Will we ever... (t9 related)

[Alberel]

If my (unverified) sources are right, Nael was always a woman in the JP version, but due to using masculine Japanese pronouns was translated as a man. Since there was very little voicework in 1.x, there was no context for "his" voice, so there was no conflict in translating her as being male. Then the Coil comes around, and Nael is revealed to be a woman... so they said Bahamut got EN!Nael wrong and "accidentally" gave him a sex change when reconstructing his body.

Only possible due to lack of voices and quirks with Japanese pronouns. Done deliberately to shock the players a la Samus Aran back in the original Metroid.

Hmm, if this is indeed the case then I would honestly have thought less of it if Nael hadn't commented on the new body him/herself. They could easily have just revealed Nael to be female and left us to speculate that she used some kind of magitek voice altering device in the helmet. Having the whole unexplained identity of the 'new' female form only makes this feel messy and unfinished if it's actually just a cover for Nael being female all along.

Moose was asking about the combat voice pack that Nael used earlier and it was male in the localized client. As far as I'm aware those voice packs are actually universal and not unique to specific localizations so Nael likely had a male voice pack in the JP client too. At that point it seems to me that this big reveal would make as little sense to the JP players as it does to us.

[Anonymoose]

Moose was asking about the combat voice pack that Nael used earlier and it was male in the localized client. As far as I'm aware those voice packs are actually universal and not unique to specific localizations so Nael likely had a male voice pack in the JP client too. At that point it seems to me that this big reveal would make as little sense to the JP players as it does to us.

Correct, the Elezen male voice pack should be the same in every language. Someone who met the Darnus GM in Japan in 1.0 might have the same "Was Darnus a man, originally? Is there a voice modulator in the helmet? Is she taking a gruff tone?" conversation that others are having now.

If people are intent on debating this, I'm glad that piece of evidence was actually in the game. You never can fully trust unseen back-end assets, even when you're looking them on a DB site. An extreme example: Technically, no one is in Darnus' suit; it's hollow. That's probably not evidence that Nael van Darnus was a very complicated Dullahan, though. Likewise, people who need everything tidied up perfectly might focus on there being no way to make an ironclad claim that in-game JP Darnus as of 2012 wasn't a woman lore-wise just because development-wise they used an Elezen male voice alongside Elezen male emotes on an Elezen male skeleton filed as an NPC in the Elezen male list right next to Urianger. Attempts to get past that just invite Pope Joan back into the debate and we go in a familiar circle, again.

This is a lot of focus on the out-of-game end, too, with people trying to figure out which devs had which impressions in which year and whether the people who designed the NPC as a male knew about or if it even mattered at the time. Granted someone might actually guess it right, but at this point I feel like it's doing more harm than good - even my input (perhaps especially my input). Each time this comes around, I'm more concerned that my attempts to help define the boundaries of the known are just dragging things to the surface better left buried or bringing too many pieces to the puzzle. Unless they bring this back up someday, I'm inclined to trust the English exposition by Darnus, Urianger, and Alisaie (and Yoshida-san's apparent acknowledgement of it at Fan Fest) as in-world canon, regardless of how we got there out-of-world, and otherwise not think too hard about it.

In the spirit of getting nowhere, though, maybe Darnus was a man who always privately identified as a woman. It explains everything!

[treuhavik]

an Elezen male skeleton filed as an NPC in the Elezen male list right next to Urianger.
(...)
Each time this comes around, I'm more concerned that my attempts to help define the boundaries of the known are just dragging things to the surface better left buried or bringing too many pieces to the puzzle.

Let the record show that I cautioned you against sharing these findings, lol.

In the spirit of getting nowhere, though, maybe Darnus was a man who always privately identified as a woman. It explains everything!

</disappears into the shadows to the sound of popping corn kernels>

[Alberel]

In the spirit of getting nowhere, though, maybe Darnus was a man who always privately identified as a woman. It explains everything!

As much as I doubt this is what the writers intended I would actually be quite content to think of it this way until we get more information on the subject. Mind you SE did publish Nier so they've dealt with gender identity issues before. Maybe there's a slim chance...