So what is a Hrothgar?

[Daralii]

Unfortunately, by checking archives dataminers think it was added around December 2018, from what I can gather.

Yeah, the hrothgar and viera strings were added in 4.5.

[xbahax92]

Yeah, the hrothgar and viera strings were added in 4.5.

Funny enough, BluFever mentioned this 7months ago

Blufever 7 months ago#10

Blue Mage is a support melee dps if this helps. Viera isn't the only new race. Please don't make me reveal more. ;_;

[Seraphor]

Consider this:

The Viera are, in spirit, the propriety of Ivalice and under the guiding hand of Matsuno.
Yoshi and Matsuno are friends, and Yoshi brought Matsuno on board to guide the Return to Ivalice arc, and ensure it remains faithful to Ivalician lore.
So it makes sense that Yoshi would respect Matsuno’s creations as his to have the final say on.
Ivalician lore states that male Viera are so rare, that no non-Viera has ever seen them. To go against this would not merely be breaking FFXIV lore but Ivalice lore too, and in all likelihood, they may think that if male Viera were to ever be revealed it should be in an Ivalice title, not in what essentially amount to a fanservice a cameo in an MMO. It would basically be FFXIV stealing Ivalice’s thunder.

So, how about they get around this, by introducing a FFXIV unique race, who in FFXIV lore are related to the Viera, but this does not step on the toes of Mastuno’s Ivalice.
This new FFXIV exclusive race, related to Viera, are predominantly male, or are entirely non-dimorphic/asexual, but look masculine.
This new race are called the Hrothgar, they’re large, hare-like people, with manes instead of tails.

[briarth0rn]

Consider this:

The Viera are, in spirit, the propriety of Ivalice and under the guiding hand of Matsuno.
Yoshi and Matsuno are friends, and Yoshi brought Matsuno on board to guide the Return to Ivalice arc, and ensure it remains faithful to Ivalician lore.
So it makes sense that Yoshi would respect Matsuno’s creations as his to have the final say on.

While that's true, Yoshi has said in an interview that the addition of Viera as a playable race and the Ivalice series of raids are mostly independent of eachother- We're getting viera largely because the community has asked for them for years, the decision to bring them in was likely made long before they brought Matsuno on board for the 4.X alliance raids.

[Seraphor]

Except that we have development concept art of male Viera released in 2015, two years after that statement, along with a bug (the one that prompted this thread) that showed conditional statements in the code for male/female Viera player characters six years after that statement was made. Oh, and a multi-paragraph lore dump from an NPC going into large amount of detail about the lifestyles of male Viera and there place in Viera society in late 2018. So we have seen quite a bit of development resources - from concept artists to lore writers to programmers to the translation teams - engaged in work relating to developing male Viera in game in the six years since that interview.

So Occam's Razor in this case would be that having invested a considerable amount of development resources over the years for including male Viera in the game that likely the Viera are not gender locked and if that is the case the Hrothgar are probably not gender locked either. Remember that bug showed there were conditional statements for male and female Hrothgar too.

The lore stresses how incredibly rare male Viera are, far moreso than miqote, and Yoshi's answer was to read the lore.

I wouldn't say a couple pieces of concept art qualify as a 'considerable amount of development resources', when we've just had a Q&A with a character designer who said they reject dozens of concepts before finalizing one.

You think TWO full races is the more likely reality?

[Karl0217]

The lore stresses how incredibly rare male Viera are, far moreso than miqote, and Yoshi's answer was to read the lore.

You think TWO full races is the more likely reality?

The lore also stresses that all male Viera serve as the border guards and the forest rangers for Viera territory. No exceptions and they all swear an oath not to let any evil encroach on that territory. We also know from the last Fan Fest that we are heading into Ra'Tika Greatwood, which the developers all but confirmed was Viera territory. And we know from the trailers, not just the main one but the location trailers as well, the Scions are present when one of the Greatwood villages gets the crap kicked out of it; probably by the Imperial Garlean Army units gunning for us. You want to talk lore? It would be lore-breaking in the extreme not to run into any hostile male Viera NPCs if we are responsible for bringing Garlean troops into their homeland and said troops targeting a Viera village.

[Seraphor]

The lore also stresses that all male Viera serve as the border guards and the forest rangers for Viera territory. No exceptions and they all swear an oath not to let any evil encroach on that territory. We also know from the last Fan Fest that we are heading into Ra'Tika Greatwood, which the developers all but confirmed was Viera territory. And we know from the trailers, not just the main one but the location trailers as well, the Scions are present when one of the Greatwood villages gets the crap kicked out of it; probably by the Imperial Garlean Army units gunning for us. You want to talk lore? It would be lore-breaking in the extreme not to run into any hostile male Viera NPCs if we are responsible for bringing Garlean troops into their homeland and said troops targeting a Viera village.

The lore states that no non-Viera have ever spotted a male Viera.
It's be incredibly lore-breaking if the NPC is talking to a male Viera as he says that.

We don't know what the Rak'tika Greatwood is in relation to the Viera as a race. The current lore only mentions Golmore. It could be a fringe settlement of Viera completely unconnected to those of Golmore.

[Karl0217]

The lore states that no non-Viera have ever spotted a male Viera.
It's be incredibly lore-breaking if the NPC is talking to a male Viera as he says that.

We don't know what the Rak'tika Greatwood is in relation to the Viera as a race. The current lore only mentions Golmore. It could be a fringe settlement of Viera completely unconnected to those of Golmore.

About as lore-breaking as Yugiri claiming she is hiding her face to not freak out the people in U'ldah at the sight of an Au Ra even if the PC is an Au Ra and there are a dozen other Au Ra's in the vicinity of the tavern? Also, he says no non-Viera has spotted a male Viera and lived to tell the tale; which is a bit different in context.

I swear to the twelve if one more person mentions gender-locked viera in this HROTHGAR THREAD....

Take it to the gender-locking thread. You have your own thread, USE IT!

Well, they are also talking about the Hrothgar in the Viera threads too. The subjects kind of overlap.

[Enla]

About as lore-breaking as Yugiri claiming she is hiding her face to not freak out the people in U'ldah at the sight of an Au Ra even if the PC is an Au Ra and there are a dozen other Au Ra's in the vicinity of the tavern? Also, he says no non-Viera has spotted a male Viera and lived to tell the tale; which is a bit different in context.

Or the fact that all the NPC's basically treat any Xaela PC as a non-entity in the Steppes. I remember being pretty disappointed that my character's race at the time basically mattered not one iota back then, but it's pretty par for the course with this game.

[Skeith9]

Or the fact that all the NPC's basically treat any Xaela PC as a non-entity in the Steppes. I remember being pretty disappointed that my character's race at the time basically mattered not one iota back then, but it's pretty par for the course with this game.

It matter's a lot more in the French localization. That's how we even found out about hrothgar. I kinda want to go play a scary fem Hrothgar in French just to get NPCs reactions. Buuut I don't speak French.

Well, they are also talking about the Hrothgar in the Viera threads too. The subjects kind of overlap.

I don't care, that's the gender-locking thread, this is the hrothgar thread. People are less likely to come here to talk and hype about Hrothgar if half of it is about male viera complaints.

Overlap? You can talk about choco cake in the choco thread but don't talk about choco bananas in the cake thread!