Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Lukha]

We have no idea what he meant by saying male viera would be weird. In his mind he could have just been thinking of XII lore and how they're just about non-existent, and so it would be weird to see them in game. This was years ago, and was never elaborated on - but this community has seemingly embraced the worst possible assumption from this one-off comment.

This would be a reasonable possibility if the 'male rabbits would be weird' comment had happened in a vacuum, but it didn't. Alongside this we have
1. His refusal for several years to unlock the bunny costume for male characters (a rabbit-themed outfit which also happens to be sexy) despite many and extremely persistent requests for it
2. One of the many excuses given for no male bunny outfit was 'modelling it would make the male developers uncomfortable',
3. A statement that while the male bunny outfit was finally in development, it might take a while due to only female staff working on it.
4. The fact that, rather than release males with a similar aesthetic to female Viera (cute/sexy, lithe, with minimal feral features), they chose to go with the polar opposite and release a very macho, animalistic race.

The facts come together to paint a very clear picture of what was meant by 'male rabbits would be weird', all those years ago.


This is something I've been stewing over for a while, because I am firmly in the camp of believing this decision was sexist, and I'm honestly confused at the people who not only assert that they believe it was not, but practically froth at the mouth to defend the devs from the implication. I think the problem is that people aren't understanding what's being said.

I do not believe that Yoshida, or the team and SE in general are sexists, at least not deliberately. I DO think that they hold some sexist attitudes, most probably subconsciously, which heavily contributed to the decisions that have been made regarding gender locking and design over the past few years, not just with regards to races, but also gear. By Yoshida's own admission, he and male members of the team are uncomfortable with the male form being portrayed in a sexy way, which is understandable! I'm a little uncomfortable with female characters being portrayed in an overly sexy manner (whether that means in manner of dress, how they act, or both), especially in contexts where it's only the female characters, and male characters are instead dressing and acting normally. This is fine, it's natural to be uncomfortable when confronted with things that aren't to your particular tastes.

The only time it becomes a problem is when you're incapable of dealing with that discomfort to such an extent that it actually gets in the way of doing your job, or effects the quality of the job you are able to do. I think we've gotten to the point where this is undeniably the case, not only because of how they chose to implement races, but also because of other recent decisions, such as that to close the thigh-window on the Bonewicca set (as it was specified to be in the male version of the set) despite faithfully retaining the thigh-window (for females only) on the Skalla set shortly before, and the horror that is the spring bottoms on males.

Whether it's his own discomfort getting in the way, or his unwillingness to push his employees to get over their own, maybe it's time to have our Director/Producer step down to make way for someone able to do so. He's said before that he'd like someone to take over one of his positions, and maybe that would be enough, since he would no longer be completely responsible for and in control of the direction of the game? Perhaps they could even find a woman for the job, so there would be someone to deal with the parts he finds uncomfortable.

Viera men would only be 'weird' if they were deliberately designed that way. Which, I fear, is a genuine risk. When requests were made for a male version of the bunny outfit a lot of the suggestions were along the lines of a bow tie 'shirt', some fancy cuffs, a pair of tight trousers and a pair of smart looking shoes to go with the bunny ears. Instead we ended up getting the female outfit transplanted onto the male model. Which completely alienated those of us who just wanted something conventionally attractive yet sexy for our male characters.

Honestly, I wonder if the reason the implementation of this took so long, and ended up being just a copy/paste of the female version is because they either just put it off and put it off until they realized how long it had been since they said it was coming and had to slap something together last minute, or if our wonderful dev team was so uncomfortable at the very idea of male sex appeal that the bluescreened and couldn't come up with anything...
Like, I'm glad we finally got it, and I was excited about it, but it just looks too silly to use as anything but a PvP outfit. If they were going to give us a 1:1 copy of some female outfit, couldn't it at least have been the Thav set, which would mostly still look good on a guy even if you just flattened out the chest section?

[Theodric]

Honestly, I wonder if the reason the implementation of this took so long, and ended up being just a copy/paste of the female version is because they either just put it off and put it off until they realized how long it had been since they said it was coming and had to slap something together last minute, or if our wonderful dev team was so uncomfortable at the very idea of male sex appeal that the bluescreened and couldn't come up with anything...

My tentative assumption is that they pieced it together at the last minute. To their credit, the development team has proven capable of creating glamour that accentuates the male form in a way that is conventionally attractive. So I do find it odd that they couldn't think of something better for the bunny suit.