When a new rabbit-eared race called Viera was revealed for Final Fantasy XIV’s upcoming Shadowbringers expansion during last month’s Paris Fanfest, only female versions were shown, but players were hopeful that the male version of the Viera would be announced at the Tokyo Fanfest this past weekend.
Instead, Square Enix added a whole new race, the exclusively male Hrothgar. So, now there are two gender-locked races instead of one. Great.
Introduced in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and popularised by Final Fantasy XII’s Fran, the Viera are a race of tall, lanky bunny people. According to lore, male Viera exist but they live in separate settlements and do not appear in public.
In a recent interview with GameSpot, Final Fantasy XIV producer Naoki Yoshida cited this lore as the reason why playable Viera can only be female.
But the lore hasn’t stopped players from clamoring for and anticipating the reveal of playable rabbit boys. When asked about the possibility of male Viera during a Q&A session at the Paris Fanfest last month, Yoshida said he could not comment and that players would have to wait until this weekend’s Tokyo event for more information.
Many took that comment as confirmation male Viera would appear. They did not.
Instead of playable male Viera, Yoshida introduced the male-exclusive race Hrothgar. Modelled after the bestial Ronso from Final Fantasy X, the Hrothgar are thickly-muscled cat men, some of whom sport horns à la FFX’s Kimahri.
While Final Fantasy lore features both female and male Ronso, in Final Fantasy XIV they will be a male-only race, included as a counterpart to the female-only Viera.
This is, frankly, some bullshit. First off, adhering to the lore only matters for the Viera? Players cannot be male Viera because of lore, but they also cannot be female Hrothgar because, what, it wouldn’t be fair to everybody who wanted to be a male Viera? Nonsense.
Secondly, Final Fantasy XIV already has a humanoid feline race in the Miqo’te. Ironically, when Final Fantasy XIV first launched back in 2010, the Miqo’te were a female gender-locked race, a counterpart to the male-only Roegadyn. After the game was shut down and rebooted as A Realm Reborn in 2013, male Miqo-te and female Roegadyn got added, thanks largely to fan outcry.
Now fans are outcrying again. Reddit threads about the new race reveal (thanks to reader Connor for bringing these to my attention) are filled with angry comments.
There’s an extensive fan-created poll gathering data about how players feel about the gender-locking, and how it affects their feelings about July’s Shadowbringers expansion.
Fortunately, director Naoki Yoshida told GameStop the team is taking player feedback under consideration. The developers have a good track record when it comes to dealing with players’ complaints, like their approach to fixing issues with player housing, or their response the first time Final Fantasy XIV had a pair of gender-locked races.
Let’s hope players don’t have to complain too loud and long, and I can get my bunny boy on sooner rather than later.
Comments
Boo fucking hoo
If they want to complain send them to Terra online. I'm pretty sure basically every new class is always female exclusive.
I translated this as "A dozen players out of 5 million have complained on Reddit about it". Not a big portion of the players in other words, and just a small minority feeling somewhat entitled. When they aint.
As you so eloquently put it, boo fucking hoo.
Yet most of those complaining are no doubt quite happy to play the Mass Effect games, with their sexy exclusively-female Asari...
...and "outcrying" doesn't mean what you obviously think it means, Mike. But it is strangely apt for those losers who are complaining that they can't have a playable bunny boy. I find that SJWs quite frequently compete to outcry each other in virtue-signalling free-for-alls.
Those games didn't have you role-playing a player created Asari though: you just had particular Asasri individuals appear in the game.
Also, the Mass Effect games don't claim that male Asasri exist but are just hiding.
I take your second point, but in ME3 multiplayer you could create and customise a number of different Asari. There were also a small number of people claiming that the 'lore' excuse for not having male Asari was just an excuse for the objectification of women :-D
String me up, but I personally don't see an issue. The developer ultimately makes the decisions so just play it or don't and if your that peeved just boycott the game LOL doesn't hurt anyone, unless peoples feelings are getting hurt then we need to start getting serious.
Cheers @blakeavon!
Strange, he’s usually against whenever “gamers” (spoken with disgust) do anything. You’d think he be pro pro-dev comments.
Yeah I am not bothered I don't take this stuff personally. I just cannot see how anything in my comment remotely warrants a downvote, but hey humans are a peculiar lot.
Come on guys. Let people upvote or downvote as they see fit. He's probably got his own reasons, whether they make sense to us or not. Don't call him out for voicing his opinions through voting.
