Pronouns???

So this was something I've been thinking about for a while but...how easy would it be to just be able to pick our pronouns at character creation? You could pick your sex to whatever and that'd be the physical aspect of it but pronoun choice would just differ the text.

The idea came to mind after a trans friend struggled to make a character they could be happy with. They went with a lady Lala but they didn't get past the cut scene before they were annoyed with being called a "lass".

I know it's not something people are asking for and I know there's going to be rude naysayers who will say it's not important, that you shouldn't let pronouns get in your way of gaming, but it seems like it'd be an easy thing to implement. A lot of games are going that way so why not???

Please no.

Edit- To be a little less rude about it, please know that it would NOT be an easy thing to implement. The dev team would then have to go through 10+ years of dialogue in this game and either tie it to w.e pronoun you made on your character. And that would be after theres a clear consensus of how many genders there are and how to refer to them in every instance of that dialogue. Then of course there's those who are fluid or changing, so you'd have to have an option to change that pronoun and the game reflect that every switch. The easier answer would be just to make every instance of dialogue completely gender neutral... but then you'd still have to through 10+ years of dialogue to get that done.

I hope your friend understands that the dev team is already drowning with being overworked as it is. While it might be nice, such a system would be unreasonable to ask for at the moment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Keramory

Please no.

---

Any particular reason to appose it?

I might be a clueless cis female, but isn't part of being transgendered is to be seen as the gender they transitioned to? At least that's what a lot of stories of transgendered people say. That they want to be seen as passing as much as possible of the gender they identify with. So, I'm a little confused. Also the majority of the time the WoL is either addressed by their first or last name. If not their race. It's very rare for them to use him/her unless the npc speaking isn't one to call you Warrior of Light/Darkness while also not being close enough to use part of the character's name.

This was already discussed: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...29600-Pronouns

interesting read.

Main point brought up more than once, it would require quite a bit of extra work to rewrite old interactions and possibly recode a fundamental system in multiple languages. It would not be a simple thing.

It would need a complete restructuring of how the game inserts gendered pronouns and more complicated lines - all the different variables like lass/lad and even entire sentences at times. You can't just fill in a simple list of which words you need to be addressed by. The game doesn't store them separately and insert when needed, but codes each line of variable text to check your character's gender and display text accordingly.

I can't remember the exact formatting but roughly it's something like: Hello, [if character gender=F, print "lass", else print "lad"]

Whereas to get customisable pronouns you'd need something like: Hello, [pronoun5] and somewhere else in the system a list recording the pronouns to be inserted in different situations.

I can understand why adding additional pronouns would be possibly more difficult than it seems (though I think it would be worth doing in the end, as most efforts for inclusion are), but perhaps the programmers could allow for a toggle that adjusts which of the big two pronouns a character uses at any one time.

I feel like that shouldn't be quite as difficult, since it would just involve essentially a binary switch, and might help some trans/non-binary/genderfluid/GNC people be able to create a character that they feel more comfortable with.

Well this thread is sure to end in a reasonable and rational discussion where everyone ends up sitting around a campfire singing kumbaya while agreeing to a common consensus.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Krotoan

This was already discussed: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...29600-Pronouns

interesting read.

Main point brought up more than once, it would require quite a bit of extra work to rewrite old interactions and possibly recode a fundamental system in multiple languages. It would not be a simple thing.

---

Oh! I hadn't seen anybody else talk about this so this makes me happy to read! But hmmm I guess it would take work. I just assumed that the code for such things would be an easy thing to find/replace. I'm not a programmer so shows how well I know my coding haha. Maybe one day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Artemiz

Well this thread is sure to end in a reasonable and rational discussion where everyone ends up sitting around a campfire singing kumbaya while agreeing to a common consensus.

---

You're not wrong, but it's still a discussion worth having.

I know you meant well, OP, but with the amount of trolls on this fourm there's gonna be a lot of transphobes out. As for why, pretty much the others here said why. That's why I'm for genderlocks to be removed on things, so at least people can express themselves the way they want to in that way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Artemiz

Well this thread is sure to end in a reasonable and rational discussion where everyone ends up sitting around a campfire singing kumbaya while agreeing to a common consensus.

---

The reason I hesitated in bringing it up [sad sigh]

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HollyJollyPaca

No I assumed your intelligence and in this case, I'm assuming your guardian is typing for you at this point.

