Interesting. So there might be some outside/inside influence leading to this decision, but at the same time it doesn't really change a lot, except potentially giving some people the reason to think this is political and not game design decision after all.
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As I said elsewhere on the thread, it's a problematic decision, because it either forces NPCs to ignore gender or makes them decide on gender by looks and voice, which is basically anti-trans. To accommodate trans, there should have been both gender and body type / voice.
On the other hand, I don't really understand why having male/female is an issue. I think that a trans character could choose a gender that fits what they want to be in the game. I see no particular reason to have a trans character option, even had one been provided, unless the game specifically addressed that as part of the story.
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As I understand it, a group of nasty conservative YouYube "personalities" that make their money by inciting whiny brats to play the aggrieved victim (e.g. "SJWs are picking on us and ruining our lives by bullying game developers into making potentially good games unplayable") latched onto a quote from an interview CDPR did with Metro GameCentral at Gamescom a couple of days ago: "You know, we really want to make a video game that’s really inclusive...You don’t choose, ‘I want to be a female or male character’ you now choose a body type." These abrasive YouTube manbabies have recently released videos claiming that CDPR are bowing to extremist pressure about gender identity and ruining the game in the process, so their loyal followers are going to teach them a lesson by not buying the game (and presumably go back to telling people to kill themselves and threatening rape in online multiplayer games).
This character creation information is not actually news and it's also not about catering to minorities. Anyone that has played Cyberpunk or Cyberpunk 2020, or even watched the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer knows that it's science-fiction set in a dystopian future where corporations rule and extreme body modification is commonplace. It wouldn't be very true to the RPG if you couldn't mix and match available body types, physical traits and voices, in addition to the cybernetics, and CDPR already made it clear this would be part of the character creation process months ago at E3.
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whiny brats, manbabies, back to telling people to kill themselves and threatening rape in online multiplayer games...
Is this really necessary way of depicting those you disagree with? If you only posted the arguments and links to the sources it would sound much better. All the ad hominem comments make your post less valuable. Just a friendly note, take it as you wish.
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Oh, from the thread title I thought that CDPR changed something significant. They didn't. So all good, then.
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CDPR announced they are removing male/female slider buttons from the game for inclusion (apparently replaced with a slider or two for body/voice)
Wait, what does this mean? So instead of having:
Man O | Woman O
... you'd have: Man -----------------O-------------------- Woman ?
How does that work anyways? I get the voice thing. Pitch shifting isn't a new thing, though I'm not sure how that'd work out since they'd presumably have alternate voice actors for the male and female protagonist? Will it fuck up the audio quality a bit through the audio clipping? How does the character model change?
I don't really give a fuck about the social implication, but I'm mainly just curious about what this even means :D
Also, I hope CDPR didn't actually remove threads that were critical of them.
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As I understood, you have body type slider where it goes from male-like to female-like covering inbetween types too? And then you have a voice slider. So in theory you can have male body and male voice, or a pumped up gym type guy with a soft feminine voice or a bulky girl or a thin teen-like guy-like... or anything randomly imagined? Might be wrong, this is how I was explained.
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So basically they're going the Saints Row route then. Fair enough.
Sounds like a pretty janky way of doing things, but maybe they'll adapt to this change in a good way. Otherwise it'll probably be a really silly addition for a serious game.
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I'll be honest, this sounds like a great way to get everyone just riled up for no reason.
"So you gave in to the pressure from the LGBTQ? Weak!"
"So you're telling me that because my voice is higher pitched, I can't be a man? Discriminating!"
It feels like a really half-baked idea at this moment. I'm fine with adding a more complex gender system, but is it really better to do it in such a basic way? I dunno, maybe I'm wrong and this turns out great. I hope it does. But this just doesn't sound like a properly thought out move here. These things probably need to be included from the ground up to accommodate for the dialogue, the AI and so on.
