Developers CD Projekt Red revealed in a new interview that the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 will not include traditional gender choices in character creation. The expected 'Male/Female' gender prompt will be forgone altogether, with gender presentation options being the bulk of focus in character creation, as confirmed in a recent interview.
Detailed character creation is not a new phenomenon in video games, but where Cyberpunk 2077 will break from type is in separating various items of gender presentation from binary presentation in the character creation process. Players won't be choosing to make a male or female character, instead, they will have access to one of two voices and a body type. This allows the player to create whatever physical representation they like without any implicit assumptions about that representation.
Marthe Jonkers, concept artist for CD Projekt Red, recently established this while discussing the new features that the game will include, such as a more involved character creation process. There is, apparently, a greater push towards inclusion for not just people of different skin tones and body types, but gender presentation as well.
"Of course, if you tackle certain subjects then you will expect people to have an opinion about it and we respect that," said Jonkers in an interview with Metro. "And it’s good that people give us feedback. And our character creation menu, for instance, compared to the last demo we now give you so many more options. 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."
This revelation about the game comes on the heels of controversy regarding CD Projekt Red's handling of gender issues in the past. For instance a tweet of a joke that some considered to be transphobic and sexist. CD Projekt Red apologized in an official capacity, but this was still associated with their brand to a sufficient extent to come up in the interview.
"We just wanna know what we can improve on because we want to make a really good game and we really wanna make a game that everybody is comfortable playing." Jonkers said "But at the same time we’ll tackle difficult issues. It is a cyberpunk world after all."
Cyberpunk 2077 is set to come out on April 16, 2020 on a wide variety of platforms including Windows, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.
(via IGN)