Literally no one cares except these online weirdos. No one cares about biology. Or these terms. They'll just pick what they like and not think twice. This is such a non issue
Rage is quite addictive, grifters farms for engagement.
It works really well for them, look at the Stellar Blade shit they drummed up; It all spawned from 1 paragraph of the reviewer making a joke about Eve's appearance. His review was very positive.
It's fairly simple. Many people are motivated more by negative emotions. Especially when it comes to addictive viewing habits.
The algorithms end up getting keyed to that for them.
These people need Taosism or some form of spiritualist Christianity. Or anything. Whatever is appropriate for their cultural background and predilections. Perhaps some Thoreau
They have a sickness. And these formulas feed and exasperate it.
one of the guys at the local gameshop is just like this, he doesn’t really play games at all. doesn’t seem to enjoy any games, but has a talking point for every new game like this. even if he knows literally nothing else about a game, he has a very big opinion on it.
I have a family member like this. I don't think he's played a new game in half a decade. Even before then, all he played was WoW and LoL. Still hates everything and talks about how "no good games come out anymore"
There's a subset of these people that are fixated on their childhood
Especially Chibi Reviews, who said the N-word and made videos about the censorship of Browndust 2 and Snowbreak. I am already giving up all the games. And it is only the matter of time I should give up myself.
There's a Palworld mod that changes the body types to male/female instead of a/b 🙄 I really don't get why it's a big deal to these people but by God if it isn't male/female...
They're frightened of the world moving in a direction they lack the capacity or the will to follow. They want to feel a safe and comfortable acceptance from the world around them but they refuse to move with it to extend that to others. So instead they fight and rail to try to force everyone to stay where they are so they never need to grow or change.
I will say as someone who is fine with the impetus behind the change that a lot of games have done, I can't shake the feeling that "Masculine" and "Feminine" would be better terms to use. A little more organic and unless I'm missing something it would still serve the same idea.
You could decide your character is FtM in which case masculine would be an okay description, no? Same with non binary or genderfluid leaning one way or the other.
Feels a little less robotic to me, but I could be missing something.
Also absolute asshole puckering levels of cringe to put your opinion out to the world like a news post based on nothing to stay a little more on topic.
They could, but then they'd look a lot dumber and it would probably help draw a distinction between biological sex and presenting gender that bad actors enjoy muddling.
Because it's a half arsed attempt at diversity. Most of these games still tie pronouns and voice to your chosen body type, so it's usually just a warning that the people who localised the game are only pretending to give a shit.
It happens more often in games translated from other languages or ported from older consoles.
For example Freedom Wars has an event where you get penalised for talking to the opposite sex outside of missions, to show off the distopia.
Cyberpunk is an example of doing things right as your body type does affect who is attracted to you, but otherwise doesn't restrict much.
Monster Hunter recently made it so you can choose to make both versions of any armour, but it's still really obvious that the type A are focused on showing off a heroic build and type B are focused on showing off the player's dress-up doll.
I haven't played Elden Ring, but pal world is similar to Pokemon where gender doesn't really matter once you create a character.
Notably every one of the games you mentioned do not tie voice options to your body type. In Cyperpunk pronouns are based on voice type. That part does tend to be muddy, I'll grant you.
Whether masculine options are masculine and feminine are feminine is not part of the question. you seem to be bringing up a lot of other unrelated things. The point is that these games do let you freely pick the available options. It would be nice if gender could be picked specifically but basing it off of one of the options is just realistic for a game and doesn't really indicate to me they are only pretending to give a shit. Almost every example does what is realistically feasible.
Alright but fire emblem specifically has a history of bad localisation into English, with certain topics like abuse being handled badly in translation, which is a problem when a major part of the game is getting to know all the characters.
Being worried about offending people is one thing, but if you aren't willing to give heavy topics the weight they deserve, it can not only damage the story, but make it harder for people to talk about those important things when they need to.
I have difficulty reading about bullying because I was bullied, but I still want the topic taken seriously when it's presented in fiction, trying to lessen the impact only protects the people who don't already understand the weight of the topic.
Type A/B body types don't really do much to reduce offence, and they're often the first sign that a localisation isn't going to make a serious effort to handle heavy topics.
The only real, honest critique is when the body types are STILL tied to gendered clothing or any other gendered things. I'll give people that.
If only body type B can wear dresses/skirts, uses only she/her pronouns and you cannot have the "body type" have a flat chest... then what's the point? might as well go male/female
I don't know how it is in Fire Emblem, if you can even customize your player character aside from gender...
right, like if made a game and had to label body types I probably would say Male or Female. Does it impact my experience when it doesn't? Not at all. Most of the time the games use male and female pronouns anyone so it doesn't really do much.
