Capcom’s Deep Down won’t have female player-characters

Over the weekend Deep Down producer Kazunori Sugiura took to the PS4 Lab livestream on Nico Nico to share more information on the PlayStation 4 exclusive, the most devastating of all (for this female games writer) being that Deep Down will only have male player character models thanks to its story.

Man, Capcom. My boyfriend and I just spent the weekend playing gender-swapped hunters in Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and then you give me this? I had a great time playing the Deep Down demo at Tokyo Game Show and while only a male armor-clad player character (PC) was available I didn’t think it would come down to this. After all, it’s not that hard to remodel armor so it looks like there’s a woman in there.

The lack of female PCs in Deep Down is pretty disappointing considering even industry vet Square Enix has moved with the times and produced a female protagonist in Lightning, for Final Fantasy XIII. While its reason for creating her is still rather disparaging, Motumu Toriyama said at a press event in Singapore last week that Square Enix “wanted to create a female character that looks cool and appears as a hero in the eyes of male gamers,” it is at least a step forward.

It looks like Capcom is still under the mindset that women don’t play video games because they could easily have rewritten the script to allow for female player characters. Considering Deep Down is an online game, where so much visual importance is placed on an avatar, Capcom could really have done so much better.

(Source: Dualshockers)