Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Mutemutt]

I concede your point in that it would've made more sense to co-reveal them together at Tokyo, but at the end of the day, I find that reintroducing genderlocks is the bigger strangeness of this fiasco. And their decision to not say a solid no remains a fault in how they handled the situation. I understand why they did every single thing they did so far - I simply resent them for it and think many mistakes were made.

"Your experience may vary". Truth be told, I would've been much more surprised if they actually implemented male viera. Given all the previous representations of the race, I kinda expected it would be female only as far as player characters are concerned. Naturally, I didn't see Hrothgar coming at all.

[BillyKaplan]

Truth be told, I would've been much more surprised if they actually implemented male viera. Given all the previous representations of the race, I kinda expected it would be female only as far as player characters are concerned. Naturally, I didn't see Hrothgar coming at all.

They were considering Viera for HW and even made concept art for them. Which had a lot to do with why people thought they were coming, given the females were confirmed. After all, they already had concept art for them! So at the very least, in that point in time when they worked on it, past representations of the race didn't matter enough to make them think about genderlocking. And if we go by the version of events saying male Hroths came first and then they debated between the females, we know any sort of lore is absolutely not the reason why we didn't get bunny boys. It was because they had already decided on what males they were going to release, and then fell down the genderlock bunny hole for both races.

Honestly, at this point I would have preferred a full Hrothagar race with Fran being left out of the Ivalice questline, replaced with another character from that game. Matsuno isn't why they decided not to introduce male Viera but now I wonder if he's not the one responsible for this mess from another angle - by pushing to have Fran appear, he backed SE into a corner. They couldn't show Fran and not have Viera playable with how requested the race was, but by that point it seems they were already set on making Hrothgars and wouldn't go back on that for the sake of a full Viera race.

[Mutemutt]

They were considering Viera for HW and even made concept art for them. Which had a lot to do with why people thought they were coming, given the females were confirmed. After all, they already had concept art for them! So at the very least, in that point in time when they worked on it, past representations of the race didn't matter enough to make them think about genderlocking. And if we go by the version of events saying male Hroths came first and then they debated between the females, we know any sort of lore is absolutely not the reason why we didn't get bunny boys. It was because they had already decided on what males they were going to release, and then fell down the genderlock bunny hole for both races.

I wouldn't put too much stock in concept art. I wouldn't be surprised if they had done tons more concept art pieces of things that haven't come to fruition. And don't get the wrong idea; I'm not saying they couldn't do it because of lore reasons. I'm just saying that I expected they would want to do it this way because of the previous Viera lore, or in other words, I expected that they would want to stick to certain aspects of what we know of Viera from other games including the being pratically female only part. I figured it would just be one of those things that would continue, like moogles going kupo and chocobos eating gysahl greens.

[BillyKaplan]

I figured it would just be one of those things that would continue, like moogles going kupo and chocobos eating gysahl greens.

Those are interesting examples given Moogles can effectively be completely different entities, so long as they have a pom and go 'Kupo'. Ivalician Moogles are one such case in point, compared to Hydaelyn's moogles. In comparison, a genderlock feels... meh as a racial attribute. Both because it's not that the males don't exist, they do, and unlike attributes like "bunny people", genderlocks not only aren't such an attribute, but they have a way of being removed, like in the transition from 1.0->2.0.

here's not many Male NPCs but they clearly exists to us in this world.

And Male Viera also clearly exist in the world, or the Dramaturge would've had a lot less text boxes for me to click through.

A NPC that says they "simply don't exits to us" is a good indicator.

That statement is an oxymoron. It only exists in the first place because male Viera exist on Hydaelyn.

The bottom line here isn't that I argue the reality of what happened. Just that there was enough going for people to believe that male Veira would yes be revealed - mostly people's misplaced faith in SE, and that I think they were stupid for going along with a genderlock.

[Mutemutt]

Those are interesting examples given Moogles can effectively be completely different entities, so long as they have a pom and go 'Kupo'. Ivalician Moogles are one such case in point, compared to Hydaelyn's moogles. In comparison, a genderlock feels... meh as a racial attribute. Both because it's not that the males don't exist, they do, and unlike attributes like "bunny people", genderlocks not only aren't such an attribute, but they have a way of being removed, like in the transition from 1.0->2.0.

It's not to say they couldn't. But why they would. Why do moogles in XIV look that way and say kupo? It's just that common trait you keep bringing back because you can. Don't really need much reason other than reference.

Only thing I can say about the rest of that is I feel differently.

[Lauront]

I wouldn't put too much stock in concept art. I wouldn't be surprised if they had done tons more concept art pieces of things that haven't come to fruition. And don't get the wrong idea; I'm not saying they couldn't do it because of lore reasons. I'm just saying that I expected they would want to do it this way because of the previous Viera lore, or in other words, I expected that they would want to stick to certain aspects of what we know of Viera from other games including the being pratically female only part. I figured it would just be one of those things that would continue, like moogles going kupo and chocobos eating gysahl greens.

If it were just concept art, fine. However, the race was given consideration for inclusion in XIV at the time (HW) and this was in conjunction with that concept art. It was cut at the time in favour of Au Ra, however the presence of the males in the art is highly suggestive of having an idea in mind for what the males should look like. The lore in the other Ivalice games is not that they don't exist but that they're unseen. FFXIV game also involved the reversal of 1.0's genderlocks. I really don't get why people should have expected Viera to be genderlocked. The devs were very evasive about it, for sure, but an interpretation that they were holding off to reveal them at JP Fanfest to build on hype is as consistent with that as the interpretation that they had no plans to add them. And again, one leaker was very unreliable and the Hrothgar leak sent mixed messages.

You can think what you want on it, but my view is that they were silly not to address the earlier concept art and bear part of the blame for the expectations people formed. My suspicion as to why is that they did not want to deal with the heat the genderlock would cause and did not want it to detract from JP Fanfest's excitement - that's fine, but it still has certain consequences.

Now there's also the alternative viewpoint that Yoshi wanted to get in 2 races whilst he could in order to secure senior management approval, with the intention of back-filling the missing gender later on due to being easier than trying to argue for a new race, which I am hoping is the truth of the matter.

[Mutemutt]

If it were just concept art, fine. However, the race was given consideration for inclusion in XIV at the time (HW) and this was in conjunction with that concept art. It was cut at the time in favour of Au Ra, however the presence of the males in the art is highly suggestive of having an idea in mind for what the males should look like. The lore in the other Ivalice games is not that they don't exist but that they're unseen. FFXIV game also involved the reversal of 1.0's genderlocks. I really don't get why people should have expected Viera to be genderlocked. The devs were very evasive about it, for sure, but an interpretation that they were holding off to reveal them at JP Fanfest to build on hype is as consistent with that as the interpretation that they had no plans to add them. And again, one leaker was very unreliable and the Hrothgar leak sent mixed messages.

Somethings just never make it past the concept stage. That's just how it goes.

Was the reversal of the genderlocks before or after the the 2013(?) interview when Yoshi essentially says if they added female viera they would add another race as the male counterpart instead of male viera? I honestly don't know, but even that far back, that's a pretty good reason to be a little skeptical. And the lore is ending up the same here, which was kinda my point; the male viera are nowhere to be seen -- literally.