Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Alleo]

If the Hrothgar would have had bunny ears and were called Viera instead, would you guys have been cool with it?

I honestly would not have been that cool with it. It would be imo better because we would have had at least one complete race but they would look way to different to make them feel like one race at the same time. Lets not forget that until the age of around 13 they are allowed to live in the village because they look like the females. I would find it hard to believe that they would turn into hulk like beings after that. The difference between female and male Au Ra are already quite big and there its mostly just the height. A hrothgar viera would be even worse with being even bigger than the females and looking much more beastly and wild than them. This would 100% fall into the: The females look like models while the males look completely different and beastly -trope...which is something that I dont want.

So it would have been better than a genderlock but still would play too much into the common trope of the men looking like beasts while the females are only allowed to be cute/sexy. I dont care if they have more or less muscles (even though I wish we had a more slimmer race) but please let them at least look like they are belonging to the same race at all.

Edit: Can someone tell me what exactly a conventionally attractive man is? Because isnt that depending on where you live? And isnt that changing all the time too? One time you have all these manly hairy men with big muscles and big beards other times people find men more attractive that are clean shaven (on the whole body) and less muscled. Heck there are even studies that show that women also can see someone as much more attractive if they are are simply successfull. So I doubt that there is a universal conventional idea about men.

In the end Yoshida and his team will be doing the decision. And they are from Asia, who might have a slightly different view about what makes a man look handsome. This is the same culture where slim, boyish idol groups are loved, and even Yoshida himself looks much more like that instead of the more "western" view of a man. (But even that would depend on where in the western world you would ask, and who you ask)

[Theodric]

I wouldn't want anything bulkier than a Highlander. That's my limit, since anything else just ends up looking comical.

[Senn]

...

I mean, you can say that you don't want it to be bulkier than highlander, but Yoshida already described male viera as slim, so no need to worry about that.
It probably won't look like Lauront's signature. Male viera, if ever implemented, will most likely look like the concept art, which is slimmer than what is in Lauront's sig. This is just going by the interviews and concept art, though. Things can change in development, but since we already know what female viera look like, we can take an educated guess as to how the males will look like. We're not completely in the dark.

This is just my speculation, so take it with a grain of salt, but based on the in-game lore, male and female viera look identical at a young age, to the point where you cannot tell them apart. What I speculate is that when the males and females grow older, it becomes apparent which viera are females because of their female characteristics. However, the males remain androgynous, but do not have the obvious female features, so it would be easy to tell they are males.

Normally in humans, kids look similar in gender to each other. When boys grow into men, naturally, human men get bigger than human women.

If a normal human growth pattern is the same case for male viera, why would the lore even bother to mention that male and female viera children are identical at a young age? To the point you can't even tell male and female children apart? There would be no point in even mentioning this because this is a normal growth pattern for real humans, and it would be nothing worth mentioning. That is, unless the males still look a bit androgynous when they are fully grown. In this case, it would make sense for the lore to explain how you can't really tell young male and female viera apart, because it is out of the norm - it's different than what you would expect for ordinary humans, so it would be worth noting.

Other people may say that when the males grow older, their appearance becomes more savage, and that's how you can tell the males and females apart. I disagree with this. Based off the interviews, we can tell that the dev team, or at the very least, Yoshida, was leaning more towards a handsome, slim, and elegant type of male viera. Furthermore, they were considering using an elezen base and miqo'te esque face for male viera. It seems like female viera is using a modified elezen base with a miqo'te esque face, so it stands to reason the dev team will do something similar for the males. The young male viera would not have a wild and savage appearance as adults based off this information.

Like I said though, this is all speculation.

[Lauront]

Because it could just be referring to something other than their overall build, borrowing from a certain characteristic of rabbit anatomy... stuff that they don't really want to make any more explicit than that. I doubt it will tie into anything to do with "androgyny".

As for the concept art...



...is not miles away from...



Particularly not the second one.

He was using those words to set them apart from Hrothgar. It does not mean they will not add any bulk to a modified Elezen model. You can retain a slender build even with more bulk than is on the Elezen model, and certainly with more muscle definition, i.e. by making them more ripped.

[Senn]

...

Your signature and the concept art are still different. Your sig is more bulky. It will most likely look like the concept art, and they probably won't be any more buff than that. Just going off the information and spitballed ideas that have been given in interviews.

I'm assuming male viera will look like a mix of this

and this


Somewhat androgynous.

[BillyKaplan]

I'm assuming

Stop that. XD

[Senn]

Stop that. XD

No. I'm free to speculate here.

[Lauront]

Your signature and the concept art are still different. Your sig is more bulky. It will most likely look like the concept art, and they probably won't be any more buff than that. Just going off the information and spitballed ideas that have been given in interviews.

I'm assuming male viera will look like a mix of this

and this


Somewhat androgynous.

It's exactly the same level of bulk as the first image. The only way to argue it's not is to premise it on the assumption that they will go for a blended look. I'm hoping they'll concoct something better looking than that second concept art pic...

I would like for them to adhere to conventional beauty standards. By all means, have one of their base face options be androgynous but I firmly believe that it would be a mistake and a major disappointment if they were designed that way across the board.

I'd nudge those eager to play an androgynous character in the direction of Lalafell - as they can be designed to adhere to that particular aesthetic.

Going off miqo'te, they have 2 masculine faces and 2 more androgynous picks, so if they gave something like the dadcat face and that emo anime boi one, it'd be all right.

[Theodric]

I'm hoping they'll concoct something better looking than that second concept art pic...

I'm in firm agreement. It's pretty unsettling - and not in a good way! Even putting that aside, it doesn't scream 'fierce protector of the forest' to me in any way. The Viera in your signature, however, does.

[Senn]

It's pretty unsettling

...Unsettling how? And why are you so easily unsettled?