We have another reason to look forward to Cyberpunk 2077.
If you asked a gamer what video games he or she were most looking forward to in the coming year, many would respond with Cyberpunk 2077. Ever since the announcement of its development back in 2012, gamers have been excited to play the next installment in the long-running Cyberpunk game series. And now, a new announcement creates even more reason for gaymers and LGBTQ fans to be excited.
A new report by IGN states that CD Projekt Red, the developers behind the new project, have decided to do away with binary gender options for player characters. Instead, character creation will be centered on body types.
“Our character creation menu, for instance, compared to the last demo, we now give you so many more options,” Marthe Jonkers, CD Projekt Red’s senior concept artist, told Metro in an interview. “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. Because we want you to feel free to create any character you want.”
“So you choose your body type and we have two voices, one that’s male sounding, one is female sounding. You can mix and match. You can just connect them any way you want. 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 is exciting but possibly complicated news considering the game developers have earlier announced the inclusion of romantic encounters (both long-lasting and one-night based) within the game.
In fact, earlier reports of the game stated that some romances were locked or open to players based on their character’s gender identity. That said, most of the romance options were bisexual, according to US Gamer. Now that the game is switching to body types, we wonder how the romance dynamic will change.
No matter what happens though, it looks like LGBTQ gamers are in for a treat. With the game being based in a futuristic setting, it seems concepts like gender and sexual orientation are much more fluid than in today’s modern world. So gaymers looking to create a character who explores both will be taken care of by CD Projekt Red.
Ironically, all of this news comes a few months after the game was criticized for including in-game background art that many saw as transphobic. Could this change to body types be a way of appealing to LGBTQ gamers who expressed outrage before? And is it working? Let us know your thoughts down below.
Sources: IGN
