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Cyberpunk 2077 will not use a binary gender category for its player-created protagonist, as revealed in an interview with Metro GameCentral.
Criticism had been levelled at Cyberpunk 2077’s central themes of body modification and transhumanism, that would still require players to select either a male or female V for their customisable protagonist’s gender. Developer CD Projekt Red had made transphobic jokes in the past as well, but new information divulged by senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers seems to show that feedback has been taken on board.
The character creation system has been changed significantly, and now offers flexible and fluid options for V’s gender identity. Jonkers said, ‘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.’
‘We have two voices, one that’s male sounding, one is female sounding,’ she added, ‘You can mix and match. You can just connect them any way you want.’ This sounds quite similar to the system introduced to The Sims 4, in which players can tick box masculine or feminine attributes for their characters. Expectedly, the customisation options expand beyond voices and physiques: ‘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.’
When asked whether more diverse consultants were brought onto the project in light of the controversies, Jonkers explained, ‘We just want to know what we can improve on because we want to make a really good game and we really want to make a game that everybody is comfortable playing. But at the same time we’ll tackle difficult issues. It is a cyberpunk world after all.’
Cyberpunk 2077 will launch for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 2020. The highly customisable V will explore a dark and densely packed Night City, that will take them to underground and underwater locales with anarchic companions.
