Pokémon games have been around for years with the first release in Japan in 1996 and North America in 1998. They hold a lot of nostalgia for many of us who have grown up with them and grown alongside the progress from Pokémon red/blue on the Gameboy Color to Pokémon Legends: Arceus on the Nintendo Switch. Though the game has come a long way technologically, we're missing gender identity representation that would be so impactful to many who fall outside the gender binary. The game will assign a gender to you based on the looks of the character you choose with no other options or way to change this in the future.

Depending on who you choose, there is continual gendered rhetoric that pops up throughout the game that you can't get past (the main NPC continually refers to you as "my boy" or "my girl" and you get labeled with he/him or she/her pronouns for the rest of game), which causes those who are don't fall in the "femme woman" and "masc man" categories to be continually misgendered throughout the entire game. It would be so impactful to either have the option to choose pronouns at the beginning of the game (and have them changeable throughout the game if someone's pronouns change) or to instead use gender neutral language throughout the game (taking out "my boy/girl" and putting the character's name in where pronouns currently are in dialogue) that way we aren't actively being misgendered every time we try to play and so we can feel represented by the game.

I know that pronoun options may have implications for translations in other languages.

Even if this isn't added to Pokémon Legends: Arceus, I'm hopeful that in creating this petition it will show the team at Game Freak how impactful adding gender inclusivity would be to any future Pokémon game.