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Cyberpunk 2077 Now Has No Gendered Options, CD Projekt Red Say They Want to Make Cyberpunk 2077 Inclusive, Something That Everybody Is Okay With
- Thread starter vestan
- Start date
That's cool of them. I wish more games went this route instead of gender locking various character creator options.
That's pretty cool. I just wonder how long I wait to get this on Steam lol. I usually wait for months for patching and stuff. Oh well I can wait. I got plenty of games. This is going to be amazing.
That's my take on it as well. It feels like Jackie was identifying V as a girl in the gameplay demo. That and the guy with the cigar in the car calls you "Miss, V"
Wasn't that GoG and not CDPR and didn't that dude get fired?
This, i am confused. If i want to play as a male or female i want the world to see which gender i chose. Even if i have a male body and identify as female i want the world to recognize that. Or will the world respond to you to which body type you choose? That would be weird if you have a male body and identify as a female.
We just have to wait and see, hopefully, the demo will finally show us the creation system. In a bigger light.
I believe your character will be referred as "V". It's just like Hawke in DAII or Shepard in Mass Effect.
Alternatively, they may also call your character the title, like Warden in DAO or Inquisitor in DAI.
"they" is a perfectly adequate substitution for "she". I think you're overthinking the body type part.
How is they a good substitute for she? Plural doesn't equal feminine?
Rewatch the long gameplay demo, it will be fine.
"I think she wants the gun."
"I think they want the gun."
"I think he wants the gun."
It's a perfectly good substitute.
it's neutral, it can be applied to everyone. it's not just used as a collective term, and Shakespeare used "they" frequently in third-person. it's an age-old thing that's gaining more traction because it doesn't exclude anyone.
Ok. To me they want a gun implies multiple people want it. In French, saying it vocally implies the same, writting it on the other hand and you have to either write ils or elles which implies a gender.
Also why would a character use they when they only refer to V, doesn''t make sense.
we're talking about the English language currently, but we can move on to French if you prefer. I speak it quite well. and sure, French has genders, but I'm sure if I have a discussion with some of my friends I can find out ways that French people are experimenting to make it more inclusive.
comparing gender in French to gender in English is fine, but it doesn't paint the whole picture, "they/their" is used frequently in place of not knowing someone's gender and being inclusive. what if your friend mentions a friend, say, "Alex". what are you going to say to refer to them in third person if you don't know their gender from name alone?
Gendered language is where CDPR are going to have issues, but in English "they" is an acceptable substitute to refer to a person generally without defining gender nor specifying a group. They/they're/them. Example would be in my job I may need to call or talk about a client I haven't met personally nor read their file, and thus unknowing of their gender pronouns (particularly if it's not an English name that I have no traditional gendered association for) I would refer to them as they/they're/them. It's pretty acceptably used in this context and isn't assumed to be referring to a group.
But yeah, gendered languages cause more complex linguistic issues.
they're really not as complex as reactionaries would have you believe. Latin Americans have already started doing it with "latinx" etc
Well using I would deduce a gender from the conversationg we had about "Alex" if I make a mistake I would be corrected, no biggie. Or I would just refer to his friend as Alex.
I understand being inclusive but if people make a male or female character, I would sure find it odd if it was reffered to as they during ingame conversations, it wouldn't make sense to me. Speaking only about English here :
If multiple people quoted me in a thread and I wanted to tell you about it, I would use they in reference to the multiple "quoters", if only one persone quotes me and I still use they , how does it still make sense?
Maybe it's just me but I still don't get it. I feel this would only work if your character was a "Voices of Nerat" type of thing.
Ok in your example I can begin to understand but just in the context of a client. I imagine someone being behind a group, let's say "Microsoft". I would understand if you had someone on the line and later refer to that person to a colleague as "they gave me a call".
This is cool. They've made some mistakes in the past but if the game itself doesn't promote shitty values, I'm okay.
Also, this is kind of the way Saints Row games have let you make characters for a while, and I've always been surprised more games don't do it. It seems actually like less effort to not attach anything to a gender option and just let players do whatever they want, right? Assuming you're making the sliders and stuff in the first place. I'm looking forward to seeing this character creator, at the very least!
Regarding pronouns, I imagine they just let you choose what you want during character creation. That would be the easiest option that would make the most sense, since they probably were intending to record multiple line reads for different genders anyway. Hopefully they include a "they/them" option as well.
Also, this is kind of the way Saints Row games have let you make characters for a while, and I've always been surprised more games don't do it. It seems actually like less effort to not attach anything to a gender option and just let players do whatever they want, right? Assuming you're making the sliders and stuff in the first place. I'm looking forward to seeing this character creator, at the very least!
Regarding pronouns, I imagine they just let you choose what you want during character creation. That would be the easiest option that would make the most sense, since they probably were intending to record multiple line reads for different genders anyway. Hopefully they include a "they/them" option as well.
Great news which I sort of expected anyway.
Cyberpunk lets you be whatever you want so this was necessary.
I really hope CDPR nail this. Skin tones and hair styles are pretty awful in most games for non-white characters.
Fingers crossed.
Cyberpunk lets you be whatever you want so this was necessary.
I really hope CDPR nail this. Skin tones and hair styles are pretty awful in most games for non-white characters.
Fingers crossed.
if you can do it about a theoretical group of people, why is it so hard to say "they" in reference to someone in singular form? it's been used since early middle English, and it's seeing a resurgence due to the traction that inclusivity is helping.
why would it matter to you more that you don't use it in a singular way because you're not used to it over potentially misgendering a person who may or may not feel bad about said rhetorical device.