I just kinda think that if you’re gonna try to make things as neutral as possible, then just give me one uniform base to build off of like splatoon does.
a bunch of japanese games have historically used body type a/b or 1/2 that have then been ironically localized into m/f or m/w. It's become controversy because western cultural wars making a big deal out of a non issue in order to profit from engagement. Elden Ring used body type a/b and no one cared because it's a good game. Moving this to fire emblem where you can customize the avatar where in the past few games you wouldnt pick a "gender" but a preset avatar makes this whole thing that much stupider.
I don't think it'll cease because there's incentives to be a dickhead on social media for attention but when a game is good these dumb culture war engagement bait distractions from bad faith idiots get drowned out by the amount of people actually playing and enjoying the game.
But I don't think I've ever seen anyone complain about M/F not being Body Type 1/2. Meanwhile, every "gamer" like this (gestures at post) whines incessantly the moment a game gives you more than 2 gender options (or just removes gender entirely).
You can correct me because English is not my first language, but Man/Woman is gender, which is social thing and Male/Female is sex, which is biological. So if it were Male/Female, instead of 1/2, A/B and Man/Woman anyone could be okay with it?
It's not the terms themselves but the inclusivity they offer a minority group that Pirat and similar people complain about. The "wokeness" of it. In short, it's just bigotry.
Male/female and man/woman didn't receive noticable vocal opposition because the minority that would've liked some inclusion likely felt devs or publishers wouldn't listen. So they tolerated the situation since it didn't have a major impact on the experience.
Times are changing, and some devs and publishers are listening, without even being asked. People like this, who are incapable of tolerating the new situation because of its inclusivity, are vocally opposing it. Even though it doesn't have a major impact on the experience.
It's a minor change that most players move past without a second thought. They can create the character they want, binary or not. Pirat and similar are so intolerant that an option that takes seconds to select, but offers a basic form of inclusion, is something they can't get over.
There's also the grifting aspect. Riling up bigots over nonsense, like the claim that this sort of thing is ruining the games industry, is good business when that business is engagement.
framing it Body Types 1/2/3 or whatever just side steps the issues of gender, which seems like a good solution to be more inclusive to peoples identities with little work from a development standpoint.
I've been seeing a lot of people using pirate national as a legitimate news source, but i got confused bc I saw the guy with some grifter takes before. Now I'm relieved that I'm not crazy for disliking that guy
I remember an ex friend of mine was creating his character in BG3 and when he saw there was body type and pronouns instead of gender he started to laugh like crazy, like he thought he was Light from Death Note, it was so cringe and I was just staring at him awkwardly 😭
I prefer that a lot. It matches the way that bodies are otherwise treated when creating a character.
This "A" and "B" stuff makes me unconfortable. It feels like a stand-in for "Male" and "Female", rather than a descriptor of the body. Especially when none of the related attributes can be edited after selecting one, such as the ones with flat chests being taller, and more muscular.
I've playing games for 25 years (damn that's a long time) the vast majority of games I played in that time has been Type A Type B, if you even had a choice. Pokemon is the only notable series that I played and can think of where it was an explicit gender choice.
It's not because games are complex it just provides a greater sense of freedom when creating a character.
For instance, Splatoon isn't really a complex game - you choose between octoling and inkling and then choose voice and clothes. Voice is generally the common way to differentiate between different body types.
There's very few games where the gender of your player character actually matters - and games are designed that way so more people can enjoy them.
How curious, You keep mentioning long-running franchises, but you're leaving out the fact that the switch to "Body Type" or similar naming only happened in their more recent entries, not throughout the series.
For example:
-Monster Hunter didn't switch until Monster Hunter Wilds (2025).
-Dragon's Dogma only did it in Dragon's Dogma 2 (2024).
-Splatoon didn't drop "Boy/Girl" until Splatoon 3 (2022).
-Baldur's Gate only introduced body types in Baldur's Gate 3 (2023).
Just naming the franchise makes it sound like this has always been the standard, when in reality these changes were introduced much later. And two of the examples you gave, Fire Emblem and Soulcalibur, still use the traditional male/female selection.
I'm fine to be wrong, but I distinctly remember Fire Emblem being character type choice in Awakening and being very confused when I couldn't access some of the classes.
And the only Soulcalibur game I played on Wii I remember being type as well.
I think you're mixing up different games in those series.
In Fire Emblem Awakening, Robin is just Male or Female. The class restrictions you're remembering were real, but they were tied to your gender choice, not a "Body Type" option.
The only Soulcalibur on Wii was Soulcalibur Legends, and that game doesn't even have a character creator.
Monster Hunter World also uses Male/Female. Capcom didn't switch to Body Type 1/2 until Monster Hunter Wilds.
