Wuthering Waves is a new, free-to-play gacha RPG from Kuro Games, the Chinese developer behind lesser-known games, such as Punishing: Gray Raven and Twin Tail Battleground. Kuro, who is currently a subsidiary of the multimedia conglomerate Tencent, released Wuthering Waves on iOS, Android, and PC earlier this year. Although the game suffered from some launch issues caused by bugs and broken patches, it was an immediate hit. Kuro Games announced that over 30 million people from across the world had pre-registered the title, and that it had become the most downloaded iOS/Android game in more than 100 regions. The unprecedented success of Wuthering Waves automatically cemented it alongside the leaders of the gacha RPG genre, like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.
Kuro Games aims to attract even more fans to Wuthering Waves with its upcoming 2.0 update, which will bring the game to PlayStation 5 on January 2, 2025. The highly-anticipated patch is going to contain a bucketload of new features, including 5 new Resonaters (a.k.a. playable characters), a new region called Rinascita, and plenty of new questlines. What Kuro Games has already revealed about update 2.0 is apparently just scratching the surface, though, as there is apparently even more unannounced content that will be added to the game next month. One such feature, according to recent rumors, is the ability to swap the gender of playable characters, which, if true, will put Wuthering Waves ahead of its competitors.
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Wuthering Waves Version 2.0 Should Avoid One Massive Pitfall From Version 1.0
Kuro Games’ Wuthering Waves Version 2.0 is expected to launch in just over a month, and it should avoid repeating a mistake made in Version 1.0.
Wuthering Waves’ Rumored Gender-Swapping Feature Could Put It Ahead of HoYoverse’s Games
Rumors Suggest that a Gender-Swapping Mechanic Will Be Added to Wuthering Waves in Update 2.0
A trustworthy insider known as Sleep recently shared an image of an unfinished build of Wuthering Waves‘s 2.0 update, which clearly depicted UI elements for a gender-swapping feature. The leak also revealed that said feature would have a 24-hour cooldown period. In other words, once players pick a new gender for their protagonist, they will not be able to revert their change until they wait an entire day. The ability to change genders mid-game is, as previously mentioned, not something that Kuro Games has officially confirmed but, assuming these leaked images are legitimate, update 2.0 may give Wuthering Waves a long-requested feature that’s sorely been missing in other recent gacha RPGs.
HoYoverse’s Games Do Not Allow Players to Change Their Genders Mid-Playthrough
The majority of anime-style gacha games, including the ones from Genshin Impac t and Honkai: Star Rail developer HoYoverse, do not allow players to swap the gender of their protagonists in a single playthrough. In most instances, if players want to experience the game as a male instead of a female or vice versa, they will have to start the entire RPG from scratch. HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact, for example, may be a pioneer of the gacha genre, but it lacks this simple feature that many other games have, like the Hotta Studio-developed RPG Tower of Fantasy. The same can be said for Honkai: Star Rail, as well; players are not allowed to switch between the Trailblazers Stelle and Caelus mid-game.
To HoYoverse’s credit, its most recent title, Zenless Zone Zero, does give gamers the freedom to change the gender of their characters. However, there’s a catch. In ZZZ, there are two types of playable protagonists: Agents and Phaethon siblings. Agents are the characters players control during combat encounters, while the Phaethon siblings are the ones they use outside of battle. There are more than 20 obtainable Agents in the game, both male and female, but there are only two Phaethon siblings.
When starting a new playthrough of Zenless Zone Zero, players are given the option to choose between one of two non-combat protagonists, the male lead Wise and his sister Belle. The character they pick will become more prominent in ZZZ‘s story. Their sibling, on the other hand, will serve as a navigator. Players can technically switch between protagonists when exploring the game’s Overworld, but during quests and story events, they can only use the Phaethon sibling they first chose, which seems like an arbitrary restriction. Hopefully, if Kuro Games brings a gender-swapping feature to Wuthering Waves in its 2.0 update, HoYoverse follows suit by adding the mechanic to Zenless Zone Zero and its other games.
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