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[Shai-Tan]

It's the requirement of videogame mechanics, you have to advance and kill enemies.

But do you believe it's more realistic to have a super athletic and strong dude doing it, or a toddler?

It's the same principle.

there is a case to be made for more finesse ie the Jackie Chan approach which leans in a bit more into to the not playing fair aspect of it but it’s still ridiculous for either gender. The unreality of action hero is much more deep than how physically fit someone is.

 

[bishopcruz]

Eh, about the only one I think SHOULD have been the main is likely Cassandra, and maybe Evie (though I liked the twins dynamic).

The problem was that Kassandra being a female in that world as written never felt real in a series that is at least trying for a veneer of historical accuracy because no one treats her as unique or different when she WOULD be. The greeks of that era were super sexist by our standards today, and having SOME mention of that would only have made the narrative stronger.

 

[Goro Majima]

Two things I am finding an issue in this thread:

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.

After playing through Odyssey twice with both Alexios and Kassandra, I don't think Ubisoft sacrificed anything there. Hell they incorporated the duality by making them brother and sister and embraced that dynamic.

The only thing that could have suffered is any part of the story that would be gender specific and they still had those instances (mostly thinking the DLC). In those times they would just create them a little bit differently depending on the POV of the character.

• 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.

I will say that Ubisoft is at least being consistent and made both Eivor's pretty unappealing.

At least outside the character select screen where they look good? Maybe their hair and makeup is what is dragging the whole thing down?

 

[Thugnificient]

Eh, about the only one I think SHOULD have been the main is likely Cassandra, and maybe Evie (though I liked the twins dynamic).

The problem was that Kassandra being a female in that world as written never felt real in a series that is at least trying for a veneer of historical accuracy because no one treats her as unique or different when she WOULD be. The greeks of that era were super sexist by our standards today, and having SOME mention of that would only have made the narrative stronger.

Yeah, that was sort of puzzling to me. I'm not sure what they were going for. On one hand, they had the politics of ancient Greece pretty well-done with the way Lakonia was portrayed(though once again, they went the fantasy route with their military might) and had all these illustrious figures such as Sokrates, Perikles, and Kleon. On the other hand those guys just accepted a woman as if nothing was unusual which was sort of jarring. At least acknowledge that her being a woman in this political world of man is something of note and don't brush it off as a regular occurrence because the world it is based on and the way they portrayed it simply doesn't suggest that.

 

[Inuteu]

Sparta game without a Leonidas look a like

yeah that will work sure

 

[Bryank75]

Xbox should cancel their marketing deal for AC Valhalla or it could be seen as supporting a sexist and racist organization.... what was said about Boyega was disgraceful and the treatment of women at Ubisoft is outrageous.

 

[GrayFoxPL]

Assassin's Creed Syndicate was originally going to feature a more even split between its two playable leads, twins Jacob and Evie Frye. After meddling from executives, including recently-resigned Serge Hascoët, the balance became much more skewed in Jacob's favour. In the final game, it is a rough 40/60 split between Evie and Jacob

Huh? I platinumed this one and I didn't feel this was the case.

Assassin's Creed Origins. The original story saw protagonist Bayek killed off early in the game to be replaced by his wife Aya. In the final game, Aya has a massively reduced role.

So now the dumb ending makes sense where Aya, out of nowhere, takes over the central plot and Bayek is showed to the sidelines.

 

[Guardian's Light]

This was true in the 90s, people wanted marines and bulky action movie heroes like Duke Nukem
Today, this thing has heavily reduced, but one thing has always been true: people will like or dislike a character if It's good or bad, no matter what sex it is

Dino Crisis' Regina was the goat, as well as re3 Jill, and Lara in the 90s - first 2000s was reaally loved, as well as many female characters in fighting games cast
And what about Samus?

