, you have no idea what the person on the other side of the screen looks like, so using gender neutral language is the safest bet until shown otherwise.

When you can actually see the person, it is a different situation. You can guess someone's gender identity just by the way the looked (traditionally anyway), so using gender neutral pronouns, for most people, is just weird. It would be the same case here.

As others have pointed out, just reducing all voice lines to they/them just causes the same issue as just having he/him or she/her, just the other way around. You could appease more people if a third set was added for gender neutral (and giving the player a choice as to which one of the 3 they use, regardless of the sex of their character), however, how soon would it be before others come along and ask for their pronouns to be added?

To make it clear. I would have no issues with having an option for gender neutral for those that want it, as long as people realise there has to be a line drawn and you cannot get everyone's pronouns in the game.

Obviously it shouldn't be forced on people.
But there's nothing wrong with giving players the option to change it, if they want to.

I am male IRL but my character is not, random FC members call me she, the game calls me she, strangers in parties call me she. It never bothers me. Seems like a pointless change that would just make the annoying loud transphobes here more loud and annoying. Could make it like an option I guess.

It would be extremely jarring and obvious. While you *can* use "they" to refer to anyone of known, unknown, or ambiguous gender because that's what the word is there for, using it repeatedly is weird and unnatural sounding. Several games do this to save dev time or because their main character is purposely ambiguous, and it doesn't make it less unnatural there. The better ones simply avoid having many lines that refer to the main character, but that also gets awkward after several hours.

If it's an option, I don't mind. But my char is a "she", and I wouldn't like the neutrality to be forced on her.

Wouldn't mind the option, but wouldn't like it to be forced on me.

I would be against it. I am a gay man who is both male in the real world and in favour of playing men in video games. I expect my characters to be referred to as such and I have no interest in eroding away outright references to either men or women.