You can choose between two voices, so probably dialog is affected for it.
Yeah, French translation will likely be quite hard. But i won't know as i play my games only in English.
But as a french guy, i think i'd be a bit thrown off if "they" is used all the time. Despite me knowing and understanding the use for this, my french bred brain can't understand "they" as anything else than plural (ie : more than one person) without a real effort on analyzing the phrase the word is used in. So on the fly and in a middle of a conversation, i fear i'll have difficulties.
But anyway, that's a good decision on CDPR.
But as a french guy, i think i'd be a bit thrown off if "they" is used all the time. Despite me knowing and understanding the use for this, my french bred brain can't understand "they" as anything else than plural (ie : more than one person) without a real effort on analyzing the phrase the word is used in. So on the fly and in a middle of a conversation, i fear i'll have difficulties.
But anyway, that's a good decision on CDPR.
Easiest workaround is to let us choose pronouns, which I believe they may do. They've only spoken about the physical side of this so far.
Unless you know the posters gender how are you assigning he/she in that situation regardless? You should be using they in that instance anyway lol. "I didn't engage before they quoted me".
You already do it regarding people you don't know well; "oh they nipped to the post office", "no don't worry I'll go get their hat", "oh I think they were about six foot". It's really not a large mental wall to climb when you realise you already do it and you adjust it slightly.
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They is commonly used in the singular in English anyway so you should learn to break from this "anything else than plural" mindset even without the question of gender identity.
"Hey, have you seen Cris?"
"No what do they look like?"
"Hey my best friend is coming down this week!"
"Oh nice, how long are they staying for?"
"I think they went that way"
"I'm not sure officer, just that they were definitely six feet tall"
"Urgh, all they do is moan, moan, moan"
"I don't really know them very well, but sure I guess"
Bridging it from someone you don't know well to someone you do isn't too difficult.
Cool, I like this. It's not like you'd hear a lot of he/she when being talked about you or with you in an FPS role-playing game anyway, "Can you fetch X for me", "Hi V, what are you up to" and "Shoot V!" is probably the apex of things in that department.
But I do wonder if they'll add lines like "Kill them!" or "They must be here somewhere" instead of going with He/She by voice or something. Genderfluid pronouns would be quite hard to translate, 'cause they simply don't exist in many languages. I just recently had a laugh at the German Borderlands 2 site, to check how they did it after the "ProZD's character is to be adressed "they"" thing, and surely enough, every single instance on the official page was a "he" and very clearly and plainly male.
But I do wonder if they'll add lines like "Kill them!" or "They must be here somewhere" instead of going with He/She by voice or something. Genderfluid pronouns would be quite hard to translate, 'cause they simply don't exist in many languages. I just recently had a laugh at the German Borderlands 2 site, to check how they did it after the "ProZD's character is to be adressed "they"" thing, and surely enough, every single instance on the official page was a "he" and very clearly and plainly male.
In French EVERYTHING is gendered, and arbitrarily (which is pretty difficult for foreign learners) and we don't have an indefinite pronoun like "they" or "it" in English - and there's no perfect solution.
You could use the écriture incusive (inclusive writing) like in Québec but no solution is truly satisfying and there's not really an indefinite pronoun :
I have issues with the use of the interpunct, I find it really painful to read and practically speaking no one speaks like this.
You either use sentences that refer to what you want to say in a diverted way (instead of "them" to refer to V you'd say "Cette personne" ="This person") but it becomes heavy to say or read.
Instinctively we'd use male pronouns to refer to indefinite things but that's like opening a can of worms if you say that on the Internet.
I've seen people use iels (portmanteau neologism using male il + female elle) like you'd use "they" in some texts but it's not standard. Why not after all but if Cyberpunk 2077 uses this I can already taste the salty tears of the French incels.
Whatever solution you use you're bound to piss people off.
Edit : it's particularly funny to see how translators struggle sometimes and backpedal in their later translation due to the nature of translating one distant language to French
neutral in reference to a being is usually rendered masculine by default, even with no gender. in German, masculine is considered neutral too, in reference to people.
Well, from my point of view as a non-native english speaker, I'm using the gender of the corresponding noun. For exemple here, When on the forums, I'll just tag or replay to the post, but when I'm talking about it to 3rd party participant, I'd say "He (the user) quoted me." where "he" implies that a user has quoted me and I've replied to him. It does not assume the user's gender.
So for me it's not natural to speak/write in plural, when the languages I know and use have defined declensions for that purpose.
Basically this ^
Oh but i know it full well. It's just that there is no neutral equivalent in french, so when i translate for myself on the fly, "they" is automatically linked to "ils", the plural french equivalent. And that's how i've been teached english when i was a kid (i guess my teachers where either not aware that "they" work for in the singular form or just didn't want to teach us that, dunno).
And it's weirdly a hard thing to get used to, especially hearing it. I tend to catch on it and adjust my initial translation faster than i did a few years ago, but it's still rare that i get the correct translation immediately and then, since i bugged in my translation, i tend to miss a phrase or two that could have been said after. When reading, it's not a problem, so there's that at least.
Sure, but (apart from the generic masculinum having nothing to do with gender-adressing people at all) in this case, they'd have to use masculinum by default, even for all non-male characters, which would be equally stupid. And, if the game doesn't even include male/female identifiers in gameplay and/or programming/translation - which again, would be fine for English - there's no way to adress this in most other languages.
I'm really wondering how they plan to get around that, given that Borderlands clearly didn't.
"he" is the very definition of assumption if you're unaware of their gender, in English.
it can be either singular or plural, which you should be aware of.