Ultima Forever has received some criticism for its somewhat limited selection of character classes, and its even more limited selection of female playable characters. And from a purely quantitative standpoint, it’s a fair criticism: there are only two playable classes (out of a canonical eight, per Ultima lore), and only the Mage class offers the player the option of a female character. (At present, the Fighter is a male-only class.)

Of course, despite the fact that the game has gone into wide release, Mythic isn’t finished working on — or adding content to — Ultima Forever. Far from it, in fact, as Carrie Gouskos reveals in an interview with VentureBeat. And rectifying the gender cap in playable characters is definitely on Mythic’s list.

Granted, the game had to ship at some point:

Ultima Forever touts itself as a game of choice. “There is no wrong answer,” it tells you after every major dialogue decision, which nets points in different virtues. So why give players a whopping 10 builds for male fighters and absolutely no female ones?

“Ultimately, we had to delay the debut of the female fighter due to resource constraints,” Carrie Gouskos, the senior producer on Ultima Forever, told GamesBeat. “Early on in development, we had decided to take the eight careers of Ultima and divide them into four women and four men — mostly because of the challenges of creating hundreds of sets of armor that would be applicable for both genders for all eight classes.” In other words, the fighter and mage were initially only male.

“We were also originally planning to release the druid at launch and ranger shortly after — both female — but when resource constraints made that impossible, we chose to add a female mage instead.”

And we learn that a female Fighter will soon be added to the game, although this has presented a few additional challenges to the artists at Mythic:

The female mage may have been a product of necessity — it was less ambitious to launch two classes with different genders than all eight classes (four male and four female) at once — but it worked out better for players. “We will be launching the female fighter class in our next game update,” Gouskos said. It’s tentatively set for mid-September and “will also include functionality that will allow players to switch their gender” — as well as change their appearance — “if they would like to do so.”

…

Since the fighter was originally only going to be male, the team at Mythic created appropriate armor, which fits broad shoulders and huge arms.

“This was done because exaggerations are easier to read at the size and perspective of the game — and because the style of the game is more characterful and less ‘realistic,’” said Gouskos. The bulky garb is not going to look good on a female. Fighters also wear a lot of tartans and shirtless pieces, which wouldn’t work on the opposite gender for obvious reasons.

We also learn about plans for some of the other upcoming classes:

Mythic also plans to introduce equal genders for the other archetypes (including the ranger and druid), hopefully “without killing our art budget,” said Gouskos.

“Because we expect players to invest hundreds of hours into their characters, we are trying to figure out a way to let players enjoy the six remaining classes without simply requiring them to start over as brand new characters,” she said. “But that’s still something the designers are exploring. Either way, moving forward, all class options will be available to either gender.”

Now, I think I’ve pointed out before that the Ultima Forever development team really should be getting more “women in game development” press coverage, because the game’s development team features a significant number of women in pivotal roles. But there really hasn’t been a lot of that sort of coverage; Carrie Gouskos and Kate Flack haven’t avoided interviews or public appearances, but there hasn’t been a lot of focus put on them specifically because they are successful female game developers. They tend to talk about the game, rather than themselves.

Simiarly, Gouskos — despite noting that gender parity will be a feature of all classes in Ultima Forever from here on — goes on to downplay the role that gender actually plays in Ultima Forever:

Gender may be an important issue, but it doesn’t influence the story. “Ultima Forever is reflective of the player’s choices and actions; it doesn’t matter what gender you are so much as the sort of person you are,” said Gouskos.

The producer doesn’t believe that all role-playing games — or any genre, for that matter — need to offer gender options. Gouskos said it shouldn’t be a requirement even though she’s personally very conscious of the feature.

“Sometimes it’s important to the story that the character be a certain gender or ethnicity,” she said. “And even when that’s not the issue, I understand, as a developer, to be deeply empathetic to the resource constraints of building art and audio and the impact that has on the game’s size.

VentureBeat also released a pair of art pieces showcasing the different approaches to Fighter armour that Mythic are taking for male and female fighters. Perhaps refreshingly, it isn’t the female fighters in Ultima Forever that are storming into battle half-clad!