New Trailer For Bandai Namco’s ‘Freedom Wars Remastered’ Reveals Updated Character Creator Adds ‘Type A’ And ‘Type B’ Voice Options
In a move that’s as unnecessary as it is eye-rolling, the latest trailer for Bandai Namco’s Freedom Wars Remastered has revealed that rather than the usual male-female binary, the remaster will instead have players create their character according to body ‘types’.
Developed by Sonic Lost World and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 studio Dimps and featuring gameplay akin to Monster Hunter and God Eater, the story of Freedom Wars centers on a dystopian future where humanity is not only on the verge of going extinct, but those who remain have found themselves locked within sprawling, surveillance-heavy prison cities known as Panopticons, almost all of them being sentenced within for the crime of simply being born.
In order to shave time off of their million-year prison sentences, these ‘Sinners’ are required to submit themselves to state servitude, which itself often takes the form of life-and-death combat against the Abductors, a robotic race of creatures who are known to prey upon humans.
Enter the player, who via a custom character will take up arms and fight alongside their fellow Sinners in the hopes of one day earning their freedom.
Originally released in 2014 for the PS Vita and going on to become one of its most popular titles, the Freedom Wars Remastered edition was announced by Dimps in September 2024, with the developer confirming that the game would feature a slew of upgrades including better visuals – all presented at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second – a brand new weapon crafting system, and a cooperative multiplayer mode.
Unfortunately, one of these ‘upgrades’ also appears to be the addition of ‘inclusive’ language to the game’s character creator.
This change was first revealed on January 8th courtesy of the game’s System Trailer, as hosted by the mascot of the protagonist’s home Pantopticon, a blue-hatted, microphone-wielding-and-speaker-system-wearing bear by the name of Percy Propa,
Essentially serving as a video walk-through of “the updates and improvements” made to the game’s original build, the trailer eventually turned to discuss Freedom Wars Remastered‘s new character creator features, including the various voice options players can give to their Sinner’s respective Accessory, a cyborg warden/companion assigned to each prisoner.
And though Percy himself never brings explicit attention to the fact, during this portion of his presentation, the gameplay capture video shown behind him reveals that the eight total voice options available for the Accessories are evenly split between the ‘Type A’ and ‘Type B’ categories.
Interestingly, in the original release, not only was there no mention of ‘Type A’ or Type B’ voices, but this section of the character creator actually featured zero references to gender.
Rather, players were asked to select from 14 total options, all of which were simply labeled ‘Type 1’, ‘Type 2’, etc. etc.
(It should also be noted that it is never explicitly showed or stated whether this gender-less binary will also be applied to the player character’s voice options. However, given that the original Freedom Wars featured the same vague labeling between the Accessory and Sinner character creation menus, the same is currently assumed for Remastered.)
While this move from Bandai Namco is both unnecessary, it is unsurprising given the current state of the overall video game industry, which in recent years have taken up a new goal of ‘avoid offending anyone whenever possible’.
To this end, for those players still interested in taking up arms to defend their Panopticon from being wiped off the face of the Earth, Freedom Wars Remastered is currently set for a worldwide jailbreak onto the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC platforms tomorrow, January 10th, 2025 (with Japan getting it one day earlier).
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