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[Explosive Zombie]

If it upsets you that they forced diversity into Battlefield V this should, too, right? My problem will always be execs forcing creatives to change their vision. To be fair, Ass Creed is a huge franchise that is one of the main areas of revenue for Ubisoft, to not expect such executive meddling is short-sighted, that said if we have a problem with it one way we should the other way too? I mean, I do. I want creative freedom for people making games, not committees trying to figure out what makes the most profit. This means I want my World War II game to be white and male and I want my sci-fi/fantasy alternate history assassin games to be whatever the people making them want them to be.

But... I also like OPTIONS in games. While I get some games are trying to tell you a tailored story for me gaming should be more about doing what you want in a world the developers created. I dunno, conflicting principles.

 

[iHaunter]

They should give you more control over your look, not just m/f. You should be able to choose height, weight, hair, and the like while still being the right ethnicity.

Dick sliders?

 

[Mattdaddy]

I’ve liked their female leads up until the viking. She way too fugly.

 

[diffusionx]

If it upsets you that they forced diversity into Battlefield V this should, too, right? My problem will always be execs forcing creatives to change their vision. To be fair, Ass Creed is a huge franchise that is one of the main areas of revenue for Ubisoft, to not expect such executive meddling is short-sighted, that said if we have a problem with it one way we should the other way too? I mean, I do. I want creative freedom for people making games, not committees trying to figure out what makes the most profit. This means I want my World War II game to be white and male and I want my sci-fi/fantasy alternate history assassin games to be whatever the people making them want them to be.

WRT Battlefield V, the devs at DICE seemed very happy and proud of the shitshow they released, it's silly to just blame executives for what came of that game, or any other. The execs and devs work together, they have to.

A game like Assassins Creed somehow costs over $100 million to make, there is not just one but many committees sitting around trying to figure out how to maximize profit. It's just the way things are, get over it. And considering that Origins is one of the best selling games in the franchise, and something like 80% of Odyssey players chose Alexios, those committees may have made the right call.

 

[CitizenX]

The "choice" for a character has weakened stories IMO. Does a book, movie or TV show have a choice. No clue why these talented people bend the knee when the hate comes people who are not even players or even a significant customer for their product. Make and say what you want you will succeed. Fact.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

WRT Battlefield V, the devs at DICE seemed very happy and proud of the shitshow they released, it's silly to just blame executives for what came of that game, or any other. The execs and devs work together, they have to.

A game like Assassins Creed somehow costs over $100 million to make, there is not just one but many committees sitting around trying to figure out how to maximize profit. It's just the way things are, get over it. And considering that Origins is one of the best selling games in the franchise, and something like 80% of Odyssey players chose Alexios, those committees may have made the right call.

if it's all about sales yhen consumer voices matter and that's exactly why people shouldn't get over it and should voice their problems.

 

[Godzilla Emu]

I started playing the game as Kassandra (due to the loud minority on forums and reviews recommending her) but after about 20 hours when the story started progressing a bit more, I realised that I'd made a mistake by picking her. She really doesn't fit as a spartan warrior (obviously) and it kept me from enjoying the game. After going back and restarting and choosing Alexios, he really was the perfect protagonist for the game IMO.

#UbisoftExecsWereRight

 

[flashfire926]

Kassandra is cool, and Alexios is dorky. I would be fine for that in Odyssey.

But Bayek is awesome, way better than Aya. Im glad thats the way it turned out.

 

[Shmunter]

Want a BAFTA? You need 50/50

 

[brap]

The "choice" for a character has weakened stories IMO. Does a book, movie or TV show have a choice. No clue why these talented people bend the knee when the hate comes people who are not even players or even a significant customer for their product. Make and say what you want you will succeed. Fact.

Are we still talking about Ubisoft here?

 

[Agent_4Seven]

Assassin's Creed Origins. The original story saw protagonist Bayek killed off early in the game to be replaced by his wife Aya

This alone would have made me enjoy Origins a lot more, but instead.... around 90+ hours I've spent playing as boring and uninteresting Bayek. Ugh, Hascoët, you effin' ....

 

[namekuseijin]

can't thank them enough

AC is historically semi-accurate reconstruction, not history rewriting to appease delusional people with a unicorn under their skin

 

[Thugnificient]

This alone would have made me enjoy Origins a lot more, but instead.... around 90+ hours I've spent playing as boring and uninteresting Bayek. Ugh, Hascoët, you effin' ....