---

Yes my guardian did, I was getting a sponge bath at the time. I didn't bite mommy's hand this time, I'm such a good boy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Keramory

Please no.

Edit- To be a little less rude about it, please know that it would NOT be an easy thing to implement. The dev team would then have to go through 10+ years of dialogue in this game and either tie it to w.e pronoun you made on your character. And that would be after theres a clear consensus of how many genders there are and how to refer to them in every instance of that dialogue. Then of course there's those who are fluid or changing, so you'd have to have an option to change that pronoun and the game reflect that every switch. The easier answer would be just to make every instance of dialogue completely gender neutral... but then you'd still have to through 10+ years of dialogue to get that done.

I hope your friend understands that the dev team is already drowning with being overworked as it is. While it might be nice, such a system would be unreasonable to ask for at the moment.

---

Thanks for clearing up your original answer!! I understand now it's not so easy to program that hmmm. With the gender fluid deal, that's just something I think people would have to just deal with or make alts for cause that'd be asking a lot. Same with multiple genders.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HollyJollyPaca

...it seems like it'd be an easy thing to implement...

---

A noble thought, and it seems like it would be easy, but likely it's not as the game is a decade of spaghetti code and all those limits.

The biggest issue will be language and not just the difference between Japanese and English regionalisation - but over the entire game including the database - where it's encoded likely as a binary. And when we are talking of this, please don't forget that all that data you carry gets transmitted to everyone. We are removing belts in 6.0 to give a few more rings, that's how tight it is.

And, in terms of language, how would you deal with わたし vs おれ if you only think in terms of English's He/She/Them and don't take into account the absolute jigsaw of Japanese pronouns that account for age, context, gender, social standing...?

Then bring French and to a lesser extent German into the picture, which are both gendered languages, and the grammar can become a dog's breakfast. You end up needing to say "Hi, my name is XXX, my pronouns are X/Y/Z, and they should follow the grammatical rules for masculine/feminine".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shibi

A noble thought, and it seems like it would be easy, but likely it's not as the game is a decade of spaghetti code and all those limits.

The biggest issue will be language and not just the difference between Japanese and English regionalisation - but over the entire game including the database - where it's encoded likely as a binary. And when we are talking of this, please don't forget that all that data you carry gets transmitted to everyone. We are removing belts in 6.0 to give a few more rings, that's how tight it is.

And, in terms of language, how would you deal with わたし vs おれ if you only think in terms of English's He/She/Them and don't take into account the absolute jigsaw of Japanese pronouns that account for age, context, gender, social standing...?

Then bring French and to a lesser extent German into the picture, which are both gendered languages, and the grammar can become a dog's breakfast. You end up needing to say "Hi, my name is XXX, my pronouns are X/Y/Z, and they should follow the grammatical rules for masculine/feminine".

---

This is a really good point. Both coding wise and language wise seems to be an obstacle sadly. :C

Is it truly necessary?

I'll be honest, I truly don't understand what's the trend with pronouns in the past years, we all lived perfectly fine without it for centuries.
You want me to call you "she" rather than "he" or "he" rather than "she"? Why not, I don't care, nobody cares, just don't make a fuss if I make a mistake by force of habit.

And it's the same with the game. You're free to select your character gender... Genital, rather?
Is it that big of a deal to play a man that isn't called "she" or opposite?

Point remains the same, I don't think it would be difficult but would it be worth the trouble? Just to satisfy a handful of players, that letters display exactly what they want their character to identify as?
It's not quality of life, I don't see the point. Surely you wouldn't stop playing the game because of that reason, neither would you engage in a game because of that same reason?

EDIT: Actually just saw that great answer above about language barrier, meaning it would be actually difficult and only meant to please a very small percentage of the community.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HollyJollyPaca

Thanks for clearing up your original answer!! I understand now it's not so easy to program that hmmm. With the gender fluid deal, that's just something I think people would have to just deal with or make alts for cause that'd be asking a lot. Same with multiple genders.

---

When it comes to suggestions for features, it helps to map out what it would take to add said feature. I'm not a programmer either but an example of the process:

Problem: We need to add pronouns because game dialogue is misgendering players.

