It’s not surprising to me really given that gamers have thrown fits over past games using types instead of ‘female’ or ‘male’ but I guess I just can’t get over how fucking stupid it is to care so much that you download a mod that reverts the text in a character creation menu. The slightest change in language in order to be more welcoming to other players is treated as the downfall of society by these people.
(For context, this is on nexusmods)
tangential: the “body type” stuff is annoying because stuff like pronouns and voice options just end up getting tied to the choice anyway in a lot of games. i get that it’s like a liberal baby step in the right direction but the form (at least in mainstream or AAA) is still doing a lot to uphold Gender and has a long way to go.
all games should embrace sims 4 thought
Saints Row 2 stays winning. Choose any of six voices. Gender slide, not binary. Pronouns just the Boss. Can wear all clothes not locked behind gender .
and you’re canonically transfem, but that’s never remarked on beyond some Fresh Prince of Bel-Air “aunt viv did you do something with your hair”? lampshading
Maybe it’s just the games I’m playing but in my experience most of the time when games have “body type” instead of gender they also have separate pronoun and voice options.
Elden Ring didn’t, that’s my only experience with it.
i don’t really play AAA games, but a couple i can think of are Cyberpunk (character gender + pronouns tied to voice), and Elden Ring (pronouns tied to body type). Oblivion Remastered obviously does it too. Cyberpunk is the especially irritating example for various reasons. Baldur’s Gate 3 set a new standard which i’m hoping becomes more the norm. like i said i don’t play many games like this but i personally haven’t seen one with body types that isn’t also essentialising in some way. would like to hear about them!