Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Komarimono]

Chances are getting slimmer depending on how you read the answer about Viera and Hrothgar in this thread.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-transcript%29

Question:

What was the most difficult aspect of adapting both Viera/Viis and the Hrothgar/Ronso into XIV's lore and story?

Banri Oda's Answer:

As for Viera, we took the origin setting from FINAL FANTASY XII as is and as much as possible without giving it sort of the "FFXIV interpretation" to it.
By having talks with (Yasumi) Matsuno-san many times who was in charge of the scenario of "Return to Ivalice", we kind of prevented giving the spoils to FFXIV's world. I would like to thank Matsuno-san.

As for the Hrothgar we didn't want to give the impression that this race just suddenly appeared in the world so we created a setting like a link towards the place go to so it doesn't feel like a sudden appearance. And also we touched upon the Hrothgar background in the Tales of the Storm so that it can be better understood by players.

So it's as I said way earlier in the thread, their lore is based on FFXII, so males are likely to be nill to none.

[official_coconut]

Wasn't there a lot of discussion about how Matsuno was talking about male Viera on twitter a few months back? If anything he seemed open to the idea but time and resources seem to be getting in the way of, well everything these days.

[Komarimono]

Wasn't there a lot of discussion about how Matsuno was talking about male Viera on twitter a few months back? If anything he seemed open to the idea but time and resources seem to be getting in the way of, well everything these days.

Well, that interview was with the head of lore, so... Why I found it far more important then what Matsuno says.

[WhiteArchmage]

If anything, being based on XII lore would actually make it MORE likely to have males. Since in Ivalice they just live in separate villages, in different zones of the forest (which we can't access since Lente's Tear basically guides us through a part of Golmore and out). Plus, XII's development was also troubled, since Matsuno had to drop out mid-way due to health issues, so if he planned to introduce the males in that game, it was out of his hands. The whole "lower birthrate than females" was invented for XIV and we know it was a development time issue and trying to please 2 subsets of the fanbase.

Basically, we're back where we've always been. Not a yes, not a no.

[Komarimono]

If anything, being based on XII lore would actually make it MORE likely to have males. Since in Ivalice they just live in separate villages, in different zones of the forest (which we can't access since Lente's Tear basically guides us through a part of Golmore and out). Plus, XII's development was also troubled, since Matsuno had to drop out mid-way due to health issues, so if he planned to introduce the males in that game, it was out of his hands. The whole "lower birthrate than females" was invented for XIV and we know it was a development time issue and trying to please 2 subsets of the fanbase.

Basically, we're back where we've always been. Not a yes, not a no.

Non existent in FFXII except for one mention if Fran talks to one of the Viera, on how the males are sparse and mad in the head and muscular/stout.

Revenant Wings talked of cross breeding female Viera with other races and connected to the Ivalace lore. Hence Feol Viera.

So if they pull directly from FFXII lore, the men are crazy and barely to be found lol.

Let's hope that changes if they do ever try and add them, or would be quite awkward.

[WhiteArchmage]

Non existent in FFXII except for one mention if Fran talks to one of the Viera, on how the males are sparse and mad in the head and muscular/stout.

Revenant Wings talked of cross breeding female Viera with other races and connected to the Ivalace lore. Hence Feol Viera.

So if they pull directly from FFXII lore, the men are crazy and barely to be found lol.

Let's hope that changes if they do ever try and add them, or would be quite awkward.

I'm gonna need a quote on that. The only mention of males in particular is in the Ultimania, where it just describes their society as segregated with both sexes living in different villages.

XIV DOES mention that the males are really aggressive, which may be in large part because of their training, but the one male we run across in a sidequest is nice enough to not shoot us on sight (as, again, a technical limitation as there are no males in-game right now, we only hear about it afterwards).

There's a lot of lore that exists for most of the playable races but it isn't always referenced in a consistent manner.

Indeed! I chuckle when the random generator makes a Suncat a Nuhn, which would mean they left their tribe to go adventuring and would not be a nuhn anymore

[Komarimono]

I'm gonna need a quote on that. The only mention of males in particular is in the Ultimania, where it just describes their society as segregated with both sexes living in different villages.

XIV DOES mention that the males are really aggressive, which may be in large part because of their training, but the one male we run across in a sidequest is nice enough to not shoot us on sight (as, again, a technical limitation as there are no males in-game right now, we only hear about it afterwards).



Indeed! I chuckle when the random generator makes a Suncat a Nuhn, which would mean they left their tribe to go adventuring and would not be a nuhn anymore

When you're on the Lente quest, Fran can talk to the other Viera. Not hard to play it and see it yourself.

[Gwenorai]

When you're on the Lente quest, Fran can talk to the other Viera. Not hard to play it and see it yourself.

I saw this and it seems less likely that they're crazy and it's a difference in translation. Mad of mind doesn't mean crazy, it means mad as in aggression. 'Out of your mind' is what you would say if they were crazy, not 'Mad of mind.'

We can't forget here that male Viera are noted to be very aggressive, which fits with the 'mad of mind' meaning they are aggressive, and not mentally unstable - for which there is nothing else in FF12 etc which mentions that the men are actually 'crazy'.

As for the numbers of male Viera I did maths on this months ago, not sure if it was in this thread or not. Anyway, the encyclopedia gives a number of how many Viera there are in FF14 world. It also gives the birth rates, with that information I was able to put forward that there was thousands of Viera, even if the males went through a massive cull along with lifestyle there were a good one thousand + of males and at minimum 500-1k males. If someone can grab all that info I'd appreciate it. I don't have my encyclopedia II with me.

edit - snip I think the post was in the 'gender lock' thread which is now gone :[

[official_coconut]

Oh yes the wonderful lore (starts up my Regalia) that we must protect (activates flight mode) at any and all costs (puts on frog suit)... If what I think is correct is when they did not have the resources that they wrote the lore after. I believe near the launch of Shadowbringers they added new lore to the Hrothgar character creator to explain their clans more so things are not really set in stone.



Looking far backwards, the races come and go to eorzea when dramatic events happen, such as the Au Ra coming when Doma fell. I think they could write more events such as those to justify the other genders or more races later on, such as for the Hummingways of the Moon, Burmecians, or even Genomes. Though if resources and time continue to be a problem I may as well switch my entire cast of characters into hyurs which have every feature still available (except facial hair that was available in the benchmark?) to them and forget about the other races.

[Komarimono]

Oh yes the wonderful lore (starts up my Regalia) that we must protect (activates flight mode) at any and all costs (puts on frog suit)... If what I think is correct is when they did not have the resources that they wrote the lore after. I believe near the launch of Shadowbringers they added new lore to the Hrothgar character creator to explain their clans more so things are not really set in stone.



Looking far backwards, the races come and go to eorzea when dramatic events happen, such as the Au Ra coming when Doma fell. I think they could write more events such as those to justify the other genders or more races later on, such as for the Hummingways of the Moon, Burmecians, or even Genomes. Though if resources and time continue to be a problem I may as well switch my entire cast of characters into hyurs which have every feature still available (except facial hair that was available in the benchmark?) to them and forget about the other races.

They still stick to the lore for all story and race related things. Yes, tons of lore breaking items in game, doesn't detract from the fact that when things are story connected they strictly stick to the lore.