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they are not saying a man is less manly because he has a high pitched voice or something like that. They are just allowing player players to create a character of a body however the player wants and the voice independent from the physical phenotype
Are they not? So why is gender even mentioned here? Why isn't it them just saying that they've created an in-depth character customization system that is independent from your gender. This is PR we're talking about here. If they didn't say it, then it isn't the case. No reason to believe that CDPR was just really desperate for making their product look worse. That they really went for a system that basically isn't really a system, but actually is more of a toy that doesn't mean anything, but the message behind it is really something, but not really since they didn't do anything.
These things don't just come out like a fart in an elevator. These things can stay hush-hush until their PR can whip up a single sentence.
Maybe they'll change course, but right now you're not just assuming, you're making things up:
For instance, you don’t choose your gender anymore. You don’t choose, ‘I want to be a female or male character’ you now choose a body type.
At which point you need to start asking, how does the game differentiate what gender you are? Will it be just an option? Will it be something that determines it?
It looks like something that deepens the role playing aspect especially because of Cyberpunk's body enhancing/changing practices (it fits the lore). It also gives the player more freedom of choices, so unless they make it on a bad quality, it will probably be a pretty good RPG character creation module.
But it literally won't be. You can read their quote and see that the character development will not be anything great. It's just a "no gender, presets" system.
because of Cyberpunk's body enhancing/changing practices (it fits the lore)
I can't really say much here. I just thought it was digital mixed with physical, not just plastic surgery.
What if I wanna roleplay a BJJ female fighter that is pumped on steroids(and therefore has a deep/rough voice)? Now I can!
But you barely can. Literally the entire issue here. You can play as a preset. Not as anything you've created. You can only play that character if they have created that precise preset for you.
Since now Cyberpunk's no longer really a character based story, like The Witcher, but now instead they have to abandon a lot of avenues to make this happen. There will no longer be specific threads they can follow. But since they abandoned that idea, it's likely they never were going to take advantage of any of the possibilities they gave themselves.
I hope they actually make something decent instead of this half-baked thing. If you truly do care about the lore-friendly approach and think that this is what the lore presents, then it makes no sense how you're even close to being satisfied. How you're really interested in having options, yet being satisfied by literally not being given anything. A lot of contradictions here for me.
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this is exactly what they're doing, man.
How are two sliders "in-depth"? In what world is a preset and a pitch shift enough to make you think "Wow, that's really in-depth right now! No other games have gone further and this is pretty much all there is to it!". They should commit and really make an in-depth system. Even Mass Effect in 2007 had more to offer. How can you sit there and call that in-depth? This is on the level of The Technomancer right now. It's ridiculously shallow at best. They should commit.
No need to start assuming that I need biological presets or that I think something's transphobic or not or that something is one way or another.
No point in dragging it out. You've seen what I've written and I've seen what you've written.
I want them to have more than what they've said they'll have. You say that they will have what I want, yet CDPR hasn't said they will (somehow you've fully predicted their development cycle).
I want them to make sure that the voices are treated better than a simple pitch shift.
You basically completely ignore that CDPR literally just finished a trilogy which was based on a single defined character and yet you start talking about Fallout 4 here, in which you literally just mention a character build, which has literally nothing to do with this. It's falling to a point where it's not that I don't get what's going on, but I just don't get what you're trying to say. I'm going fully off of what CDPR said. I won't pretend that they'll do more than what they've said.
"For instance, you don’t choose your gender anymore. You don’t choose, ‘I want to be a female or male character’ you now choose a body type. /.../ So you choose your body type and we have two voices, one that’s male sounding, one is female sounding. /.../ And then we have a lot of extra skin tones and tattoos and hairstyles. So we really want to give people the freedom to make their own character and play the way they want to play."
This literally points to a preset system. How can you even claim it doesn't?
I agree, we'll see what it will be. But right now, you can literally read it yourself: Two voices. Preset skin tones, preset body types. No open customization.
