Quote Originally Posted by BillyKaplan View Post
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.
Tbh I get why hey made Hrotgar but it made literally no sense to make a race that will earn then almost no money (let's be real, I'm not hating on Hrotgar but it is gonna be as popular as male elezen as best, probably it'll be as popular as roegadyn) instead of making a race that would have made them so much more money, and then maybe introduce Hrotgar later as a side thing. Also there was just waaay more ppl that wanted Viera than those who wanted a beast like race, and even more than hose who wanted the beast like race to look like does with way too many body hair mods stuck together and a moving tail