Sarcasm?

 

[namekuseijin]

Assassin's Creed Origins. The original story saw protagonist Bayek killed off early in the game to be replaced by his wife Aya.

did she use a golf club?

 

[dcx4610]

I tend to pick the female option if given because the males are so dull. Evie and Kassandra are great. From what I've seen of Valhalla though, the male is the way to go.

It's all about personality for me - not gender.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

I'd have loved to see the reaction of the consumer if they proceeded going forward with the original plans.

 

[The Alien]

No one takes Alexios away from me!. Thank god
And have they really been 'cancelled' for that?

MALAKA FOREVER!!!!

 

[Arachnid]

Bayek is one of the best leads in the series. Aya is one of the worst. Thank god she wasn't the MC

I didn't care for Jacob or Alexios though. Evie was great. Kassandra was very slightly better than Alexios (still meh).

 

[J____Av]

Call me sexist all you want. Its not that crazy to think a group of assassins throughout history would be mostly men

 

[IYAOYAS2019]

Corrected for accuracy.

Evie < Jacob
Aya < Bayek
Kassandra < Alexios

 

[base]

Kassandra was >>>>>>> than Alexios.

It doesn't matter if it's a male or female. Just make the character interesting. I miss Ezio.

 

[Ashraf’s Lioness]

The just want to vilify people and shove forced diversity down your throats.

Of course a company like Ubi just chases the money. Of course they want the male option to be available.
I myself didn’t like Alexios and loved Kas but you got to be real here. The stats are there, more people played as a male. That’s why Ubi wanted it.

That’s is also why CDPR have the male V as the main face but whatever white straight males are the reason to any world’s problems

 

[GaviotaGrande]

As longs as female characters are like Kassandra, I will never complain about it. Sadly the new vikings Assassin's Creed only offers two male characters to choose from.

 

[German Hops]

I'm taking note of the beta males in this thread..

 

[TGO]

Corrected for accuracy.

Evie < Jacob
Aya < Bayek
Kassandra < Alexios

Evie > Jacob
Bayek > Aya
Alexios > Chyna

And call me crazy but I rather have a Remastered Assassin's Creed Unity then this new AC

 

[cormack12]

I mained Evie more than Jacob, she had the dope cane and also the extra stealth perks and I preferred that playstyle.
Bayek was immense, Aya was OK, but in a series that has had more downs and ups with protagonists I'm not sure if it's possible to eclipse Bayeks story/performance in Origins
I mained Alexios just because so many people took the piss out of his VA, and the game is just too big to go play through again for the same story, just with a different skin
I have no interest in playing as the new female character in Valhalla. It's that much like a man it really makes no difference to me, but I like male Eivors beard and styling better - probably because it's easier to imagine you're playing as Ragnar Lothbrok from Vikings. Even Senua has 100 times more character and design appeal than this thing.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I’ve liked their female leads up until the viking. She way too fugly.

Yeah no way in hell I'll be playing as female Eivor even with the option to change the gender during the game.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

[/QUOTE]

Also - if I'm going to play a 100+ hour third person game like this, you better believe I'm gonna have a preference for looking at the backside of the female walking animation. In Kassandra's case you can have her smash with other girls so it ticked all the boxes for me and made Alexios look like a chump in comparison.

That made me laugh, and I have to agree with you. It's the main reason I chose females in most games..

I think the only game where I didnt was Mass Effect.

 

[the_master]

If the devs wanted to put a female character, fucking let them do what they want!

 

[Roufianos]

Even I was surprised at the Alexios/Kassandra split. I honestly expected Kassandra to be the preferred one.

I'd love to the know the Commander Shepard Split.

Why? You do realise most gamers are male and their thought logic is "I'll play as the man because I am the man".

 

[Hudo]

Executives doing a good thing for once, it seems. But damn, this whole thing is a nothingburger. Decisions like this are made all the time in all companies that produce products meant for consumption. I love how the gaming blogs are trying to spin this into some sort of anti-feminist conspiracy.

Execs just saw data from market research that suggested that for those types of games, including a male protagonist (as a choice!) might broaden the appeal and therefore might end up in more sales. And I can guarantee that they didn't give a shit about whether that variable was male vs. female protagonist or something else. It's just looking at parameters, looking at research according to that parameter in the market and making adjustments. There's no story here.

