You know you’d be happy if they let you have a beard :-p

I haven’t taken my helmet off since the first week of D1Y1... I don’t know or care what my guardians look like under their armour, lol.

I don't. All I know is what has been accomplished and is being accomplished by others.

Bungie didn't set Destiny up for this. Fine. But they can be thinking about it for Matter. Even beyond the issue of gender it's just a good idea anyway. And I don't think say, CD Projekt Red, has more resources and ability to do this than Bungie.

At the very least you could offer a finite variety of body types and appearances instead of just 2. At the VERY very least you could offer 3: masculine, feminine, and neither.

This post is SO different from your earlier one and demonstrates some level of awareness that there are varying options with varying levels of difficulty.

Comparing the resources of CD Projekt Red and Bungie and not discussing the possible issues of how those resources are used is a thorny issue for me.

To take this point further, it comes down (at least partially) to a question of resource allocation and “bang for Bungie’s buck”. Given the kind of game Destiny is, and the current state of the game, I would argue that offering a wider range of selectable body types for our guardians is so far down the list of priorities that it isn’t even worth considering. There are huge, gaping problems with D2 right now that effect every single player most of the time they are playing. Beyond that, it’s not like adding a range of different body types would be a purely good thing for the game either. The character models were very carefully designed to have clearly distinct frames and outlines so that players could differentiate between hunters, warlocks, and titans at a glance. Even having the male and female variations of each class is adding enough into the mix to make those split-second distinctions tricky at times.
So a developer like Bungie probably looks at a situation like this and says “would more body types be nice? Sure. Will it cause other problems? It might. Does it significantly increase our workload? Well, every single piece of armour needs at least 1 extra model generated, plus whatever other resources need to go to animation, memory allocation, test, etc etc etc”. So this becomes one out of a million trade-off issues that crop up over the course of making a game.

Now if it turned out that enough players cared enough about it that it actually made sense for Bungie to prioritize it, then maybe they would. But we’re 7 years into Destiny, and I haven’t seen the issue come up once on Reddit (which is not to say that it has never come up, but certainly not with any regularity). Heck, if Bungie announced tomorrow that they’re adding multiple body types into D2, I’d add that fact onto my mental pile of evidence that Bungie no longer knows what they’re doing as a studio... not because there is anything wrong with that feature, but because IMO Bungie has come pretty damn close to killing this franchise with Beyond Light, and they need to be putting all their resources into areas that make the biggest difference for the most players possible.

I don't. All I know is what has been accomplished and is being accomplished by others.

Bungie didn't set Destiny up for this. Fine. But they can be thinking about it for Matter. Even beyond the issue of gender it's just a good idea anyway. And I don't think say, CD Projekt Red, has more resources and ability to do this than Bungie.

At the very least you could offer a finite variety of body types and appearances instead of just 2. At the VERY very least you could offer 3: masculine, feminine, and neither.

This post is SO different from your earlier one and demonstrates some level of awareness that there are varying options with varying levels of difficulty.

Comparing the resources of CD Projekt Red and Bungie and not discussing the possible issues of how those resources are used is a thorny issue for me.

Bungie didn't set Destiny up for this. Fine. But they can be thinking about it for Matter. Even beyond the issue of gender it's just a good idea anyway. And I don't think say, CD Projekt Red, has more resources and ability to do this than Bungie.

At the very least you could offer a finite variety of body types and appearances instead of just 2. At the VERY very least you could offer 3: masculine, feminine, and neither.

Me: Have you thought about doing x?

Dev: Yes, but we can't because y.

The devs are usually right.

What’s the solution? There are two body types in the game, you have to pick one of them.

Sliders for infinity body choices.

Okay, now what’s a realistic solution?

You realize this has been done literally for decades in other games right?

In games where it was planned that way from the beginning. How do you make that work in Destiny? There are two versions of every armor in the game, one for each body type. How do you make those fit on fully customizable body shapes? It’s looked horrible in every game I’ve played that does it—you just end up with stretched, weird textures.

What’s the solution? There are two body types in the game, you have to pick one of them.

Sliders for infinity body choices.

Okay, now what’s a realistic solution?

You realize this has been done literally for decades in other games right?

What’s the solution? There are two body types in the game, you have to pick one of them.

Sliders for infinity body choices.

Okay, now what’s a realistic solution?

What’s the solution? There are two body types in the game, you have to pick one of them.

Sliders for infinity body choices.

I can wear the Eater of Worlds Titan armor.

What’s the solution? There are two body types in the game, you have to pick one of them.

Sliders for infinity body choices.

May I remind you you have two choices for your guardian: male or female.

It's my understanding that this was recently changed to masculine/feminine.

It's still a binary option!

Not really. It's just choosing to be closer to one side of the spectrum rather than the other.

Male/Female is Black/White. Masculine/Feminine is just saying I would rather be more Black than I am White or vice versa.

At least that is how I see it.

May I remind you you have two choices for your guardian: male or female.

It's my understanding that this was recently changed to masculine/feminine.

It's still a binary option!

May I remind you you have two choices for your guardian: male or female.

It's my understanding that this was recently changed to masculine/feminine.

However, gay characters have long been in the background when included. Either unimportant to the story, or as fascination / humor for the other characters or audience. In some ways this actually minimizes them. Not on an individual story basis, but collectively. If you're gay and all you see are gay people with small story roles, or are otherwise on the offshoots of the story, then it re-enforces the notion that they themselves are minor in society. Granted Cruel is right; Destiny has barely any story anyway so it's not much of a slight.

However I very much doubt Bungie would actually make a game with an LGBTQ main character, or have a relationship exist prominently and be of vital importance to the story. I mean, you can play as non-binary in the New Call of Duty Cold War. Call of Duty! Where Reagan is ordering you around, at a time when he didn't give a shit about gay or trans people, and they couldn't even BE in the military!

May I remind you you have two choices for your guardian: male or female.

So forgive me if I don't see this as really that bold. I wouldn't hold this up as an example of Bungie being super progressive. It's buried away in the lore and not even part of the main audiovisual presentation. It's absolutely FINE, but it's kind of the bare minimum above "don't have gay characters at all". But it's not wrong either, as not every story has to be about someone gay.

So it just is, and it made a big difference to this guy, but not really on the cultural level.

P.S. I finally got windows working to play Tell Me Why.

This isn’t JK Rowling insisting Dumbledore has always been gay without so much as subtext hinting at it, and her only saying it after the fact. Not to mention the new movies that have Dumbledore as a pretty important character that still don’t even hint at it being the case.

Even if it wasn’t intended, there are things in the past that could be read that way, even if only at a stretch. And now it’s actual text. It’s not some after the fact retcon in an IP with no new material. It’s actually canon in a demonstrable way. That’s important.

I appreciate a little subtly in story telling, subtext rather than text, but I can appreciate this being important enough to be a little heavy handed. If anything, I mostly agree with Nevin, in that this isn’t and hasn’t really been a story with romantic relationships. I’m okay with that changing, I’m just not confident they can do so meaningfully.