Guh, I didn't want to get involved in this thread but just seeing the misinformation about what happened between the Viera reveal fanfest and Hrothgar reveal fanfest being shared here is making me want to say something.

Quote Originally Posted by Alleo View Post
The hype was completely on SE...again Yoshida was asked after the reveal of the females if we get male vieras and he just kept on increasing the hype. He bascially was like "you will see at the next fanfest" which seeing how we always got all genders and no other race was on the door at that time, that this was a yes....
First of all, Yoshida was not responsible for increasing any hype for any potential male Viera after the Viera reveal fanfest. When asked about it, he told the interviewer to "reread/look at the game's lore." And players quickly checked out the Ivalice raid's dramaturge and discovered that he says something along the lines of "they simply don't exist to us" about the subject. For all people want to get upset over Yoshida for not telling them "no;" the way I still see it, that was his way of letting people down gently and letting them discover the answer to that on their own without subsequently spoiling a major reveal for the upcoming Tokyo Fanfest.

You also need to consider the situation at the time which put the development team in a bad spot. There was a leaker who had already more or less correctly spoiled upcoming things like BLU and it not being a full job, the upcoming bosses for the Omega raids (referring to the last boss(es) as "Adam and Eve" as opposed to Omega M and F, for example), and most surprising of all, that Viera and a muscular lion race were in the works and coming next expansion. There is no way that the developers could not have been informed and aware that someone blew the lid on their upcoming reveals. Outright saying there would be no male Viera right then and there would instantly cause many to connect the dots and realize the leaked races were correct and a lion race for males was being saved for the Tokyo fanfest. He instead gave a breadcrumb trail.

What made it even more accidently blatant before that Tokyo fanfest was the dataminers finding text that not only confirmed a new lion race coming by being described as having "manes," but namedropped the race as Hrothgars. The discussion was right here on these forums as well. It was even brought up that in an older interview about new races, Yoshida said he didn't think they'd make male Viera, and would include a different male-only race; so its not as if the precedent wasn't there.

Yet despite all that, I still remember how people let hope and personal headcanon delude themselves into thinking male Viera had to happen. "Lore doesn't matter." Perhaps it doesn't, but that was what the game's director said to look at to come to our own conclusion about the probability of male Viera (essentially near-0) without totally spoiling an already dwindling reveal for Tokyo's fanfest. Whether or not its an excuse now is moot since they've been asked about it after the fact and he's mentioned why they did what they did. Male Viera had the odds stacked way against them and yet some people would not let it go or temper their expectations and self-inflicted hype that many echo-chambers here did not do any favors for; which culminated in the vile, nastiness from some of the "fans" here on the forums against the devs when the Hrothgar showed up- as many had already expected.

You're free to continue to hope and hold-out for male Viera the missing genders here, but it's getting exhausting seeing some people try to shift the blame to the devs about not taking it upon themselves to personally rein-in speculation between fanfests.