Pronouns?

[Ammokkx]

I'm still trying to remember the last time I saw a voice acted cutscene where anyone referred to my character as anything other than "my friend" or "warrior of light" or something similar. I can't recall hearing "she" or "her." I've seen it in text obviously, but never said out loud.

Cutscene right before you confront Vauthry, Exarch talks about his friend. About things he would like to do with he/she. Admittedly I only readily have this by hand because I just got done with that particular part of the story, but trust me on this when I say there are far more examples than just this.

[SturmChurro]

I'm still trying to remember the last time I saw a voice acted cutscene where anyone referred to my character as anything other than "my friend" or "warrior of light" or something similar. I can't recall hearing "she" or "her." I've seen it in text obviously, but never said out loud.

I heard it voiced multiple times last night when I caught up in story.

[Mavrias]

Cutscene right before you confront Vauthry, Exarch talks about his friend. About things he would like to do with he/she. Admittedly I only readily have this by hand because I just got done with that particular part of the story, but trust me on this when I say there are far more examples than just this.

I stand corrected, although I will point out, that that's a scene where the gender neutral pronoun "they" would fit quite nicely. For the next MMO, perhaps.

[reiichi]

Cutscene right before you confront Vauthry, Exarch talks about his friend. About things he would like to do with he/she. Admittedly I only readily have this by hand because I just got done with that particular part of the story, but trust me on this when I say there are far more examples than just this.

Yeah, in the handful of situations where a voice line DOES actually refer to the player character's gender, we do have an issue there. But there's only a handful of them, and I think this is something that could be handle by letting the player have a fallback to one of the currently implemented choices (male or female pronouns). It's the sort of choice that SE could improve upon going forwards by either avoiding gendered phrases for the player (ex, "a person of your stature" instead of "a woman of your stature" or "a man of your stature"). And that saves them a line of recording.

There isn't really a perfect way to handle the already-recorded things because like plenty of other features that were tacked onto FFXIV, it wasn't a design decision from the start and there's going to be technical bloat. But I don't think that means it cannot be improved for new content.

[SturmChurro]

I stand corrected, although I will point out, that that's a scene where the gender neutral pronoun "they" would fit quite nicely. For the next MMO, perhaps.

Just off the top of my head from last night. One example.

https://youtu.be/xHdQgaBKIKg?t=1114

Yeah, in the handful of situations where a voice line DOES actually refer to the player character's gender, we do have an issue there. But there's only a handful of them, and I think this is something that could be handle by letting the player have a fallback to one of the currently implemented choices (male or female pronouns). It's the sort of choice that SE could improve upon going forwards by either avoiding gendered phrases for the player (ex, "a person of your stature" instead of "a woman of your stature" or "a man of your stature"). And that saves them a line of recording.

There isn't really a perfect way to handle the already-recorded things because like plenty of other features that were tacked onto FFXIV, it wasn't a design decision from the start and there's going to be technical bloat. But I don't think that means it cannot be improved for new content.

No, I actually like my character being referred to as their proper gender, and would rather not have voice lines diluted for this purpose. It's not a "design choice" at all either to refer to someone as their sex.

[Ammokkx]

Yeah, in the handful of situations where a voice line DOES actually refer to the player character's gender, we do have an issue there. But there's only a handful of them, and I think this is something that could be handle by letting the player have a fallback to one of the currently implemented choices (male or female pronouns). It's the sort of choice that SE could improve upon going forwards by either avoiding gendered phrases for the player (ex, "a person of your stature" instead of "a woman of your stature" or "a man of your stature"). And that saves them a line of recording.

There isn't really a perfect way to handle the already-recorded things because like plenty of other features that were tacked onto FFXIV, it wasn't a design decision from the start and there's going to be technical bloat. But I don't think that means it cannot be improved for new content.

Gonna be real with you chief, I'd rather you kept the "she" there. It added a lot more emotional punch to his speech than if he'd just said "they" which, by the way, a lot of people still go "isn't that plural?" when they hear or read it. A lot of people are more used to directed he/she's and would think the dialogue is weird if everything was aimed in third person.

