RE: Leaks / Rumors / Speculation Thread - Don't post topics that have their own thread!
I think the problem lies with language barriers; Japanese doesn't differentiate between masculin and feminin words, it's just all the same as far as I'm aware. When the games are given to the translators, they just try to make the most of it.
HikaruAyame said:Kitana Coldfire said:As I was playing my W2 restart, I had a small epiphany. You know what little thing I wish they would add that would make the games 100% better (but would take about 0% extra effort)? Personal freaking pronouns.
It just irks me whenever my pokemon is paralyzed or something and the game spits out 'Rosehip is paralyzed! It can't move!' My Leafeon is a girl, game, stop calling her an 'it'. Same goes for my Armaldo; he's a boy, call him 'he'. Magnemite? Yeah, go ahead and call it 'it', since IT is genderless.
Instead of calling everything 'it', I wish they would just tie the pronouns to whatever gender the pokemon is. The pokemon is female, use 'she' 'her' or 'hers'; male, use 'he' 'him' or 'his'. Genderless an non-gendered legendaries can still use 'it', no problem. The only way I could see that becoming a programming problem is in the case of Azurill's weird gender ratio change, but that still probably wouldn't be a big issue.
Ah well, I suppose it's something I can dream for in later games.
Speaking as a programmer, THIS WOULD NOT BE DIFFICULT. This has bothered me since genders were introduced. All they'd have to do is change the string "It can't move!" to (pronoun)+" can't move!" and have a pronoun check. NOT HARD. THEY DO THIS FOR THE PLAYER ALL THE TIME. It baffles me every time we have a new set of games that they don't do this on. Simple pronoun identification would help us bond better with our Pokemon. Half the time I can't even remember the gender of my Pokemon because it really, truly doesn't matter. Ugh.
I think the problem lies with language barriers; Japanese doesn't differentiate between masculin and feminin words, it's just all the same as far as I'm aware. When the games are given to the translators, they just try to make the most of it.