So how do we get that done? Potential solution you had: Option in character selection, adding pronoun. I'm assuming you suggested this because you know on some level the character's sex is tied to the dialogue. Add the pronoun, tie it to the dia, then the game will call you the right thing.

- So we add an extra "line" under your custom options to insert a pronoun. 2 options there off the top of my head. Add a "type your own" or a drop down. We can remove "type your own" as an option because we need a way of course to tie this pronoun to the dialogue. So we need the drop down. So we have to then grab however many genders there are and add them to the drop down. That'll be a bit of research.

- We then need to go in and tie every gender option to their corresponding pronoun when referenced in dialogue.

- We then need to check to make sure every instance of every option makes sense in every conversation in the game.

- We then need to repeat this for every language. Assuming of course every language can support something like this in dialogue to where it makes sense.

This isn't even the programming part. Where then someone needs to figure out if implementing this is even possible and if it wont interfere with everything else thats remotely tied to both the character creator and dialogue.

Then there's the moral issue that you kind of brought up in that reply. If we're doing this in the name of inclusion, why are we stopping it at just enough to satisfy your friend? What about those who are fluid, why is it fair that they have to make alts while your friend got what they wanted? If we're going to do this, we should do it all the way. Which then adds in the issues I brought up in the first page. So now we have to rework everything. And thats assuming there isn't another issue I didn't think of, in which we have to go back again to do it right.

THEN there's the issue of considering every culture and region we supply this game to. Not everyone's down with the ideology of what your friend believes. What kind of backlash will this take? Is it worth it for that alone? Things to consider.

I know this is a fantasy world and all, but sometimes you have to establish rules in said fantasy worlds. World builders go to great lengths to set the rules for magic use, religions, etc. It's not beyond the reach of world building that gender is also established. Until the rules change, we need to be willing to accept that there are two genders in this fantasy world. It's fine and all if they want to change things down the road, but it would take a lot of work. Sometimes words like they/them don't work well with dialog either, so it's a little more extensive than simply changing variables.

For instance, what would you replace "lass" with in your example? How would you address the culture of NPCs in game having to use such language? It's the same kind of adjustment you'd have in the real world at any rate. If the devs missed something in the dialog somewhere, would your friend feel misgendered? It would take time to address every little problem like that.

I think it's easier to accept that it's a role playing game where only two genders exist. You're not playing as yourself. You're playing the role of another character. It doesn't have to 100% represent you in real life. They're not calling your friend "lass," but rather your friend's character "lass." I mean, your friend picked a Lalafell. Are they that small? I know I'm not over six feet tall with rabbit ears. Do they have this issue with other games where they can't pick a gender at all?

As a more realist side note: This is a non-issue for a large amount of people. People that really would like to have more playable content, rather than have the devs take time away from that to make sure a few people are called "champ" instead of "lass." They still haven't gotten hats done for Viera or Hrothgar after two years. I'd hate to see how much of a delay this would cause.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SannaR

I might be a clueless cis female, but isn't part of being transgendered is to be seen as the gender they transitioned to? At least that's what a lot of stories of transgendered people say. That they want to be seen as passing as much as possible of the gender they identify with. So, I'm a little confused. Also the majority of the time the WoL is either addressed by their first or last name. If not their race. It's very rare for them to use him/her unless the npc speaking isn't one to call you Warrior of Light/Darkness while also not being close enough to use part of the character's name.

---

Don't worry you're good!! But presentation is a big part of being transgender/gender fluid. So in my friend's case, they're trans BUT they're still quite fem in terms of physical appearance. So they wanted to have that in their character. But they couldn't get exactly what they looked for unless they had a lady Lala's face. They got the presentation they wanted from the female physical model but it didn't satisfy them gender wise. Another example could be somebody wanting to play an Au Ra and wanting to play as a girl but...well, we know how the sexual dimorphism is there haha!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CKNovel

Is it truly necessary?

I'll be honest, I truly don't understand what's the trend with pronouns in the past years, we all lived perfectly fine without it for centuries.
You want me to call you "she" rather than "he" or "he" rather than "she"? Why not, I don't care, nobody cares, just don't make a fuss if I make a mistake by force of habit.

And it's the same with the game. You're free to select your character gender... Genital, rather?
Is it that big of a deal to play a man that isn't called "she" or opposite?

