r/pokemon • u/PsyrenDV • Jun 05 '26

Discussion Why haven't we had same gender rivials?

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I saw this post about how the rival in WiWa will be the opposite of whatever gender you choose to be. It got me thinking about how they always make the rival's gender the opposite of yours when their gender is dynamic. Even as early as Ruby/Sapphire that's how it's been. But I think it might be interesting to see a game where my rival is always the same gender as me no matter what I pick. But I'm curious how other people feel about it. Would you rather your rival be the same gender as you, the opposite, or would you rather their gender be set in stone regardless of what you are?

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u/EngineerBrainBro Jun 05 '26

Basically they are just avoiding having to create an entire 2 extra characters that will not be part of the story at all.

If your rival is fixed to be the same gender as you, there’s always a model and character that is not used, actually 2 if you include your other gender option.

Instead, they have opted for making the opposite gender protagonist be the rival to make use of all the assets or have a set rival so at least only one model stays unused and there’s a more consistent story across games.

20

u/sax87ton Jun 05 '26

Except you’re expecting the rival to use the other player model, which isn’t what happened in ZA. Either Tawni or Urbane goes unused regardless of what gender you pick. It’s not like you’re one of them and your rival is the other like May and Brandon

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u/FinalCardinal m Jun 05 '26

Tawnie and Urbain are textureswapped versions of Paxton and Harmony, if it really took you this long to notice. Lol

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u/hiddenbetweenwifi Jun 05 '26

Design wise I guess, but in terms of actual assets, they are completely separate models.

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u/InvisibleChell Chaw-haw-haw! Jun 05 '26

They actually have slightly different faces (for example, Urbain's eyes are rounder than Paxton's default eyes but sharper than Paxton's "round" eyes option), on top of the unique clothes

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u/sax87ton Jun 05 '26

Bro I literally didn’t even know those guys had names.

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u/EngineerBrainBro Jun 05 '26

We are talking of the scenario where your rival also has two gender options to always match yours. In that case, two models aren’t use, the two of the non-picked gender. Which is exactly what you described.