In a move that reeks of the company’s infamous ‘Ethics Department’, a new report suggests that rather than gender, the characters in Square Enix’s Dragon Quest III HD-2D will instead be classified according to their “look”.
As seen immediately upon starting the original 1988 adventure, Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation features a novel-for-the-time gender mechanic which allows players to not only choose the gender of the game’s protagonist, but also recruit Male or Female versions of each respective class (such as Warrior, Mage, or Thief).
While the decision to play as a man or woman ultimately has little effect on the game’s narrative, the choice to play does determine their appearance, what equipment they can use, and which personalities (a trait that has a slight effect on gameplay stats) they can potentially develop.
A memorable-if-not-inconsequential element of the overall DQIII experience, every version of the game – including the aforementioned 1988 original, the 1996 Super Famicom remake, the 2000 Gameboy Color remake, and the 2014 mobile remaster – has explicitly labeled the mechanic according to the standard Male/Female binary.
However, it appears that with the Remake, this consistency will be coming to an end.
According to noted Japanese entertainment scoop outlet Ryokuta2089, as machine translated via Deep L, rather than Male or Female, the two options will instead be referred to as “Look A (clearly a male hero)” and “Look B (clearly a female hero)”.
Further, each ‘Look’ will be voiced respectively by Hiyama Nobuyuki (Hiei in Yu Yu Hakusho) and Minaguchi Yuki (Videl in Dragon Ball).
“I guess it’s the trend of the times,” wrote the unidentified scooper who broke the news. “It seems that [the game’s] other jobs will no longer distinguish between male and female in the name.”
As noted above, this is far from the first such ‘politically correct’ change Square Enix has made to a remake or re-release of their games in recent years.
For example, in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, the company edited the scene in which Cloud originally stole a pair of Tifa’s panties from her drawer in order to make it far less ‘controversial’.
Further, upon Rebirth‘s release, Square Enix also released a patch for the preceding Final Fantasy VII: Remake that retroactively censored the teenaged Tifa’s ‘cowboy outfit’, as worn by the heroine during the infamous Nibelheim Incident.
This is also not the first Square Enix title to feature such non-standard gender options.
In their 2022 RPG Harvestella, upon creating their character, players could choose to experience their adventure as either a man, a woman, or a non-binary individual.
At current, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is on track to start its hero’s quest on November 14th, 2024.