343 Industries To Reportedly Replace Halo: Reach ‘Gender’ Options With ‘Body Type’ In Upcoming Halo: The Master Chief Collection Season 8
343 Industries will reportedly be removing the option to select one’s gender from the Halo: The Master Chief Collection edition of Halo: Reach, as the developer is apparently set to replace the currently available ‘male’ and ‘female’ customization options with ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ armor, respectively.
This upcoming removal of gender options was first brought to public attention by /u/Blazkowicz01 on the /r/Halo subreddit, who first discovered the change courtesy of an update to the official Halopedia entry for Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s upcoming eighth season of multiplayer content, subtitled Mythic.
According to the newly updated information, upon the season’s start on October 13th, “Gender Selection” will be “renamed to Body Type and gender terms changed to ‘Heavy armor’ (formerly Male) and ‘Light armor’ (formerly Female).”
Halopedia also noted that voice selection options would no longer be “limited to the body type,” thus allowing either body type to make use of any of the various male and female voices provided for players to choose from.
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In Halo: Reach, players are encouraged to create a ‘custom character’ – built from a number of available options including species (Human vs Elite), armor appearance, and voice – for use in the game’s multiplayer modes.
However, these differences in gender customization offer no effect on gameplay outside of aesthetic personalization. In fact, the differing armor sizes for the male and female Spartans even feature the exact same hitboxes.
In an official blog post discussing some of the upcoming Season 8 changes, the 343 Industries Community Support & Engagement Coordinator known as Postums noted that the incoming content would also include a “Halo: Reach Firefight update to include Firefight voice previews, more granular body type and voice.”
However, Postums did not specify what exactly this change meant, though many assumed it to be either the ‘decoupling’ of voices from specific gender types or the general removal of gender all together.
YouTuber Vara Dark of Dark Titan Enterprises reacted to this new stating, “This is absolutely ridiculous. Companies do these things think it’s going to get them more attention and they are going to get more money. But the opposite always happens.”
She continued, “They are not making these changes because they want to be inclusive or diverse. They are changing things like this so that they are uncancellable. They’re changing their companies and their products so no one can say, ‘Look at how terrible they are.'”
What do you make of gender reportedly being removed from Halo: Reach’s customization options? Let us know your thoughts on social media or in the comments down below!
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