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Don't know if they'll do any pitch modulation or just have two or four different voice actor options, but if they do, I wouldn't expect any issues with audio quality. A small pitch mod in a reasonable range of the human voice usually isn't too uncanny-sounding with today's tech. Ten years ago, yeah, it'd be an issue. (On a personal opinion note, I think male vs. female vocal inflection can be more than just pitch, but in a blind test I don't know that I'd be able to tell, especially if you were to throw kids' voices into the mix.)
P.S. Audio clipping is more of an amplitude concern, not really a pitch concern. Also, even if it were, compressors could nip it in the bud nearly immediately -- and since all the game audio is pre-recorded and not being streamed in in real-time, clipping is should be a total non-issue.
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A small pitch mod in a reasonable range of the human voice usually isn't too uncanny-sounding with today's tech.
I'm mainly thinking of The Sims 3 and Saints Row, which both allowed you to do it. The voice got quite scuffed at both extremes. But if the pitch shift is supposed to be there to let you be more fluid with your gender, then alternate voice actors won't actually do the job since people don't just get a new voice when they change their gender. And if they do just have different voice actors, then what's even the point since it'll have no bearing on gender fluidity and instead just gives you multiple voice options.
(On a personal opinion note, I think male vs. female vocal inflection can be more than just pitch, but in a blind test I don't know that I'd be able to tell, especially if you were to throw kids' voices into the mix.)
It is, but not when you're transitioning, which is most likely why they even included this. If you're just a man or a woman then this wouldn't even be a thing people would think about as a thing they'd need in the game. I'm guessing it's made with transgender, androgenous and the other inbetweeners.
But maybe not. Maybe I'm just missing the vocal demand from people who want their character to not only have different facial and body features, but to also have their gender on a spectrum. :D
It's a new idea, so things will definitely be wonky to start off.
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Yeah, exactly. You've got ultra-masculine body on one end, ultra-feminine on the other, androgynous in the middle. You also chose the voice, and can alter the voice to sound lower or higher. It sounds to me like they just made character creation better and more versatile.
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If that's the case, sure.
Voice pitching might make the sound scuffed since they probably have finished recording (if they haven't, they best be recording with that in mind).
I still don't understand why it can't just be body features like with literally any other open ended customization? Saints Row did that whole thing without forcing everything on a single slider. What if you want a feminine character with a stronger jawline?
If anything, now they've basically made it the least versatile customization possible. Seemingly more options that actually show off how little options there really are.
Perhaps they'll actually do it properly, however. Who knows.
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If the character creation doesn't work well, I'll be happy to complain about it. But until the game releases, and we see the actual character creation tool, it seems silly to get upset over something that's clearly still a work in progress.
This isn't an unsolvable problem. Many other games have had body type sliders and the ability to choose a voice to go with whatever body you create. Adjusting the pitch of the voice may be new, but it's only an issue if the player makes it an issue. You don't want to have a ridiculous voice, don't shift it to the extreme.
This really seems like people looking for something to get upset over and making a big deal of a non-issue because it'll get them attention.
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it seems silly to get upset over something that's clearly still a work in progress.
Didn't mean to come across as upset, but I guess I did...
I'm just asking questions.
If the character creation doesn't work well, I'll be happy to complain about it.
Yet you're happy to praise it. I'd rather go the middle of the road and just be skeptical. Would probably not be best to give any rash opinions on both sides.
This isn't an unsolvable problem. Many other games have had body type sliders and the ability to choose a voice to go with whatever body you create. Adjusting the pitch of the voice may be new, but it's only an issue if the player makes it an issue. You don't want to have a ridiculous voice, don't shift it to the extreme.
But that's not what is being described. What's being described is an unsolvable problem. "replaced with a slider or two for body/voice", not "a brand new, in-depth character customization tool with no gender boundaries".
As to the voice, the whole reason I even mention it is that the "extremes" aren't extremes irl. Record your voice and pitch shift it to make it sound like the opposite sex's stereotypical voice. So not just a feminine man or a masculine woman. You'll run into major issues there since it'll start clipping. That's even with professional works, where even a reasonable pitch shift can sound unnatural.
I hope for the best, but I do also fear for the worst.