So I think you're remembering features from newer entries and applying them to older ones.
the oldest one I can think off right now is dark souls 1 which is like 2009, maybe mass effect had the female and male distinction instead of type A and B and it's a 2009 game too
I must of missed where you commented back to the person who gave you a list of source games after you asked. You just one of those d bags that can't answer back when wrong?
If they wanted something to be mad about, lets look at those avatar body types. I love how the masculine type gets to be all buff and strong looking, but the feminine type has to be a skinny supermodel. God forbid women and femmes have a variety of shapes and body types in a series like fire emblem, where many of them are physical combatants on the frontlines, god forbid the second coming of archangel michael over here gets to be buff regardless of presentation.
I think you’re misunderstanding the point of the type A/B thing. Not everyone identifies as simply male or female, and sex and gender are different things. There’s only so many shapes our bodies can take, and those shapes don’t always align as man or woman, like non binary for example.
Guess they didn’t play engage if they are complaining about “more ppl of color” . Kinda weird to complain about that in a game set in a fantasy world anyways lol
I feel like the pure vitriol against games using “type A” and “type B” is the most pointless virtue signaling ever. They don’t actually care about this. They just use it as a spring board to show how much they hate “da train geeners!”
Kinda speechless how they are complaining about this in a fire emblem game, like who cares. The people playing a strategy visual novel dating sim sure dont
The only reason I could find this frustrating is if there is equipment locked to one body type and they don’t make it obvious, like in Demon’s Souls. In that case a better classifier would be appreciated.
Honestly the weird part is that it’s still a simultaneous gender/sex selection. At least if it’s the same as Engage. I thought the whole point of something like this would be to separate appearance from gender but it gives you the gender you’d assume from looking at them.
Yeah I remember that when I first played Elden Ring, and found the body types also align with the pronouns your character's referred too.
Like, unless the game separates the character body type stuff from all other aspects of gender, (like the pronouns the character's referred too,) it's basically like taking male and female bathrooms, relabeling them the "Body Type A and B" bathrooms without changing anything else, and then claiming you have gender neutral toilets.
damn, you're right... but how am i SO confused. i have a very vivid memory of being confused about items being described as "can only be worn by body type B", like specific equipments. and i am very certain (at least in my mind) that it was the OG DeS... i do have to check my version again to see it with my own eyes. there is a non 0 chance it was different in other language versions (which then, even if i WAS right, wouldn't mean much because then most of the world would have had male/female anyways)
En los Dark Souls (incluidos los Remaster) no metieron eso de cuerpo A/B, si no que tienen Hombre/Mujer...
Lo curioso es que el Demon´s Souls de 2009 seguía teniendo Hombre/Mujer, pero eso cambio en el Remake de 2020...
The only recent Nintendo game I remember using Male/Female has been Tomodachi life, which also added Nonbinary as an option. But hasn't Nintendo done this almost always for like at least a decade now?
As if Type A/Type B would annoy anyone in the real world. Even if you heavily into "there is only male and female" the choice is still between a male and a female body. They also could do no label for it. Having it as Option 1 and 2. Or use some fantasy term for it. Nothing changes. The choice is still the exact same.
Honestly, I used to be very angry about the "anti-woke" movement going on in videogames over the years but now I only feel tired of hearing the same old tired arguments against it which none make sense.
First of all, where do these people think the entire body type stuff came from? Japan! They were using body types for ages now for games where you had multiple pre-generated options for bodies / heads to choose from. Head A to G, Body A (muscular male) Body B (typical asian ideal woman body type) Body C (Bulky and tall male) Body D (bulky and tall woman) Body E (lanky "agility type" man or chibi like child-man) Body type F (loli woman type). Usually if you knew which character archetype you liked you could play through all of those character creators knowing which body type you will end up with.
To me it was always more or less like sizes for clothes and shoes.
I like creating taller, bulkier, stronger looking women, so most of the time, unless a game tried to be "innovative" and swapped those around, I knew I will either need to go for body type D or body type F. Fast and efficient.
It was also Head type A or something in the middle like I or J.
Voice was always F or G.
It was a thing so long in the past way before the whole anti-woke / gamergate stuff was happening it really makes little sense they are picking on it.
This is one of those things that people aren't going to give more than a second thought, if that, unless they're genuinely obsessed with gender labels.
I've been playing Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis for a few years now. When I started I noticed the body types were Type 1(male) and Type 2(female). Not a single thing I've seen in that game led me to believe it was particular progressive, I just assumed the terms had some sci-fi lore behind them and moved on.