Point remains the same, I don't think it would be difficult but would it be worth the trouble? Just to satisfy a handful of players, that letters display exactly what they want their character to identify as?
It's not quality of life, I don't see the point. Surely you wouldn't stop playing the game because of that reason, neither would you engage in a game because of that same reason?

EDIT: Actually just saw that great answer above about language barrier, meaning it would be actually difficult and only meant to please a very small percentage of the community.

---

It's not truly necessary no but just an idea that I thought wouldn't be hard to implement. Turns out language and programming is bit more of an obstacle.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Keramory

please know that it would NOT be an easy thing to implement. The dev team would then have to go through 10+ years of dialogue in this game and either tie it to w.e pronoun you made on your character. And that would be after theres a clear consensus of how many genders there are and how to refer to them in every instance of that dialogue.

---

It would be quite easy. You are overcomplicating it. Presumably there is a placeholder token in all lines of dialog where the WoL's personal pronouns appear. Presumably the game replaces the placeholder in all dialog occurrences with the corresponding pronoun via a conditional that calls the function that returns the character's sex. These are reasonable presumptions that any competent programmer would make.

I don't care how bad the game's code base is; there's no way it would take more than twenty minutes to add a gender selector to character creation, add the gender field to the character data, and modify the function that returns the character's sex during dialog pronoun replacement to return the character's gender instead. Then another twenty minutes to add a quick validation into the character loader that silently fixes any existing character data that doesn't have a gender selected to default to the gender matching the character's sex. Hardly any time at all for each localization team to provide add the word for "gender" into the localization dictionary. Maybe a little bit more time to code a dialog box that gives all existing characters the opportunity to set their gender on the first load after the feature is added.

As far as technical difficulty is concerned, this is not a difficult ask, by any means.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TarynH

I know this is a fantasy world and all, but sometimes you have to establish rules in said fantasy worlds. World builders go to great lengths to set the rules for magic use, religions, etc. It's not beyond the reach of world building that gender is also established. Until the rules change, we need to be willing to accept that there are two genders in this fantasy world. It's fine and all if they want to change things down the road, but it would take a lot of work. Sometimes words like they/them don't work well with dialog either, so it's a little more extensive than simply changing variables.

For instance, what would you replace "lass" with in your example? How would you address the culture of NPCs in game having to use such language? It's the same kind of adjustment you'd have in the real world at any rate. If the devs missed something in the dialog somewhere, would your friend feel misgendered? It would take time to address every little problem like that.

I think it's easier to accept that it's a role playing game where only two genders exist. You're not playing as yourself. You're playing the role of another character. It doesn't have to 100% represent you in real life. They're not calling your friend "lass," but rather your friend's character "lass." I mean, your friend picked a Lalafell. Are they that small? I know I'm not over six feet tall with rabbit ears. Do they have this issue with other games where they can't pick a gender at all?

---

I wasn't really calling for a they/them option (though that would be cool), just being able to pick between the main two gender expressions. I agree that fantasy worlds aren't going to adhere to real world stuff but at the same time, it's the players that make up the game so anything to get one to fully immerse the better yeah? Obviously same sex marriages weren't too much of an issue to worry about cultural wise.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

It would be quite easy. You are overcomplicating it. Presumably there is a placeholder token in all lines of dialog where the WoL's personal pronouns appear. Presumably the game replaces the placeholder in all dialog occurrences with the corresponding pronoun via a conditional that calls the function that returns the character's sex. These are reasonable presumptions that any competent programmer would make.

I don't care how bad the game's code base is; there's no way it would take more than twenty minutes to add a gender selector to character creation, add the gender field to the character data, and modify the function that returns the character's sex during dialog pronoun replacement to return the character's gender instead. Then another twenty minutes to add a quick validation into the character loader that silently fixes any existing character data that doesn't have a gender selected to default to the gender matching the character's sex. Hardly any time at all for each localization team to provide add the word for "gender" into the localization dictionary. Maybe a little bit more time to code a dialog box that gives all existing characters the opportunity to set their gender on the first load after the feature is added.

This is not a difficult ask, by any means.

---

I think nobody knows, supposedly many things in this game should be easy but time has shown us otherwise and in any case, I prefer that these "resources" are used in other things especially in an expansion where the feeling of "little" content is many players.