This really seems like people looking for something to get upset over and making a big deal of a non-issue because it'll get them attention.
For those that are against it for the sole reason of being against it and for those that react to it solely due to social politics, yeah. But I hope you're not lumping people like me into it just because we're just looking for answers and a decent product that doesn't get compromised for whatever reason.
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Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were upset, or were complaining about this just to complain. I was referring to the ones making youtube videos complaining about this and posting about how they cancelled their pre-order (I think you shouldn't pre-order in the first place, but that's a completely separate issue). I'm assuming you haven't done stuff like that. :)
To me it just seems to make sense that one body slider is more versatile than a male / female toggle, but certainly it depends on the implementation - and at this point we don't really know much about the implementation, and it seems the implementation is currently in flux as they just changed it. Game features are constantly being re-evaluated and changed, and this is why developers hate mentioning a game feature until the game is ready to ship - because any feature could change, or be removed, and you're always going to upset someone who wanted it to be exactly the way it was originally announced.
It just seems like a lot of people took the replacement of a male/female toggle with a slider as a huge issue, when it's been done before and it's worked just fine in other games.
Record your voice and pitch shift it to make it sound like the opposite sex's stereotypical voice.
Why would you need to do this? If you want a masculine voice, select the masculine voice and adjust that, and if you want a feminine voice select that and adjust. I'm not sure how many voices they'll have, but it's at least 2. It's really only an issue for those who want something perfectly in the middle, and they'll just have to go with whichever option sounds best to them. And given the setting, some may actually like the artificial clipping to give themselves more of a synthetic, electronic voice.
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I'm assuming you haven't done stuff like that. :)
Better not mention how I sent my Cyberpunk body pillow and lube back :P
To me it just seems to make sense that one body slider is more versatile than a male / female toggle, but certainly it depends on the implementation
I 100% agree. I just want more at this point. I think they've basically abandoned a way to have a character-specific narrative, like for The Witcher 3 in favor of an open-ended RPG, which is totally fine. It's just that now I want them to actually commit to it. Specifically mentioning that there are no gender options feels that it's less about the customization and more about the message behind it. If they were to say that their customization was now more in-depth and not bound by gender, it'd be better since that would mean that they basically created something in line with Saints Row, where you just have sliders for everything and genders and body types don't really matter, which would be awesome. Just right now it feels like "no genders! Though... eh, we don't really want to actually commit, so we're gonna make couple of presets and pretend like that's on par with any RPG customization system since 2007. It's just lazy design then to me. They should commit and go all out on it.
It just seems like a lot of people took the replacement of a male/female toggle with a slider as a huge issue, when it's been done before and it's worked just fine in other games.
What other games have had gender as a slider? I haven't seen any, so I'd love to hear it since it'd be a good way to kinda see how it'd work.
Why would you need to do this? If you want a masculine voice, select the masculine voice and adjust that, and if you want a feminine voice select that and adjust.
The main reason I said to do that was so you could see how easily you can scuff your voice and make it unusable with pitch shifting. To see how hard of a problem it is to solve. But also to say that that's not how trans people work. They don't change voices, their pitch changes. But their pitch isn't shifted, like you would do with a sound file. It's a natural change and if they truly want to be inclusive like that, then they do definitely need to make sure it works like it should. That's why you can shift the pitch to begin with. They are aware of how it is. They just need to make sure they can actually supplement this demand they themselves created.
And given the setting, some may actually like the artificial clipping to give themselves more of a synthetic, electronic voice.
If they add filters, yeah, I agree. But if they just pitch shift, it just sounds scuffed. It doesn't sound synthetic or electronic. It's just audio that clips.
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The main reason I said to do that was so you could see how easily you can scuff your voice and make it unusable with pitch shifting. To see how hard of a problem it is to solve. But also to say that that's not how trans people work. They don't change voices, their pitch changes. But their pitch isn't shifted, like you would do with a sound file. It's a natural change and if they truly want to be inclusive like that, then they do definitely need to make sure it works like it should. That's why you can shift the pitch to begin with. They are aware of how it is. They just need to make sure they can actually supplement this demand they themselves created.