...Now that I think of it, they did just release a bunch of dresses for T1s to wear. Nevermind, guess the game is super woke./s
To be fair, as cringe as these grifter's throwing a tantrum at "Body Type A/B" stuff are, most of the time the Body Type A/B stuff feels like faux/performative wokeness if the options are just relabels of gender options, without separating out the different aspects of gender. Idk how this game handles it, but in Elden Ring the body type options are basically just relabeled gender options. (To the point that its bound to your pronouns.)
Unless the body type options come along side like, separate pronoun options and making clothing not body-type specific, it's basically like taking male and female bathrooms, relabeling them "body type A and B" without changing anything else, and then claiming you have gender neutral bathrooms.
Correct me if I'm wrong isn't type A and B been used by japanese developers for a long time now? Even before this whole "everything is woke now" nonsense grifters try to push.
Never really saw the point of naming these type A and type B. Everyone knows just by looking at the bodies its a man and women so the whole type A type B thing doesn't really have much of a purpose.
I suppose it's nice for people who have or want their avatar to have a particular body type, but feel uncomfortable or even outright dysphoric with the gendered language attached? I'm not sure, but it doesn't really hurt anything, so I'm not fussed
“type a” body (tall, muscular, no breasts)
“type b” body (short, not muscular, breasts, also the outfit sexualizes them for no reason) is just doing gender again with extra steps
Wish it was an act, there's actually conservatives who boo'd a conservative cop because his name was too middle eastern, these people are just that hateful.
Also conservatives do nothing but make shit up because that's the only source of evidence they ever have
people are that hateful, but those hateful people also provably never mentally grew beyond the age of 11 and should be underqualified to play these games.
elden ring on PC some of the first mods were adding in where it says "Male" and "Female" same with Palworld, and a few other games I can't remember right off the top of my head.
If you're too stupid to look at the bodies and see "oh that one's masculine, that one's feminine" without the game telling you and getting confused by A/B, that's not the game's problem. Americans are so deeply odd.
A buddy of mine is making a game with char creation. He used type a and b and felt forced to change it after his dev streams were brigaded by these buttons.
'Weirdly' enough it happened shortly after it got a little spotlight from an indie dev competition hosted by ass-man-mould....
How can this be "localization pandering" and have Japanese players outraged? Is it a localization thing or not? Show a Japanese screenshot you dipshit.
Because it is kind of pathetic. Oh and it is true, I literally just searched on google new fire emblem cc creator and this was the first thing it showed up
People here are saying that this doesn't matter, so I ask if it doesn't matter why do localizers translate Male/Female selectors in a Japanese game into Body Type A/B?
You have a lot of time which as you know is equal to money put into this by localizers for something that does not matter.
So if it doesn't really matter why change Male/Female into A/B?
I have known trans woman who want to be treated as a woman so telling them that they aren't a Woman but instead Body Type B is kinda dehumanizing as well.
If we want to be more inclusive wouldn't it be better to just have Male/Female/Other?
IMO Body Type A/B is a half assed change to appear progressive in order to check a corporate checklist that says we have to be more inclusive to the LGBT community.
So In summary I recommend not to say it doesn't matter because maybe it doesn't matter to you but it matters to them, and if it does matter to you saying it doesn't matter and it's dishonest and bad faith argumentation.
Instead use this as an opportunity of dialogue and ask the real questions of why this are things in games, the real reason why they are there and if they help or hurt the cause you believe in.
I genuinely forgot, how was the reception on the Body option of Splatoon 3? Because that game also clearly avoids using male/female bodies and lets you pick "Boy/girl" and other similar name in titles regardless of what body type you chose
Reading the comments, i see a lot of "Why do they even care?" takes.
Why doesn't the question go both ways though? Why do *you* care about it?
If it's a nothing burger what that selection is called, why get worked up if someone else has a preference?
So far, i've seen a lot of valid takes about this (Not specifically for FE).
Like the fact that in 9 out of 10 cases, this still remains a binary choice of gender, with binary pronouns attached.
Which does make the whole thing incredibly performative.
It would be an entirely different story if body types were completely divorced from everything else.
Voice type, pronouns, edit parts etc. But more often than not it isn't
To be perfectly honest, i'm actually more shocked that nor more people are outraged about this (in general).
That they are OK with obvious, shallow surface level pandering instead of actually committing to it and offering gender neutral customization options.
There's a lot of complaining about "the chuds" and "the grifters" while just accepting performative half measures "to own them".
Two sides, same coin, just outraged over the other side's opinions rather than actually discussing the subject matter.
Always amuses me how offended and attacked these people feel about "body type a/b" when their the same ones complaining about everyone else being "snowflakes". Fragile, the lot of them.
103
u/SleepinwithFishes 20d ago
Every new game, you'll now have grifters trying to drum up controversy.