Nintendo announced the return of its ink shooter franchise during the Nintendo Direct presentation on Wednesday with Splatoon 3. The first trailer for the game didn’t offer much detail, just a few gameplay fragments and bits of history. However, fans have noticed a significant change Splatoon 3: Nintendo seems to have eliminated the gender language when choosing a character. Instead of asking players to choose a boy or girl like Inkling Splatoon 2 does, Splatoon 3The character creator simply gives players the option to choose their “style”.
The brief clip we saw on Wednesday of the creation setup included other options like skin tone, hair styles and a variety of characteristically fun street style outfits from Splatoon.
The text delighted Splatoon fans across Twitter, with many of them noting that Splatoon has officially eliminated the very concept of gender.
Many expressed enthusiasm for how inclusive the change is and developed fan theories related to the change and the game’s color scheme. For example, some tweets noted that the colors of the logo are the same as the non-binary pride flag.
EXPECT SOME GENDER OPTIONS IN SPLATOON 3 ALL SQUID KIDS ARE CONFIRMED NON-BINARY
– bit (@splatbit) February 17, 2021
This is not the first time that fans of the game find Splatoon strange. Many fans were convinced that Pearl and Marina, the faces of Splatoon 2, were dating.
Splatoon is not the only Nintendo franchise to eliminate gender choices. Animal Crossing: New Horizons uses similar language, asking players to choose their “style”.
We have contacted Nintendo to confirm these details and will update this article with any responses we receive.
Splatoon 3 is scheduled to be released in 2022 on the Nintendo Switch.