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Why does the Luminary in Dragon Quest XI have to be a boy?

JB2448

JB2448

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Been thinking about this on and off for a while now, and with all of the changes and additional content made to Dragon Quest XI S, it's been on my mind even more:
Is there any particular reason that the plot of Dragon Quest XI requires its protagonist to be male?

Of course it's Yuji Horii's and Square Enix's prerogatives to not include the ability to customize your protagonist, but it seems especially strange coming from a franchise that has given us the likes of Dragon Quest III, where the protagonist (not to mention every member of your customizable party) could be a boy or a girl, and Dragon Quest IX, which featured robust character customization on the Nintendo DS.

The thing about XI's lack of choice in this matter is that the protagonist is silent in the first place, so there is a similar amount of effort that would need to go into making the Luminary a more personalized experience that only serves to be more inclusive for the sizable audience of women that have played through Dragon Quest both in Japan and abroad since its inception (which Square Enix has even featured in the marketing of Dragon Quest XI in Japan).



If anyone more knowledgeable about the situation could share some insight, that would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: As an addendum regarding the argument of budget allocation to prerendered cutscenes, other games such as the soon to be released Fire Emblem: Three Houses allow you to choose between playing as a boy or a girl while also showing them in full during prerendered scenes (see 1:15):


Edit 2: That's whataboutism, so never mind about that.

Edit 3: Edited the verbage in the original post to agree with the fact that the work to make it happen in any future revision or release would not be trivial:

Eumi said:
Look, you can criticise this decision all you want, but creating a female option is not a "minimal amount of effort".

You'd have to re-do any dialogue relating to gender, re-do all that associated voicework, do voice work for the new character, re-render and animate all the pre-made cutscenes. It would be a shit ton of work, especially if they were retrofitting the new protag in for the Switch release. You can point to other games all you want, but those games have different priorities. Hell, fire emblem literally hasn't even released yet so trying to use it as a comparison point is just silly if we haven't seen the final product.

If this thread was just asking for a female protag I'd be fully on board. I think the effort would be worth it, and I also think that the game should have been designed to have a female option from the start, which would have made the inclusion far less costly. But by misrepresenting the effort it would take to add this option, this thread is built on an incredibly poor foundation.

If you want to have this discussion, you shouldn't be using awful arguments in your favour. It just makes the real discussion harder to have.
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Deleted member 2791

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There's a lot of cutscenes & CG in the game and they didn't want to make different versions of each.
(it's the reason in like most of the games where this happens)
 
Velezcora

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LordKano said:
There's a lot of cutscenes & CG in the game and they didn't want to make different versions of each.
(it's the reason in like most of the games where this happens)
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I know CG is pretty and all but if this is the price I'd rather all cutscenes be in-engine from now on.
 
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JB2448

JB2448

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Opa-Pa

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Now that you mention it, yeah, it is kinda weird they didn't let you choose for some extra DQ3 nostalgia (and inclusivity of course). Nothing in the story would change except "having" to make a male version of Gemma, I guess.

A missed opportunity with the Switch version too.
 

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Yeah, it's weird considering how this game drinks so much from III, a game that lets you choose your gender.
 
Odeko

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JB2448 said:
Then how come Fire Emblem Three Houses lets you choose and has pre-rendered cutscenes with the protagonist as well?
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In previous FE games with customizable protagonists, the pre-rendered cutscenes always awkwardly cut them out of whatever was going on. I'm not sure if that's the case in Three Houses too but I assume it is.

Edit: oh watching your video, it looks that might be improved here. That's a cool change
 
Linde

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JB2448 said:
Then how come Fire Emblem Three Houses lets you choose and has pre-rendered cutscenes with the protagonist as well?
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Because they are not the same game
They are not developed by the same studio
Not at the same time
Not with the same budget
They are different

And so far, for all we know there's only those 10 seconds or so of cutscenes with the MC directly seen anyways
 
Manmademan

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JB2448 said:
Been thinking about this on and off for a while now, and with all of the changes and additional content made to Dragon Quest XI S, it's been on my mind even more:
Is there any particular reason that the plot of Dragon Quest XI requires its protagonist to be male?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I didn't finish playing the game as I kinda dislike it for a lot of reasons, but isn't the primary reason that the Luminary is male is that

he's the first Erdrick? And the (male) Hero of DQ1 is his descendant, named after him?

That would seem to preclude the luminary being a woman, here.
 
Kalentan

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Mediking said:
A bland protag nearly ruins the game. You gotta self insert hard to give a damn about the world and its story.
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It's just frustrating when people say you can understand how they're feeling from their expressions but the Luminary looks at things in the same way. There is no nuance to how they express over seeing:

Their village having been destroyed

and seeing something mildly bad.
 
