Disappointment

This is fairly old, but I just stumbled across it. The main attention-grabber:

"Early in development, the main character in The Last Guardian was female, but the team ended up going with a boy. The reason: they thought it would be more realistic that he would have enough grip strength to be able to climb around, and because they wouldn't have to worry about camera angles with a girl who wears a skirt."

...What the hell, guys. First of all, the culture in your games clearly is not analogous to any historical culture, so why the hell would a skirt be culturally necessary on a female, or even a skirt without pants under it? Second-- main character is a kid. Before puberty, size and therefore strength differences are a lot smaller. Both justifications fall flat on their face. Maybe there are justifications that don't; I'd love to hear them. But right now, I see no reason why this game should not have had a female protagonist.

I absolutely loved Shadow of the Colossus. I was looking forward to playing Ico (despite it having a rescue-the-princess dynamic, it looked pretty good to me). The Last Guardian was on my definite to-play list in the unlikely event that I got or borrowed a PS3... but now, I'm not sure I'll want to hand over the sixty bucks that says, among other things, that I'll buy those justifications.