Dontnod Entertainment and Square Enix’s Life Is Strange looks really interesting, but it was almost a very different game, according to a developer diary video posted this week.
Apparently Dontnod shopped the game around to a number of different publishers before going with Square Enix, and it turns out most of them wanted to change its protagonists into men. That would have been a real shame, but luckily it didn’t happen.
“Square is basically the only publisher that didn’t want to change a single thing about the game,” Dontnod co-founder Jean-Maxime “J-Max” Moris says in the video. “We had other publishers telling us ‘Make it a male lead character,’ and Square didn’t even question that once.”
Life Is Strange casts you as a high school senior who rewinds time to solve a friend’s disappearance. The first episode is scheduled to be released on Jan. 30.
Via NeoGAF
Comments
32 responses to “Publishers Wanted To Change Life Is Strange’s Protagonists Into Men”
Well of course. Because dudes would feel weird playing a chick that makes out with dudes.
Undetectable level’s of sarcasm are present in this post.
Superfluous apostrophe is present in this post.
You’re a superfluous apostrophe.
Touché…
Poe’s Law strikes again.
He’s a dude’s dude who knows what dudes like when they think they’re talking to a chick
Some of those other publishers probably have Nolan North on permanent retainer and female protagonists don’t help to provide a return on that investment.
Yeah, just look at Mass Effect. Does anybody actually think Jennifer Hale is a good voice actor?
Yes.
A huge amount of people in my experience… And this guy. I even got her autograph in my Mass Effect art book!
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not…
Personally I played as male Shep (didn’t really think about it) but after seeing my sister playing ME2, I was really tempted to start from scratch before ME3 simply because Jennifer Hale is 10000000000x better then the male voice actor (whose name I can never even remember).
Mark Meer. Personally preferred his Shep to Jennifer Hale’s.
Oh, come on you babies. Do I really have to hashtag sarcasm?
Ohhhhhh.
#poe’slaw
Mmm Poeslaw
*looks at above comment he made after yours*
…Yes.
Bugger.
Not ever. Not even if they don’t get it.
In fact, especially not if they don’t get it.
Reading the replies to this was an exercise in “Oh. Oh no. Stop.”
She’s not bad but she’s certainly not the female voice acting messiah everyone makes her out to be. Both voice actors for Mass Effect weren’t ideal for 80% of the aesthetic choices you could make.
Hale played it like an older woman, most female Shepards had the appearance of 20-30 year olds max.
Yeah, my Shep was scarred and older, and a completely cold killer.
Would have been perfect for your Shepard then. For mine, not so much.
It was so much fun. When the renegade option flashed on screen, I hit it almost every time. She was definitely a shoot first ask questions later kinda soldier.
Who the hell do these guys keep asking to publish their games then? they said the exact same thing about remember me before it was about to be released
Privileged Games Inc., Patriarchy Publishing Corp., and Triggering Media Holdings.
I don’t understand the fear by publishers in regards to female lead characters. A couple of games in my ‘best of’ list are such examples: The ‘Colonel’s Bequest'(PC) and ‘Eternal Darkness'(Gamecube). Also there’s the Tomb Raider series which I’ve never played, but still.
Beyond Good and Evil, No-one Lives Forever, the better half of Resident Evil 2, Oni, Silent Hill 3…
If they changed the protagonists to guys I wouldn’t have pre-ordered & I doubt I would’ve been interested at all
I think after Crystal Dynamics refused to recast the star of Tomb Raider as a muscly, stubbled Larry Croft, Square has faith in female protagonists.
Nathan Drake already took that job.
Might be just me, but I think the context in which the publishers said that they would publish the game if the lead was a man. I think that’s an important bit of information that is missing.
If these guys last game didn’t sell well , even with a female lead in it, perhaps the publisher was thinking about recouping costs and if the lead was male, well they could possibly do that.
Rather than simply, “we aren’t touching your game because of female lead”
Context matters.
Taking in account the modern looks of FF males, they probably thought the protagonists were dudes!
Mean jokes aside, it’s pretty cool that they believed in the creative vision of the authors.