Mediking

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Kalentan said:
It's just frustrating when people say you can understand how they're feeling from their expressions but the Luminary looks at things in the same way. There is no nuance to how they express over seeing:

Their village having been destroyed

and seeing something mildly bad.
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Yup. Wannabe Trunks was like "-_-" lmao
 
Megatron

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JB2448 said:
Then how come Fire Emblem: Three Houses lets you choose and has pre-rendered cutscenes with the protagonist as well?
See 1:15 in the deep dive video:
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Because 3 Houses was designed that way from the ground up. OP seems to be asking why the choice wasn't added to the Switch version with all he other stuff they added, and the cut scenes explain that. As for why he original PS4 version didn't, I don't know.
 

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I think it's generally just a pervasive problem with Dragon Quest. I mean, we've only had a female protagonist three times in mainline DQ history IIRC, and they're all gender options.
 
Dreamboum

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I don't know where the idea comes from that the protagonist is a self-insert. DQ protags have an intricate background
 
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JB2448

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Manmademan said:
I didn't finish playing the game as I kinda dislike it for a lot of reasons, but isn't the primary reason that the Luminary is male is that

he's the first Erdrick? And the (male) Hero of DQ1 is his descendant, named after him?

That would seem to preclude the luminary being a woman, here.
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But that's the thing:
Erdrick can be a boy or a girl.
Given that, it would actually make more sense to give the player a choice similar to how Knights of the Old Republic II does with Revan while talking with Atton on Peragus.
If I'm mistaken about this, please let me know.
 
deepFlaw

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There's no real reason to not have a girl protagonist and it sucks that they didn't do it. I was kinda hoping S would include it at the least.

Kalentan said:
It's just frustrating when people say you can understand how they're feeling from their expressions but the Luminary looks at things in the same way. There is no nuance to how they express over seeing:

Their village having been destroyed

and seeing something mildly bad.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's honestly bizarre how inconsistent they are with the facial expressions. Because there's times where the protagonist does show more emotion but... in other scenes I guess the devs just didn't feel like using those expressions? That definitely exist? For some reason? And so they just :| at something happy/tragic/dramatic as if it's all the same.
 

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I actually don't care if the protagonist is male, female or an Alien from outer space. Have to say, I actually liked the Luminary more than Joker from Persona 5 who is completely overrated in my opinion.

It's a good idea if it fits to the story, but all in all, I don't need a forced second gender even if they are silent. I don't need a male version of Lara Croft and I don't need a female version of the Super Mario Bros. I think a female Luminary wouldn't make much sense storywise so it's good as it is. Maybe they should consider two genders to choose from in Dragon Quest XII. But this only works when the story goes well with it.
 

RelaxItsJustMe

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I personally just wish they'd get rid of the self insert characters and just 1 main character with an actual personality, be it a boy or a girl.

I have never really gotten self insert characters. I'm the same gender as most of them and never got to self insert at all. They don't look like me that's for sure, they don't act like me, they don't do anything like me. So how could I insert myself as him if his actions, his looks and pretty much just everything about him does not match me in any way, shape or form. I doubt I'm alone on that.
 
Camjo-Z

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Clearly it's because a girl Luminary who's into guys would miss out on the many thrilling opportunities for puff-puffs. The one in Gallopolis might be up her alley though.
 
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JB2448

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Niceguydan8 said:
Different people made the two games you are comparing. The characters are probably different as well.
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I get that. Perhaps subconscious whataboutism (didn't even realize it was until after my post) wasn't the best approach. That being said, it's hard to believe a franchise as massive as Dragon Quest cannot afford the creation of assets to assure inclusivity compared to Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo Games with Fire Emblem's latest entry.
 
Eumi

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JB2448 said:
The thing about XI's lack of choice in this matter is that the protagonist is silent in the first place, so there is a similarly minimal amount of effort that would need to go into making the Luminary a more personalized experience that only serves to be a more inclusive experience for the sizable audience of women that have played through Dragon Quest both in Japan and abroad since its inception (which Square Enix has even featured in the marketing of Dragon Quest XI in Japan).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Look, you can criticise this decision all you want, but creating a female option is not a "minimal amount of effort".

You'd have to re-do any dialogue relating to gender, re-do all that associated voicework, do voice work for the new character, re-render and animate all the pre-made cutscenes. It would be a shit ton of work, especially if they were retrofitting the new protag in for the Switch release. You can point to other games all you want, but those games have different priorities. Hell, fire emblem literally hasn't even released yet so trying to use it as a comparison point is just silly if we haven't seen the final product.

If this thread was just asking for a female protag I'd be fully on board. I think the effort would be worth it, and I also think that the game should have been designed to have a female option from the start, which would have made the inclusion far less costly. But by misrepresenting the effort it would take to add this option, this thread is built on an incredibly poor foundation.

If you want to have this discussion, you shouldn't be using awful arguments in your favour. It just makes the real discussion harder to have.
 
