Guilty Gear Strive brings back Bridget for season 2

Guilty Gear Strive’s 2nd season of characters kicked off Monday with the discharge of Bridget, the yo-yo-wielding, habit-wearing fighter who first joined the sequence with 2002’s Guilty Gear X2. Three extra characters are deliberate for Guilty Gear Strive’s season 2 move, which can run thru 2023.

For avid gamers having a look to get into Guilty Gear, developer Arc System Works describes Bridget as an “easy to pick up, standard style of character” with forged long-range assaults and… a teddy undergo. Bridget is to be had as a part of the $24.99 season move, and for my part for $6.99. The developer additionally launched a starter guide video for Bridget, who wasn’t playable within the fresh Guilty Gear Xrd video games.

Bridget’s arrival in Guilty Gear Strive is momentous no longer simply for the release of a 2nd season of DLC, it additionally confirms that the nature is a trans lady. Bridget’s lore and historical past are difficult, and in earlier entries within the Guilty Gear sequence, her sexuality and a loss of readability on her gender identification have been every now and then played for dramatic effect or comedic purposes. But in Strive, Bridget comes out definitively as transgender, as observed on this cutscene that includes an interplay between Bridget, Ky Kiske, and relative newcomer Goldlewis Dickinson.

Previous Guilty Gear video games recognized Bridget as male, and different characters referred to Bridget with each female and male pronouns. According to her official backstory (which refers to her in gender-neutral phrases), Bridget had a dual brother, and in step with a neighborhood superstition, twins of the similar gender are a foul omen. Bridget’s rich oldsters thus raised her as a woman to give protection to her from hurt, however she later units off as a bounty hunter to each in finding luck — thus proving the superstition false — and “behav[e] like a man” struggling with the Guilty Gear roster.

Bridget spawned a legion of fanatics, in particular cosplayers, who fell in love with the nature over the last two decades, regardless of the occasional drained jokes surrounding her sexuality and gender identification. Those identical tropes made her go back to the Guilty Gear franchise unsure, however it seems that that Arc System Works is absolutely embracing her trans identification — not as fodder for storytelling tropes, however as a part of an ever-diversifying roster for Guilty Gear Strive.