 

[Mithos]

Even I was surprised at the Alexios/Kassandra split. I honestly expected Kassandra to be the preferred one.

I'd love to the know the Commander Shepard Split.

ME2:

ME3:

 

[GymWolf]

Bajek was cool.

Alexios on the other hand was atrociois, his va was porn actor tier, kassandra was so much better.

Never played the one in london even if the epic store gifted me with it.

 

[idrago01]

I'm just glad they gave us a male option in odyssey for us 300 fans, it's just not the same with kassandra

 

[Elfstar]

I'm taking note of the beta males in this thread..

You mean the ones obsessed over their musclewoman femdom fetishes? Yeah, it's quite embarassing i guess.

 

[sobaka770]

Why do people bring up mass effect, as if it has any relation to AC? Mad effect had a male protag on the cover prominently displayed until part 3 and by then if you were playing male for 2 games you won't really switch considering saves roll over. There was even a while thing where male Shepard had a better modeled face than female in ME1, cause that's what the core fantasy was.

Sure, you had options but marketing does a lot to get you in the default mode and most consumers won't bother with deep customisation. Ever wonder why most played class was soldier - yeah, cause that's the default class. As well as paragon being more in character most of the time.

As for AC if Odyssey would only feature Cassandra only a small minority would bat an eye. Tomb raider sells well, TLou2 has Ellie on the cover while Fallen Order had Kal Kestis as a no choice male and it was all fine.

The problem with choice systems in Odyssey is that it's clearly too expensive to write both male and female protagonists differently so in most cases you get the blandest dialogue. Ubi must've been so happy to get the praise for the fact that you can sleep with anyone independent of gender while the truth is that it was much less work to simply trigger same sex scenes for both characters than creating separate arcs.

Surprisingly Syndicate did it best where both siblings had very different missions, approaches and personalities. It made sense for Evie to be more stealthy and I very much enjoyed her segments.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

Every one of those games was better for not having a female lead, Kassandra was terrible, the voice actress was awful! She sounded like a cartoon vampire, Bayek was the reason Origins was so good, he was the first character in any of these games I actually felt something for, his wife in the game was annoying as hell. Syndicate was better for having Jacob as playable as he was, the female character had very little personality.

 

[WelshBluebird]

AC is historically semi-accurate reconstruction, not history rewriting

Ummm, I hate to tell you!!

 

[JerryinSoCal]

Didn't Ubisoft share statistics that showed more players played as Alexios. That would mean those execs were right.

Right?

I don't mind personally although it would be weird to play Odyssey as Alexios. The story felt written for Kassandra.

Yep it wasn't even close, 2/3's picked the male character and 1/3 picked the female, Ubisoft execs were right to do that.

 

[Red Rackham's Revenge]

Interested to see how the resignations at Ubisoft affect the their games going forward.

I have a feeling Valkyrie won't be as successful as Origins or Odyssey.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

Evie > Jacob
Aya > Bayek
Kassandra > Alexios

Reverse all three of those and you'd be right, Aya SUCKED!!! Evie was boring and Kassandra was just a terrible performance.

 

[WelshBluebird]

If that is true what is the issue here? I mean I played Kasandra over the greasy douche brother, but if the audience overwhelmingly prefers males you could risk losing millions in sales.

1 - With ME the male character was the default, the games also had the male character on the box art and mainly used the male character for advertising. So I really don't think you can tell much at all from the numbers.
2 - People choosing a male character when given a choice certainly does not mean they would not buy the game if they didn't have the choice. Maybe for the neckbeard idiots, but not for the vast majority of those who make up game sales.

 

[xrnzaaas]

If the devs wanted to put a female character, fucking let them do what they want!

Ultimately it's a business decision. Majority of the rpg players like to play as male characters. If you remove the gender option from the game some people won't have a problem with it, BUT there will be those ignoring the game because of no male protagonist.

For me personally it wouldn't matter in AC Odyssey if Kassandra was the only available character, but I wouldn't even consider buying AC Valhalla if a female Eivor was the only option (especially with her current fugly character model).

