Genuinely asking: Got a source on that? I'd love to read it. Was it a recent interview? A JP article that I never saw or something?
On topic regarding people's reactions to XBC3, I am totally okay with it, even if it is overblown. The reason for it is that the cultural momentum for allowing creators and thinkers to express their ideas in ANY WAY they desire far outweighs anything else. The truth can still be the truth, because history is written by the winners, and if the winners are people who seek only the truth... well, what will the history be? Just don't give your enemy any ground in the mean time. If Takahashi wanted to portray the greyness and grittiness of Aionios by removing sexuality (aka a huge part of what makes us human besides our emotions) from Noah's story, then why does Ethel have a boob window? Why does Alexandria get tights and a texture that highlights her butt? May as well have given everyone the same uniform with different colors. It's only somewhat there, when in every other game, even DE, we had the unfiltered designs everywhere (minus some outfits in XCX but that's a
localization vandalization issue, not a censorship at the source problem). So you see, it's really more about: If it wasn't a problem before, why is it now? You're making me raise questions, and it's not
me that is the problem, now the problem is the source material not providing me what I originally got. If it didn't matter, it did matter enough for them to change it. And if it mattered for the story and thematic purposes, that wasn't true for previous games, and there are plenty of games with (since we are talking about it) sexy characters that don't have diminished quality because of it. My favorite counter example to end all argument is NieR Automata. 2B's ass is out all the time, but did any
actual fans think the game's existential messages were lesser because of it? Absolutely not. Yet there is so much universal love for 2B and the game The lack of information on the design philosophies for XBC3 is what causes people like me to raise flags, whereas Yoko Taro was loud and clear about making sure 2B's ass was very well modeled, yet he still delivered an exquisitely themed game.
The sad part is current year games will have stains of this communist social engineering, like Elden Ring with Type A/B for character sex selection, and MH:Rise with the inclusion of TypeA/B and the removal of sex-specific animations. Will FromSoft/Capcom fix these titles years later once it is politically safe to do so? We don't know, and I'm not putting my money on it, since they very likely won't warrant making a whole new build just to change some text labels. Plus, with the way companies are being strong armed, I trust no developer studio unless proven otherwise, or unless I have some agency/leverage/personal investment in it. Developers like Nintendo are navigating the landscape rather well by NOT saying anything (minus a few exceptions like with Shiver being a girl), but it has a drawback where us regular people don't get any information whether games like XBC3 are influenced like how Sony games are. So the smartest move is to stay at an arm's length, because I sure as hell am not in any Nintendo or Nintendo affiliate development studios. Are they gonna come out "on the right side of history," or just keep up neutrality? The only safe games are the ones where none of this is a concern to begin with (e.g. Nintendo's family friendly titles Metroid, Mario, and Zelda). What
can you dictate with ESG with those games? Hint at Samus being trans in an ending? That'd be horrible lmao.
You can make an argument that concepts of sex designed out of the game was for the themes of the game, but the child soldiers have no learned concept of love and reproduction anyway. "But then it proceeds that they wouldn't have sexually provoking designs at all!" Or would the themes of what makes us human be stronger if the characters' looks contradicted their behavior, strengthening those ideas? I mean, "Who wants to learn how babies are made?" And then, when they think about what they're wearing, it could bring some stuff into question. Though, the outfits in XBC aren't really important; they're just designs to differentiate characters. Also don't say "combat practicality" is why everyone has muted designs. Mio's off-seer outfit is a dress with frivolous frills and loops, and she wears it to battle in her introductory scene. No one takes the practicality of the outfit designs in XBC into effect because it's not a consideration in the XBC canon. Plus we know Moebius like D are twisted enough to be psychopaths, and yet none of them are sexual deviants despite the entirety of human history documenting humans doing human things?
Furthermore, we can somehow have Shulk's mental crisis in XBC1 and the existential crises in XBC2 while asses hung out and titties were on full display. In XCX, Elma can shout about humanity's tenacity at a tentacled alien dominatrix in a leotard. So what gives with this game? Not like they couldn't show anything at all. They were too afraid to show more. So for all intents and purposes, I herald XBC2 not just because I loved the story and the relationships between the characters, but because it's a natural filter for cultural marxists. Despite its flaws (especially compared to XBC3's practical features like the combat system), people love that game more, and for good reasons.
Also, this old(ish) comment on Rex's page of the fan "wiki" will still never fail to make me laugh. Forced diversity was a mistake.
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