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JB2448

JB2448

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Eumi said:
Look, you can criticise this decision all you want, but creating a female option is not a "minimal amount of effort".

You'd have to re-do any dialogue relating to gender, re-do all that associated voicework, do voice work for the new character, re-render and animate all the pre-made cutscenes. It would be a shit ton of work, especially if they were retrofitting the new protag in for the Switch release. You can point to other games all you want, but those games have different priorities. Hell, fire emblem literally hasn't even released yet so trying to use it as a comparison point is just silly if we haven't seen the final product.

If this thread was just asking for a female protag I'd be fully on board. I think the effort would be worth it, and I also think that the game should have been designed to have a female option from the start, which would have made the inclusion far less costly. But by misrepresenting the effort it would take to add this option, this thread is built on an incredibly poor foundation.

If you want to have this discussion, you shouldn't be using awful arguments in your favour. It just makes the real discussion harder to have.
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All right, "minimal" was a bad choice of words. I'll edit the OP to rectify that.
 
deepFlaw

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Eumi said:
Look, you can criticise this decision all you want, but creating a female option is not a "minimal amount of effort".

You'd have to re-do any dialogue relating to gender, re-do all that associated voicework, do voice work for the new character, re-render and animate all the pre-made cutscenes. It would be a shit ton of work, especially if they were retrofitting the new protag in for the Switch release. You can point to other games all you want, but those games have different priorities. Hell, fire emblem literally hasn't even released yet so trying to use it as a comparison point is just silly if we haven't seen the final product.

If this thread was just asking for a female protag I'd be fully on board. I think the effort would be worth it, and I also think that the game should have been designed to have a female option from the start, which would have made the inclusion far less costly. But by misrepresenting the effort it would take to add this option, this thread is built on an incredibly poor foundation.

If you want to have this discussion, you shouldn't be using awful arguments in your favour. It just makes the real discussion harder to have.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The good news is that the original Japanese version didn't have any voice acting. And even in English, it's not like most dialogue in the game is voiced. Not to mention that the characters refer to the main character as "The Luminary" constantly, so I don't think there'd be a ton of pronoun usage to change.

So they had a solid opportunity to change things with this release, and didn't.

EDIT: Oh, and even in English the main character doesn't speak outside of a flashback so that wouldn't be an obstacle either.
 
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KainXVIII

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Maybe its somehow tied with puff-puffing? 😜

Anyway, Omega Force does what S-E don't

DQH_150602_19_thumb.jpg

DQH2-Protag-Voices-Revealed.jpg
 
Manmademan

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JB2448 said:
But that's the thing:
Erdrick can be a boy or a girl.
Given that, it would actually make more sense to give the player a choice similar to how Knights of the Old Republic II does with Revan while talking with Atton on Peragus.
If I'm mistaken about this, please let me know.
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Hmmm It's been so long since I played DW3 I didn't remember a gender select in that game. Fair enough.
 
Camjo-Z

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JB2448 said:
I get that. Perhaps subconscious whataboutism (didn't even realize it was until after my post) wasn't the best approach. That being said, it's hard to believe a franchise as massive as Dragon Quest cannot afford the creation of assets to assure inclusivity compared to Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo Games with Fire Emblem's latest entry.
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This assumes the character was meant to be a self-insert, and the fact that they let you choose your gender in some DQ games but not others suggests to me that they specifically wanted the Luminary to be male and not serve as a self-insert. It would be cool if they did a canon female protag in the next game for a change of pace though. I hear Anlucia from DQX is considered the hero of that game and she's a girl so that's a start.
 
Eumi

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deepFlaw said:
The good news is that the original Japanese version didn't have any voice acting. And even in English, it's not like most dialogue in the game is voiced. Not, to mention that the characters refer to the main character as "The Luminary" constantly, so I don't think there'd be a ton of pronoun usage to change.

So they had a solid opportunity to change things with this release, and didn't.
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It's not so much just about the amount of dialogue you'd have to re-do, it's the breadth of it. You'd have to bring back almost every voice actor since almost everyone refers to him by gender at some point. That's a lot of work.

And here's the thing: they should do that, at least in my opinion. I couldn't be more for a female protagonist. My issue is with the OP downplaying that as a "minimal amount of effort", something they've agreed was a bad thing to do in the post right above yours.
 

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User Banned (1 Week): Exclusionary sexist rhetoric
RDreamer said:
Because he's a self insert with no personality or voice whatsoever. There's literally nothing that needs him to be male.

Your turn. what wouldn't make sense?
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Your post really lacks arguments here. There is so much stuff in the story that's focused on a male character. I will never get it why people, even here on ERA, are wishing for a forced female protagonist. Have you actually played the game by yourself? I mean, till the very end?
 
fiendcode

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They should really pull a P3P and let you choose the Luminary's gender for DQXIS. Maybe they will, I'm sure these more to reveal coming (like Jasper as a party member).
 
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