 

[WelshBluebird]

Two things I am finding an issue in this thread:

1. The assumption that a female lead = worse writing. Which of course is BS. What is the case though is that having a choice of character splits the writing / voice acting etc work, effectively doubling it in some cases (take voice acting - you have X dollars to spend on lead character voice acting, with one character you can pay all of that for one voice actor so will be able to pay for a better actor, if you have two characters you have to split that same budget so will only be able to afford cheaper voice actors). So it stands to reason that having a choice will likely have a detrimental impact. So to those saying the executives were write in forcing a male character - consider that by them forcing the option to choose - they fundamentally affected the effort that could be put into writing / voice acting etc. A female only lead game probably would have had a higher quality of writing / voice acting as they whole attention could have been spent on one character.
2. The constant whinging about how attractive or not, or how manly looking or not, a female character is. Guess what - female characters don't just exist for neckbeard idiots to get their rocks off too. I'm sure the same people aren't complaining how unattractive male characters in games can be.

Ultimately it's a business decision. Majority of the rpg players like to play as male characters. If you remove the gender option from the game some people won't have a problem with it, BUT there will be those ignoring the game because of no male protagonist.

For me personally it wouldn't matter in AC Odyssey if Kassandra was the only available character, but I wouldn't even consider buying AC Valhalla if a female Eivor was the only option (especially with her current fugly character model).

1. I am not sure you can take data about choices when a choice is offered vs how much someone cares if a choice isn't offered. They are two totally separate things.
2. What the hell does how ugly or not the character is have anything to do with if you'll buy the game or not? Or do you also base your purchasing decisions on how hot the male character in a game is too?

 

[idrago01]

1 - With ME the male character was the default, the games also had the male character on the box art and mainly used the male character for advertising. So I really don't think you can tell much at all from the numbers.
2 - People choosing a male character when given a choice certainly does not mean they would not buy the game if they didn't have the choice. Maybe for the neckbeard idiots, but not for the vast majority of those who make up game sales.

I probably wouldn't have bought odyssey if it didn't have a male option, you can't make a spartan game inspired by the movie 300 and not have a male lead character and expect people to be okay with that. It was bad enough that you weren't able to use a shield.

 

[ipukespiders]

18% fem shep
72% male shep

Bioware shared this stat some time ago, don't have source.

I just wanted to stare at fem Sheppard's ass.

 

[Tschumi]

"Aforementioned executives have now all been canceled due to harassment" so we don't get the PC Gamer spin, but we do get your chucking innuendo "join me in loling at these fools" spin instead. Lucky us

Origins sounds more interesting with this story, i guess he would have died at the hands of those Greek soldiers in the tutorial section or something.. sounds fun.

Every review I've seen for Odyssey says that Kassandra is a far better character with better voice acting... i played her, the end for me~

Just take a moment and realise you're getting triggered by women having any central role whatsoever. Are you just running on automatic at this point? Or do you realise you're getting offended by pretty pointless stuff? Would it really make much of a difference if the sprite spouting over-written dialogue was female or male?

And I'm not even a warrior for feminism. I like opening doors for my girl, i like protecting her... I just don't think these things, the agony of having women in games, matter at all!

I wish there was an opposite to the "woke" derogatory term for someone who is willfully "asleep".. maybe a mix between "blinkered" and "dinosaur"... Blindosaur...

 

[WelshBluebird]

I probably wouldn't have bought odyssey if it didn't have a male option, you can't make a spartan game inspired by the movie 300 and not have a male lead character and expect people to be okay with that.

Why not?

 

[xrnzaaas]

1. I am not sure you can take data about choices when a choice is offered vs how much someone cares if a choice isn't offered. They are two totally separate things.
2. What the hell does how ugly or not the character is have anything to do with if you'll buy the game or not? Or do you also base your purchasing decisions on how hot the male character in a game is too?

Maybe, maybe not.
Of course it matters if the character is attractive or not. I don't expect to control only supermodels in video games, but I don't want to spend up to 100 hours playing an unattractive (or even repulsive) character. That goes for both genders.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Of course it matters if the character is attractive or not. I don't expect to control only supermodels in video games, but I don't want to spend up to 100 hours playing an unattractive (or even repulsive) character. That goes for both genders.

1. And yet I suspect you are fine with the thousands of unattractive and ludicrous looking male characters that you get in video games (seriously - take a step back for a second - so many male leads are just ridiculous looking too!).
2. Why does it even matter? You aren't going to bone them - so why does it actually matter?