Oh, okay, I get what you're saying now.
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I thought about that, and it could actually work really well if they added a certain kind of modulation to the voice whenever it is pitch-shifted. Hell just the ability to apply subtle filters to the un-shifted voices would be great, and in line with other cool little possible considerations like slightly altering the colour-profile of the visuals in first person mode depending on ocular mods.
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Honestly, I totally agree.
I just don't want an unpolished version of that since it's obvious that Cyberpunk will probably be a very polished and solid game overall, so adding half-baked things might take away from the shine that they have. I hope they get it right and I hope they will consider adding filters to the voices. Would sound like a great approach to a cyberpunk world to have a choice of having a voice alternator or something :D
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you might be able to make MANLY looking character with cute anime voice instead. lol
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Fuck, if they add an anime voice, I'd probably need to play a full story with that :D
It's like the Saints Row Zombie voice you can add to the protagonist, so he just growls through everything :D
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Took a quick glance through the forum discussions and saw that a lot of folks are decrying this as pushing a "political agenda" in the game. I always find it depressing that so many people like to shove "things I don't like" into the "political" label as if it means those things are any less real, or as if it's something they're being forced into liking or taking part in.
Don't want to take part in it? Then just move the slider all the way to the left or the right and play the damn game. I promise your fragile cis ego won't shatter forever as a result.
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I'm honestly not sure how to view this.
As someone who has a thing for feminine men, I'm all for the option to create such a character in my games. It seems like a good choice to select your body type regardless of your character's gender.
On the other hand, if this was not CDPR, it could easily be seen as "we are removing the male/female options because trans people might get upset", which would of course be a bullshit attitude to have. We in the post-communist countries tend to be much less touchy about political correctness, so I firmly believe CDPR didn't do this for the sake of being "woke".
Just my thoughts on the matter, I don't keep a very close eye on the game and I don't visit their forums, so of course I don't know what exactly is going on atm.
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I'd like that to be the case as well but they are getting weird. In the last trailer that had some developers in it, and there were lots of SJW looking degenerates there. I hoped that they are just weird artist types but now here's this guy and every other word in his statement is 'inclusive' or 'diverse'.
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SJW looking degenerates
Please, do tell what a SJW looks like, so that I may know when I come across one.
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Well, there are some clues you can get but it could be other stuff, so you can either guess or wait until they say something.
If they're willing to discuss a matter without calling names they probably aren't tho.
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Like the love child of a whale and some daddy issues.
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That is a little worrying. We've seen the downfall of Bethesda, let's hope we won't witness the downfall of CDPR next O.o
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More like BioWare really. I'm probably a bit over sensitised to this kind of shit but where there's smoke there probably will be a fire in a few years.
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Oh yes, Bioware too. We are just kind of trained to expect the worst with the gaming industry :/
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What anything is seen as, depends on the stance (and the intensity) of the viewer. Because I may not keep a super close bead on social justice stuff, but my various feeds get exposure to it, and I have never heard of any advocates getting upset at the idea of being able to pick a male or female avatar. Redesigning / recoding an aspect of a big game to protect against such a phantom upset is ridiculously unlikely, so someone 'seeing it like that' could be easily discarded as a fringe individual who spends far too long within echo chambers.
It's best not to get overly concerned what the bizarre fringe cases think of your product unless they actually stumble on a sound nugget of criticism or reasoning. The sales from such far reaches are always going to be unpredictable due to the nature of their world outlook, so it's a fools errand to try cater to them. Even if you manage to appease them, you lose just as many from the opposite extreme, if not more due to the much larger moderate buyers getting a severe case of "WTF are they even doing?".
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what?
i'll just sit here, enjoy my coffee and some cookies while watching the internet burn.
again.
i expect cdpr to be reasonable when it comes to their games.
at the same time gilette lost 8 billion usd after their wokeness bullshit early this year.
turns out you can't shit on all men when 95% of your customers have a dick and a beard that needs shaving.
quite hilarious.
