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Guilty Gear Strive Developer: Bridget Identifies as a Woman

Guilty Gear -Strive- game director Akira Katano and video game developer Daisuke Ishiwatari put the Bridget controversy to rest in the Wednesday edition of “Developer's Backyard.” Ishiwatari said that they received many questions about Bridget's gender identity following her introduction in the Guilty Gear -Strive- "Season 2" DLC last month. The series creator explained plainly that the character identifies as a woman.

"After the events of Bridget's story in Arcade Mode, she self-identifies as a woman. So, as to whether 'he' or 'she' would be the correct pronoun for Bridget, the answer would be 'she,'" Ishiwatari said. He also explained Bridget's journey to discover herself in the context of her storyline.

As mentioned in her character profile, Bridget was born as the younger twin son and then raised as a girl by her parents to protect her from a village superstition.
Despite their intentions to protect Bridget, it pained her parents to do so as they felt they were forcing her to live a certain way.
Bridget, realizing this, attempted to bring wealth to the village while behaving like a man, thus overturning the village superstition, as a way to free her parents from their guilt.
As a result, the superstition faded, and nothing remained to restrict how both Bridget and her parents lived.

After this, Bridget tries living as a man, but it doesn't feel right.
This is where the Arcade Mode story begins. After her exchanges with Goldlewis and Ky, Bridget faces parts of herself she has tried to ignore, and makes a big decision for herself.
I hope that all of you will watch over her path after her courageous choice to stay true to her own feelings.

Katano followed up Ishiwatari to explain that the game also does not have "good" or "bad" endings, acknowledging past arguments that Bridget identifying as a woman at the end of one Arcade route is a "bad ending" because the dialogue differs from the "perfect" ending.

"By the way, although the difficulty and story dialogue of Arcade Mode change depending on your match results, this doesn't change the main plot, nor are there alternate endings such as “good” or “bad” endings. The same goes for other characters' Arcade stories as well. In general, these variations show other aspects of the characters," Katano said.

In Strive, every playable character gets a mini-story demonstrating how they've changed since their previous appearance, and Bridget is no different in this regard. Strive's Arcade Mode tells a sweet story about her doing some soul-searching, as Goldlewis and Ky tell her that she can be whoever she wants to be. In one the Stage 8 endings, Goldlewis asks if he should refer to her as a "cowgirl" or a "cowboy", to which Bridget responds: "Cowgirl is fine! Because... I'm a girl!"

Bridget is a popular recurring character in the series, a girl who wears a nun habit and wields a mean yo-yo. She first debuted in Guilty Gear X2.

Source:Developer's Backyard