Here at a Q&A session with Team Ico's Fumito Ueda, he revealed that the non-animal character in The Last Guardian was originally supposed to be a little girl. He said that changed his mind for a couple of reasons.
The first was an issue of believability. With the character having to do a lot of climbing onto the Trico animal and other in-level surfaces, a young boy would have slightly better grip power than a little girl. You wouldn't be feeling like you were putting a little boy out as much as you would a little girl.
The other reason has to do with....well, a little girl would be wearing a skirt, which you could probably see up with some camera situations. Pervert.
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
1:56 AM on 09.16.2010 | 
Mostly because of stupid overeactionism. Granted it is kind of a lame excuse, but I wouldn't really call it sexist. We are talking about a young girl here, not a grown woman.
Shadow of the Collosus:Your trying to kill 16 collosus to save your little girlfriend which sits dead for the whole game driving the plot.
And this now.For fucks sake you could propably get a couple of million girls playing this game but now you blew it because of so called ''believability''.
IM PLAYING A GAME WHERE A HUGE WINGED HYANE SOMETHING BEAST IS TEAMMING WITH A SMALL BOY TRYING TO OUTMANOUVARE DANGERS.
Fuck believability ,you lost realism the moment you showed the huge beast.
The protagonist has always been a boy in the series. no big deal. And you gotta remember what kind of world this is. It isn't your modern feminist type of world. I think given the setting, the reasons make sense.
Shadow of the Collosus:Your trying to kill 16 collosus to save your little girlfriend which sits dead for the whole game driving the plot.
And this now.For fucks sake you could propably get a couple of million girls playing this game but now you blew it because of so called ''believability''.
IM PLAYING A GAME WHERE A HUGE WINGED HYANE SOMETHING BEAST IS TEAMMING WITH A SMALL BOY TRYING TO OUTMANOUVARE DANGERS.
Fuck believability ,you lost realism the moment you showed the huge beast.
Shadow of the Collosus:Your trying to kill 16 collosus to save your little girlfriend which sits dead for the whole game driving the plot.
And this now.For fucks sake you could propably get a couple of million girls playing this game but now you blew it because of so called ''believability''.
IM PLAYING A GAME WHERE A HUGE WINGED HYANE SOMETHING BEAST IS TEAMMING WITH A SMALL BOY TRYING TO OUTMANOUVARE DANGERS.
Fuck believability ,you lost realism the moment you showed the huge beast.
Keep on telling yourself that, Ueda. Oh and the skirt thing? Surely as a game designer there's absolutely nothing they could've done to stop the awkwardness? I don't know, how hard is it to change a costume really?
So...there's a demograhpic of females that number in the millions that make their purchase of video games solely based on the gender of the hero, because you know, dudes obviously never play games with females as the main character and vice versa?
We watched waaaaaay too much Power Rangers.
Also I love how we chalk this up to "Oh those crazy Japanese". But yeah, kinda lame.
Would "stupid overreactions" include calling people stupid?
Also, it's totally okay to put a young girl in a pair of shorts.
Basically, you choose the protagonist that fits your story, and I'm pretty sure these guys know what they're doing by now.
I mean, it's all well and good to espouse rage and cries of "Sexism!" when someone says things like "boys are different from girls" but you ALL know it's the fucking truth that boys and girls are genetically predisposed to have physical and mental advantages and disadvantages in some areas. Just like it's ridiculous that every goddamn commercial nowadays features one black dude, one asian dude, and indian girl, a white girl, and a vaguely hispanic person, it's stupid to expect that someone should change their main character JUST for the sake of diversity.
And a lot of you all falling into the incredibly moronic realm of "OMG THESE GAMES AREN'T REALISTIC ANYWAY CUZ THEREZ MONSTERS OMG!!"
Realism is taken on a case-by-case basis and the only rules one has to follow in order to MAINTAIN believability are the rules set forth by the WORLD that the story takes place in. Griffon-esque animals and evil demons FIT into this world because it has a sort of mystical, fantastical, backdrop.
Also, since it's likely that this game will be in the same world-space as Ico and SotC, the societies shown and alluded to in this world are predominantly sort of ancient and tribal in appearance. Meaning, they probably follow the traditional conceits that men are the hunters and women are the gatherers. I'm sorry if HISTORY was sexist, but these games are obviously rooted in those themes.
Equality and diversity are great IN THEORY, and of course, everyone should be given a chance to prove themselves as much as any other person, but actually DOING something simply for the sake of diversity is complete bullshit. The natural amount of diversity happens automatically so long as you don't discriminate. It shouldn't be forced.