In March, Disney and Lucasfilm proudly unveiled Star Wars‘ first trans, non-binary characters. These are Jedi Terec and Ceret, who feature in Marvel’s The High Republic comic, with Lucasfilm explaining that they’re “passionate and committed to broadening our representation in a galaxy far, far away.”
This philosophy now looks likely to extend to video games, as sources close to We Got This Covered tell us that future Star Wars games will allow players to create trans heroes in their character creators. If it comes to pass, it’ll be a nice bit of inclusivity, especially as the vast majority of contemporaries stick rigidly to binary genders (with Saint’s Row being a notable exception).
The obvious candidate for this feature is Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world game. The team behind The Division series is currently hard at work on delivering a Star Wars RPG, with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot describing the project as “an original Star Wars adventure that is different from anything that has been done before.”
Both games in The Division franchise have deep character creation options that allow you to tweak almost every aspect of the way your avatar looks, so it’s a no-brainer to bring in trans options.
This is all a long way away from Star Wars: The Old Republic, which in 2012 saw a low point in LGBTQ representation with the planet Makeb. Dubbed “the gay planet” by players, it was the sole location in which players could flirt with characters of the same sex. This quite rightly led to criticism of “digital segregation” and the whole thing backfired tremendously.
Let’s hope we see more of Ubisoft’s as yet untitled game soon. Anyone who’s played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will know that there’s nobody in the business who can create open-worlds quite like Ubisoft, and if they manage to let players insert themselves into Star Wars they should be onto a winner.