Pronouns are about the last thing they need to work on for character creation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

It would be quite easy. You are overcomplicating it. Presumably there is a placeholder token in all lines of dialog where the WoL's personal pronouns appear. Presumably the game replaces the placeholder in all dialog occurrences with the corresponding pronoun via a conditional that calls the function that returns the character's sex. These are reasonable presumptions that any competent programmer would make.

I don't care how bad the game's code base is; there's no way it would take more than twenty minutes to add a gender selector to character creation, add the gender field to the character data, and modify the function that returns the character's sex during dialog pronoun replacement to return the character's gender instead. Then another twenty minutes to add a quick validation into the character loader that silently fixes any existing character data that doesn't have a gender selected to default to the gender matching the character's sex. Hardly any time at all for each localization team to provide add the word for "gender" into the localization dictionary. Maybe a little bit more time to code a dialog box that gives all existing characters the opportunity to set their gender on the first load after the feature is added.

This is not a difficult ask, by any means.

---

That's what I was thinking when it came to the programming part of it. Like if pronouns in game are tied to your sex then surely you could snip it and reconnect it to a new pronoun option. I'm not a programmer so I don't know who's right and who's wrong but this was my original thought process.

Language would probably be the real barrier then if you were correct.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

Pronouns are about the last thing they need to work on for character creation.

---

Oh definitely. I rather them fix Hrothgar/Viera, update the facial options for all races, than focus on that. It was just a small lil thing I thought wouldn't be too much.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HollyJollyPaca

This is a really good point. Both coding wise and language wise seems to be an obstacle sadly. :C

---

It is an obstacle. I feel for our French Canadian friends, who see English's fairly gender neutral syntax, and even if they use the pronoun "iel" or "ille" (a mix of il and elle and maybe close to our non-binary they/them) Or even words like "ul", "ol", "ael" or "ele" or "on" and they find that most people don't know how to use it in a sentence.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/gender-n...tral-1.5259027

We are somewhat lucky in English to have the non-binary they/them as English adapts fairly well, but a lot of people still have difficulty with this in the singular, as most people grew up with it as a plural word so have a new mindset to form.

So a phrase like "This is Jean, they like to go to Costa del Sol with their boyfriend Frederik" vs "This is Jean, he likes to go to Costa del Sol with his boyfriend Frederik" works for many people, but will grate like fingernails on a blackboard for some - and not just because they are gormless attack helicopters, but as it's bending English in new ways.

Less RP more TryHard Chads please

I'd be all for this being added to a new game and in theory It'd be all for it in FFXIV, but in practice it's probably not feasible for the dev team to go back and add this right now.

+1 to language being the main issue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Keramory

Please no.

Edit- To be a little less rude about it, please know that it would NOT be an easy thing to implement. The dev team would then have to go through 10+ years of dialogue in this game and either tie it to w.e pronoun you made on your character. And that would be after theres a clear consensus of how many genders there are and how to refer to them in every instance of that dialogue. Then of course there's those who are fluid or changing, so you'd have to have an option to change that pronoun and the game reflect that every switch.

---

All that's before taking into account that there are multiple languages, each with its own rules on pronouns.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Keramory

The easier answer would be just to make every instance of dialogue completely gender neutral... but then you'd still have to through 10+ years of dialogue to get that done.

---

NO, absolutely not. They tried that in WoW Shadowlands. Hearing my character (male) referred to as "they" was unbearably cringey, and ruined what would have otherwise been epic moments.

So did I know there would be naysayers? Of course. But I'm glad that majority of them were people who had actual reasons other than anti-pronoun discourse antics.

Programming I assumed was assigned to your sex you picked but apparently it's not as easy as finding that certain code and reworking it. And even if it was, language is so different and it wouldn't just be a switch in words but a switch in sentences all together for some. That I didn't think of and as somebody who has some knowledge of Spanish and Japanese, I can see why gender would change things.

Thanks for the good commentary. Just a bun who wants her trans friends to play and who wouldn't mind a they/them option in the future. C:

This would be one heck of a waste of dev resources.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

It would be quite easy. You are overcomplicating it. Presumably there is a placeholder token in all lines of dialog where the WoL's personal pronouns appear. Presumably the game replaces the placeholder in all dialog occurrences with the corresponding pronoun via a conditional that calls the function that returns the character's sex. These are reasonable presumptions that any competent programmer would make.

