Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Melichoir]

I'd definitely hate to see the gender/race combo hijacked to appease those who want the men to be drastically different to the women for the sake of being niche.

I dont think anyone is hijacking anything but rather just explaining their preferences, which is no different than what youre doing. I mean, if we go by how you are contextually using the word, than you yourself are also guilty of 'hijacking' the thread for getting your preferences front and center rather than just stating what you personally like to see.

There have definitely been attempts to hijack the cause, though. Or are we now pretending that Yoshi-P didn't have to make a statement specifically saying that they will not be designed to resemble children...? It was unfortunate that he had to point that out in the first place.

Theres a few breakdowns here. First, I know other people have mentioned how yoshi P envisions them, but hes not the sole designer. If anything hes the rubber stamper. He can have his input and put his vision out there but he is not inherently the person who solely picks what goes where. He literally has professional designers on his team that do the bulk of the designing and is extremely likely that they throw out a ton of design variations that are all drastically different jsut to see what works and what doesnt. Thats design basics 101. So nothing is ruled out just because Yoshi P said his personal PoV on it.

This is important cause yes, we may end up with dimorphic males for Viera. Males that could be smaller or different from the females. The point though about "Oh they wont be designed like children" is an oversimplification and misread of what people were asking for from Yoshi P. Generally speaking on the OFs, people werent asking for the males to be children (typically, as I know there were a few people who wanted that) but wanted cuter male characters. Theres a drastic difference but for some reason people are equating cute means child. The driving point is that people wanted a design that isnt big chiseled block of wood laquered in raw testosterone, but something cuter and softer in design. That there is a difference between child like and cute. Frankly the game could probably benefit in the end from that IMO, because we actually have pretty much every basic Trope of design for males so far (Fierce, Rugged, Average, Elegant, Funny).

Consider it this way, Fem Viera and Fem Roes are designed to be more sexy than cute, and by comparison, Fem Miqote and AuRa are definitely have design aspects to make them more cute than sexy. Neither of them would be construed as being children. Are we gonna suggest that because a character is male that they cannot be designed cute unless theyre specifically designed to be a child analogue? That the only way to have a male character is if theyre ripped, tall, and rugged?