Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Lonkkis]

I'm all for them adding male Viera to the games as long as they look similar to the concept art they already have. Sleek, tall and muscular. Like a hunter/guardian that lives in the wild would look like.

Oh, and they should also add female Hrothgar at the same time.

[CrispyUnicycle]

the return of this topic means i can finally ask for my dream character

playable bangaa please

[Senn]

I'm actually really surprised this thread is back. I haven't seen anything like this happen before on this forum. Thank you forum mods.

I've shared some of these sources before, but I wanted to compile it into one post for people's viewing pleasure.

Interview with FFXIV producer Naoki Yoshida. I think the main thing holding back the dev team is work flow rather than lore.

"As a follow up, is the team considering adding the other gender for these two races in future expansions?"

A.) Short answer is we haven’t made a decision on that. The reason why we can’t say for sure. We need to optimize our work flow with the existing races and the new ones. After that, perhaps we do the other gender. But we don’t know right now. We did consider Male Viera instead of adding an extra race, but we tried to take player feedback on adding a more beast like race as well as the strong desire to receive Viera. We did expect strong feedback on the gender lock. It was a tough decision, but we decided to do our best to meet both the player feedback and our development team’s vision. It will be very costly to add a new race or genders. So I won’t say no, but I would not like to set expectations high."


Sources: Link 1, Link 2

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Male viera & female hrothgar might not be entirely off the table. In fact, a new race might not be entirely off the table, either.

When asked about whether viera and hrothgar would be the last new races to be introduced to the game, and if there were any plans to add more customization options to the established races, Yoshi P responded like this:

"if it is a customization option that significantly changes the shape of the races body, I think we would be better off to tackle the challenge of just introducing a new playable race all together instead."


Source: Link

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Naoki Yoshida talks about possible appearance for male viera.

"If we did create a male design for the Viera, he would be quite elegant, handsome, and slim. He would look more like the Elezen race, but with bunny ears."

Source: Link

"...we only had Female Viera for reference, so we had no idea what to do for the Male variant. We would have to use our own imagination for that. There was fear about how we would approach that. Perhaps an elezen body with a miqo’te face and bunny ears. "

Source: Link

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Yasumi Matsuno, who oversaw the development of Final Fantasy Tactics, supervised the development for PlayOnline (for FFXI), and directed FFXII with Hiroyuki Ito, made some comments on the appearance of male viera. Viera make appearances in Final Fantasy Tactics and FFXII.

Actually this is the character Matsuno referred to when hinting at the body weight and muscle mass to Minafumi.
Some people here(you know who you are) are constantly referencing more bulky characters, but really, start arguing with me when you learn Japanese.
This is Toru Rikiishi from Ashita no Joe. Matsuno specifically said "his proportions before the rematch with Joe where he was at his lightest".

Rikishi Toru is a character from Ashita no Joe. Rikishi actually ends up dying after the rematch with Joe due to his extreme weight loss training. Matsuno describes male viera's physique as being like Rikishi after his extreme weight loss. Rikishi lost weight in order to be in bantamweight class to have a rematch with Joe. Bantam is the lowest weight class.

To give you a scale, I'll list all the weight classes:

-welter (66.678kg / 147lb or less)
-light (61.235kg / 135lb or less)
-feather (57.153kg / 126lb or less)
-bantam (53.524kg / 118lb or less)

Source: Link

It's the one I linked some months ago, about having "a boxer's physique".
https://twitter.com/YasumiMatsuno/st...63923227910145
The phrase inside the parenthesis says "You know that time when Rikiishi did that thing in Ashita no Joe?" with a bit of Japanese word-play involved.

Matsuno discusses the male viera appearance more here when he was requesting male viera artwork from illustrator Fumio Minagawa.


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Matsuno requested art of male viera from Fumio Minagawa (who also goes by Minafumi on twitter). Minafumi has made official illustrations and goods for Final Fantasy titles, like an art book for FFXI.

Minafumi took a crack at drawing male viera at Matsuno's request, and Matsuno replied with "GJ !!" (most likely meaning good job!!)



Source: Link


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If you would like male viera to be added as a playable character, please remember to leave a like on the original post of this thread. If your friends would also like male viera, encourage them to leave a like as well.

[Tabbs]

I've shared some of these sources before, but I wanted to compile it into one post for people's viewing pleasure.

Thank you for sharing this all in one spot! Really handy actually; its a shame you can pin individual replies to a thread.

[SturmChurro]

Thank you for sharing this all in one spot! Really handy actually; its a shame you can pin individual replies to a thread.

The OP could always be updated with stuff like that.

[grinkdaboy]

my insinuation was more that there was no established lore for the viera on the source so that there's no lore issues with male viera being made playable. maybe if we were on norvrandt, sure, but on the source?

[MikkoAkure]

my insinuation was more that there was no established lore for the viera on the source so that there's no lore issues with male viera being made playable. maybe if we were on norvrandt, sure, but on the source?

The Dramaturge on the airship in Kugane has had all the Source's viera lore since Stormblood and it's the same as Ivalice viera lore. He's also been to Dalmasca, which viera make up 5% of the population of the Kingdom, and has never seen a male viera.

I saw all manner of wondrous creatures, not once did I lay mine eyes upon a male Viera, nor did I hear of one living in the city. They simply do not exist to us.

We probably have more lore on Source viera than we do on the viis.

[GrizzlyTank]

Just noticed the tail on the concept art for the female viera... Now I'm sad.

[MikkoAkure]

Just noticed the tail on the concept art for the female viera... Now I'm sad.

Why? Tail clipping is even sadder. Plus viera in all of their other appearances didn’t have tails so it would be weird to start now.