Edit to avoid moderation hell: Wait till he comments his opinion and then have a discussion about why.
Fair call, everyone is open to an opinion.
Considering how downvotes can tank a person's account and send every comment into moderation hell, disagreeing opinions on benign posts should absolutely be shared via words instead of downvotes.
Don't like it? Don't play it, the devs can do whatever they want, who needs to pander to be inclusive to gender, it's not Earth, thry aren't human, but wahhh I can't be a furry boy bunny, christ...
The lack of female Ronso is a far greater issue than the lack of male Viera, which shares the same excuse for why there were no male Mithra back in FFXI. FFXI never had the change that FFXIV did with ARR, and only had one male Mithra appear as an NPC due to their rarity and use for breeding.
Not to mentioned how overly sexualised the female character is, and same for the male really, you would think by this age, even in FF we can move passed bikini clad woman and overly hunkified men. I guess not.
Being attractive is illegal now?
Not illegal. Moronic. Lazy. Unoriginal. Unremarkable. And,um, um, just so last century. Grin.
"Women should have the right to wear whatever they want without judgement! Unless they want to wear revealing clothes, Then we will judge you and say you can't wear that"
Progressive logic.
This is a female archetype character designed by a male, not living conscious being making decisions.
Wow... it's 7:28 am and I've already had enough internet for today.
Just here to downvote @blakeavon.
Well the playbase is to blame for that. They've been begging for Viera for years, which is why SE decided to make them a last minute project (Hrothgar were originally going to be what we got).
Yet in the paragraph above you say they are only modelled after the Ronso and therefore are not the Ronso from the lore. So yes, they are adhering to the lore for both Hrothgar and Viera.
I get that there is a legitimate battle for equality and better representation for both females and males in games but please don't weaken everyone's arguments by picking unnecessary fights. It's also unfair to artists, authors and other creatives to constantly demand that they specifically cater to your demands rather than allowing everyone to have the freedom to create what they wish.
The Viera in FF XIV are not the same as those from FF XII either. Despite the fact they have parts of Ivalice in XIV, it's all just for fanservice, they're not the same place.
Also, don't get stuck on the name because there are ~~lore reasons~~ at work here too - the plot of Shadowbringers has your character
jumping over to another world.On Hydalaen, they are known as Hrothgar, but onNorvrandtthey are Ronso. Most likely this will be how they implement two different-looking 'tribes' the way they have with the other races.My big complaint personally (I have very little interest in either race) is that the Hrothgar model is lazy as fuck. It looks like they basically took the existing male Roe model, added some fur on and stuck on some cat ears. Seems very half-assed. The concept art looks great but the actual 3D implementation is terrible.
Hydaelyn. Fuck, I always misspell it.
Did you just assume their genders?
So what you're saying is that they are really attack helicopters...
Didnt think the B1-Alpha and -Beta copters in FFVII were sentient. Learn something every day :)
Yeah... It'd be a real shame for the creators of things to be allowed to make the decisions for things they created.
It'd be worse if they did add male bunnies. If MMO's have taught me anything, it's that the female of any race is usually a babe, and the male is either a massive beefcake or some gnarled up humanoid. I don't need beefcake bunnies in my life.
The concept art they showed off from back when they were considering the Viera for the Heavensward expansion had them looking fairly delicate and effeminate actually.
The Japanese care little for this type of nonsense.
"hello please cater your art to me and not to yourself"
- assholes.
The "Lore" reason for not having male Viera is exactly the same reason they gave for not having male Miqo'te in 1.0. They eventually realized it was better to give players options rather than restrictions, and changed this in 2.0, and now the male Miqo'te is the second most popular race for male characters in the game after the bog-standard human.
Despite what some commenters (who obviously don't actually play the game) in here are saying, the outcry against this is not just a small minority, it's been wide and fairly strong from a lot of people. There's no reason not to give the option, especially when there was already the precedent of adding the other gender to previously gender-locked races. Honestly it's baffling to me that they went this route in the first place, let alone were surprised at this outcry, suggests they really don't understand their players that well. Or their game for that matter. Your character is meant to be an exceptional individual that can learn to be any (and every) class in the game. Why would it matter that men of a given race are not commonly seen? You're not exactly common. There's really no reason other than development resources not to do it.
Anyway, they'll 100% walk this decision back. Maybe not at expansion launch, but expect it to be something they'll add in 5.2 or so.
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