Spider Shen is an interesting character that is hindered by a murky agenda.

[Planguy]

Spider Shen is pretty interesting. But Shen is also hindered by an utter refusal of the game to assign them a gender. I mean you encounter a vampire accountant and the game's narration is pretty quick to name that vampire accountant a "her". That's how the english language works. Pretty much every character in the game is going to be referred to as him or her. Spider Shen being required to not be assign a gender by the game makes most of the writing referring to them simply bad prose. The tip toeing around any kind of language that would associated Shen with any kind of gender is so noticable that it takes you out of the game.

And the thing is I don't see what grand reason there could possibly be for this creative decision. It's not an attempt at trans representation, right? I mean, the thing about being trans is that you're going to want to be referred to as him or her, as appropriate. Is Spider Shen representation of people who refuse to acknowledge the gender binary at all? Someone intersex? Spider Shen not being referred to as a specific gender doesn't feel like an organic character choice, but I can't see what exactly this highly noticable thing is trying to say.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

So your character can't tell if one person is a dude, lady—or given the Shadowrun setting, lizard person, and it never comes up in conversation. Think we've all been there.

Really don't see why that's such a big annoyence, honestly.

[ρоѕιтяои_]

I never caught that. I always assumed Shen was a guy.

[Planguy]

Originally posted by Lord Of Dorkness:

So your character can't tell if one person is a dude, lady—or given the Shadowrun setting, lizard person, and it never comes up in conversation. Think we've all been there.

Really don't see why that's such a big annoyence, honestly.

You would think that a person would at least assign a person a mental placeholder gender.

[alexshiro]

Who's Spider Shen?

[Planguy]

Monk shop keeper. I make it a habit to talk to every character in the hub missions to see how their story lines go.

[chipjack]

When you first access your mission computer, Strangler Bao has sent you a message describing the various vendors in Heoi. In that message, he uses the pronoun "she" when referring to Spider Shen.

[Planguy]

I thought that might have been a typo.