I don't care how bad the game's code base is; there's no way it would take more than twenty minutes to add a gender selector to character creation, add the gender field to the character data, and modify the function that returns the character's sex during dialog pronoun replacement to return the character's gender instead. Then another twenty minutes to add a quick validation into the character loader that silently fixes any existing character data that doesn't have a gender selected to default to the gender matching the character's sex. Hardly any time at all for each localization team to provide add the word for "gender" into the localization dictionary. Maybe a little bit more time to code a dialog box that gives all existing characters the opportunity to set their gender on the first load after the feature is added.

This is not a difficult ask, by any means.

---

Nothing I mentioned had anything to do with the coding part itself, to more or less illustrate what a headache it is without even adding that portion to the conversation. Obviously there are variables already implemented that already tie the character's sex to portions of the convo. The same way they can take your name and add it to the dia as well.

The issue with it is the languaging itself and back tracking to make sure it all makes sense for every gender you implement. In every language. Unless you're referring to the very basic switch of male/female. Then yeah, that'd take no time at all (in English at least). But then how dare you, you non-inclusive meany. There are now more then 2. So you can't just switch it up. Which goes back to my original comments.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HollyJollyPaca

I wasn't really calling for a they/them option (though that would be cool), just being able to pick between the main two gender expressions.

---

If that's the case, does your friend realize they can pick a male character and literally make them look female? I'm not understanding what your friend's specific problem is. They don't like being called lass, and want to be called lad? There are tons of glamour options and hairstyles to make a male Lalafell (of all things) appear female, but still have male pronouns.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shibi

It is an obstacle. I feel for our French Canadian friends, who see English's fairly gender neutral syntax, and even if they use the pronoun "iel" or "ille" (a mix of il and elle and maybe close to our non-binary they/them) Or even words like "ul", "ol", "ael" or "ele" or "on" and they find that most people don't know how to use it in a sentence.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/gender-n...tral-1.5259027

We are somewhat lucky in English to have the non-binary they/them as English adapts fairly well, but a lot of people still have difficulty with this in the singular, as most people grew up with it as a plural word so have a new mindset to form.

So a phrase like "This is Jean, they like to go to Costa del Sol with their boyfriend Frederik" vs "This is Jean, he likes to go to Costa del Sol with his boyfriend Frederik" works for many people, but will grate like fingernails on a blackboard for some - and not just because they are gormless attack helicopters, but as it's bending English in new ways.

---

I think the latter part specifically is what causes a lot of issues for many of us not dealing with the question of pronouns in our personal life.

When taught in school that they are plural use, and having used them that way for 30 odd years, it is not easy for many to adjust.


I imagine that the younger generations will have less issues with that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TarynH

If that's the case, does your friend realize they can pick a male character and literally make them look female? I'm not understanding what your friend's specific problem is. They don't like being called lass, and want to be called lad? There are tons of glamour options and hairstyles to make a male Lalafell (of all things) appear female, but still have male pronouns.

---

I think when it came to the creation, it was the face options? I'm not exactly sure but that's what I assume. That and I think Lala was their last resort cause they couldn't get that female presentation in other races without actually being female (the other races def aren't as ambiguous face wise)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SannaR

I might be a clueless cis female, but isn't part of being transgendered is to be seen as the gender they transitioned to? At least that's what a lot of stories of transgendered people say. That they want to be seen as passing as much as possible of the gender they identify with.

---

this tbh, I'd like to hear an explanation regarding this

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

It would be quite easy. You are overcomplicating it. Presumably there is a placeholder token in all lines of dialog where the WoL's personal pronouns appear. Presumably the game replaces the placeholder in all dialog occurrences with the corresponding pronoun via a conditional that calls the function that returns the character's sex. These are reasonable presumptions that any competent programmer would make.

---

You're presuming wrong. It is coded into each individual line of script to insert the correct snippet of script. It's not cross-checking a table elsewhere.

I don't think it's poor programming but rather the only way to manage complex switches of dialogue depending on gender, like Thancred trying to flirt with you if you're female but a less remarkable compliment if male, or including any number of one-time-only comments based on character gender or race.

I don't have a source on hand but others have posted the base coded script before. It's probably in the previous discussion linked on the first page of this thread.