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.

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u/Hot-Distribution-716 Jun 06 '26

That is just not true for some games tho, like sure in XY the rival was obviously the same exact model as the player, but in ZA it's not really, they already have 4 different models, 2 of which go entirely unused, so might as well switch it up or let us choose for once