I could see the argument for recording more voice lines for different options, but cutting back on them seems like the opposite of a good idea.

[Mavrias]

Gonna be real with you chief, I'd rather you kept the "she" there. It added a lot more emotional punch to his speech than if he'd just said "they" which, by the way, a lot of people still go "isn't that plural?" when they hear or read it. A lot of people are more used to directed he/she's and would think the dialogue is weird if everything was aimed in third person.

I could see the argument for recording more voice lines for different options, but cutting back on them seems like the opposite of a good idea.

Why would the addition of the choice "they" to the traditional choices of ""she/he" dilute that in any way? You could still pick "she" if thats what you wanted.

Additionally "they/them" has been used as a singular pronoun for literal centuries. So those people would still be incorrect. That's a very tired excuse that never made sense.

Yeah we're talking about going forward.

[Ammokkx]

Why would the addition of the choice "they" to the traditional choices of ""she/he" dilute that in any way? You could still pick "she" if thats what you wanted.

Additionally "they/them" has been used as a singular pronoun for literal centuries. So those people would still be incorrect. That's a very tired excuse that never made sense.

Yeah we're talking about going forward.

The man was talking about cutting back voice options in favor of having everything third person.

I explicitely said I could see the argument for adding more options, but not for removing them.

Granted I still think it's not worth the additional effort, but I'm not going to deny that you lot have a point. Everything weighed on a scale I still think SE's current direction is the correct path to follow that makes the most sense, but you're not going to catch me saying that adding more options is a strictly negative thing.

As long as Khenda's being referred to as a woman throughout the game I really couldn't care less.

[SturmChurro]

Why would the addition of the choice "they" to the traditional choices of ""she/he" dilute that in any way? You could still pick "she" if thats what you wanted.

Additionally "they/them" has been used as a singular pronoun for literal centuries. So those people would still be incorrect. That's a very tired excuse that never made sense.

Yeah we're talking about going forward.

That reply is referring to removing gendered language as supposed "progress". Even the OP here didn't go that far, they were only asking for the option of a neutral pronoun.

[reiichi]

Just off the top of my head from last night. One example.

https://youtu.be/xHdQgaBKIKg?t=1114


No, I actually like my character being referred to as their proper gender, and would rather not have voice lines diluted for this purpose. It's not a "design choice" at all either to refer to someone as their sex.

I'm not sure how people's desire for MORE options means it's going to be taken away from you? Quite literally every line of dialog in the game, including those that have the character's pronouns, are a design choice. FFXIV could have gone the way of older games that only referred to the player character as "you" and never addressed their gender (because sex is biology and I'm pretty sure we're not trying to call people things based off unrendered sexy bits). Does it mean some scenes would have had a different impact? Maybe. But we're not rendering every single line that refers to the player character already because that also just doesn't happen in speech.

Gonna be real with you chief, I'd rather you kept the "she" there. It added a lot more emotional punch to his speech than if he'd just said "they" which, by the way, a lot of people still go "isn't that plural?" when they hear or read it. A lot of people are more used to directed he/she's and would think the dialogue is weird if everything was aimed in third person.

I could see the argument for recording more voice lines for different options, but cutting back on them seems like the opposite of a good idea.

Like I said to the other person, some of these scenes could be affected by making things more ambiguous, but I'm also certain they ALL could have been written in such a way to avoid the player character's gender if that's what the scriptwriters felt like doing. By the way though, third-person pronouns are "he, his, she, hers, they, them, etc." So the proposed change going forwards that I had demonstrated was actually getting away from third-person pronouns.

--

Ultimately, I, as a cisgendered person, already have the game catering to my preference choices. while I don't expect SE to go back and "fix" things to be more inclusive, this isn't a technical limitation of the game so much as a choice by the people writing the game's dialog and the people who voice the lines. I think SE could make things more inclusive for the players who do want to have those choices in future games (or ideally, future content in this game), but I don't really have a horse in this race myself.