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Just to kinda correct you, Gillette lost $8 billion, but their net loss was $5.24 billion. Still a total flop of a campaign, but the loss is big enough without fudging the numbers.
The stock's been growing the entire time too, so that loss means very little in the grand scheme of things, so they weren't really hurt with this.
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I don't get what the big deal is. The further technology progresses the more people will use said technology to give them whatever they deem to be their ideal body, thinking otherwise is just willful ignorance.
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Ah yes, true gamers are always angry about "more options" for some reason. Why complain about something if it doesn't hurt your style of play?
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It's amazing how much love they get for the previous work and then thrown under the bus immediately over something like this.
But that's how it goes? People want to use your canvas as a political platform?
Edit: Can't be entirely mad at those youtubers since clickbait is their whole livelihood. Sucks that the platform is built that way, though.
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I'm happy for the people who would like such a slider. I personally won't use it but I will be damned if I would condemn those who do.
And everyone crying about it can go suck a genital of their choice, because choice is always good!
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Okay, so they just added a bodytype option and then you can choose whether your character has a female or male voice?
Dark Souls (among many others with character creators) has this and no one cares.
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I'm going to take a guess that it's less of a "woke" move and more of it being too time consuming to fix all the clipping errors to make clothing fit correctly on every variation of body type.
Either that or they want you to have a purpose to use what I'm guessing will be an extensive body modification surgery system that is fitting to the setting.
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It's baffling that some people can get so invested about playing a cyberpunk game without understanding one of the core concepts of the genre. I just want to know that the game will provide enough body modification chop shops along the way, in case I, you know, change my mind about something.
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Exactly. We're talking about a cyberpunk game where body modification and transhumanism is a key component and central theme - where someone can take their face off and replace it with another - and people get upset that a male/female body toggle gets replaced with a more versatile masculine / feminine slider?
A game featuring people like this where you question if they're still even human seems like the wrong place to be making a "there are only two genders" argument.
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I really do hope it's comprehensive. I absolutely adore excessive customisation options.
I spent so many hours on the early Armoured Core series just balancing up and nudging my machines, and then the customisation system in All Points Bulletin, yesss. I still enjoyed Spore despite its weak gameplay, because those editors were brilliant.
I wonder if you can get internal heatsink lights in Cyberpunk2077? :3c
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Cyberpunk couldn't care less about your gender.
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Carefull, that kind of opinion is not the correct one to have nowadays! All praise our transgendered/non-binary overlords!
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Hello. Does Thirteen13 have an opinion they would like to voice, or is this just the idealogue answering machine service? Because just now your eyes glossed over and your mouth did a 404 by parroting a totally unrelated tribal affirmation. You can't pretend to be grounded while also going full political zombie and be taken seriously ;P
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Cyberpunk 2077 sounds like the perfect venue for Decepticons. ;)
Play or not. Everyone has a choice.
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I probably don't fully understand the complaints yet but I don't see a problem with the concept of a gender slider. If you're a manly man, put it all the way left. Girly girl, all the way right. Easy enough.
Personally I'm a bit of a beta male, so I'd probably be a few ticks from the left :P
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Don't care.
Wake me when the snowflakes REMOVE content to prevent being offended. More options? Not a bad thing.
Or like the Vampire guys they heavily hint they want to enforce a "right way to think" (in a RPG of all fucking places).
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So all the crying is because they put a slider that goes from man to woman.
Idiot people
I am convinced that if every button, man and woman, had a personalization equivalent to 50% of the slider nobody would be crying.
But no, you can't mix man and woman.
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I'm not grasping the situation completely yet, but as far as I gathered...
sliderbuttons from the game for inclusion (apparently replaced with a slider or two for body/voice)If anyone is interested in the topic, plans to follow, you can update us, I don't think I'll care too much as it is. Still hoping the game ends up good, but honestly have more important things going on right now.
edit: some sources for what's actually going on
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