This said, in regards to AC series, for me is good the way it is:

Every protagonist is ok, I loved Ezio, Evie and Alexios in particular, Kassandra is awesome and a little better than its brother, but not having Alexios would have been a waste, loved its slight comicity, and he's a great show to watch in battle, reminds me of a 300 spartan character

no one of them really sucks, imo

I'd have liked to play Unity and ac3 as a woman tho, awesome settings and opportunities, but I'm not totally in favour of the protagonist sex choice, imho this thing reduced their characterization by a little

 

[Elfstar]

I don't need to explain anything as I'm not the one feeling emasculated with female lead characters. I care about the character being the right fit for the game, not its gender or likeness. What I read from this thread is a lot of pseudo bad boys feeling emasculated by a female lead and a lot of immature children feeling upset because said female lead is not "pretty" or "sexy", as if they need that to jerk off.

So basically no argumentation whatsoever and a bunch of strawmen tossed around. I see.

 

[BigBooper]

That claim doesn't make sense. Characters in a huge game like that are not designed by one person. There's always a few people, and the ones with the most influence decided. Just another person whining about their artistic vision.

 

[Damigos]

I prefer female only than “diversity”

 

[ExpandKong]

Wow announcing years later that these games were all supposed to have female leads but some vague Executives held you back? What an easy way to earn some Twitter cred without actually doing anything.

 

[MilkLizard]

I'm not big into Assassins Creed, how many of the games are female protagonist only?

1 I think and that was the VITA one.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I’m just picturing your 3rd playthrough

Alexios again. Still ladies man.

 

[junguler]

for me, it all depends on the character design, voice actor and clothing options, if all things are equal in terms of quality and both voice actors have done a great job i rather pick the female option. both evie and kassandra were better voice acted than their brothers imo and that's why i enjoyed playing as them more (haven't played origins because of the triple drm stuff)

 

[EverydayBeast]

Sex of character doesn't matter that's how I have always seen video games.

 

[Azurro]

In a more serious reply, what matters is to make the character interesting and developing their role in the game world, where it makes sense.

Whether it's Dante, Solid Snake, Lara or Aloy, the sex doesn't really matter, but if you are going to make a story driven game then it should be a set character. If you make the protagonist a module to plug in and out, then you can't explore certain parts of the other world you are creating, that would react to the main character.

I mean, you can have two characters as long as the missions, world and people you meet are tailored to each scenario, like Resident Evil 2, for example. If it's a character to be plugged in and out, it just feels superficial and ultimately uninteresting.

 

[Roni]

New report claims Assassin's Creed developers were pressured into minimising female protagonists

Alexios was never meant to be playable.

www.pcgamer.com

Ignoring the PCgamer spin here are the facts:

Assassin's Creed Syndicate was originally going to feature a more even split between its two playable leads, twins Jacob and Evie Frye. After meddling from executives, including recently-resigned Serge Hascoët, the balance became much more skewed in Jacob's favour. In the final game, it is a rough 40/60 split between Evie and Jacob

Assassin's Creed Origins. The original story saw protagonist Bayek killed off early in the game to be replaced by his wife Aya. In the final game, Aya has a massively reduced role.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey was going to originally only feature Kassandra as its player character. Hascoët, and unnamed people within Ubisoft's marketing department, claimed that games with women leads wouldn't sell, and so Kassandra's brother Alexios was included as an alternative lead .




Aforementioned executives have now all been canceled due to harassment, so expect Ubisoft to have full creative freedom from now on.

I believe that, because Aya is one of the statues in the original Assassin Fortress in Masyaf, not Bayek. Haven't played Odyssey, but Bayek was one of my favorite protagonists in recent years, so glad that turned out alright. Although Aya was a badass too and could've used a standalone DLC like 4 had for Adéwalé. Her fight in Origins at the end against one of the targets is super cool...

 

[BDubsLegend]

Wow announcing years later that these games were all supposed to have female leads but some vague Executives held you back? What an easy way to earn some Twitter cred without actually doing anything.

Clearly devs are playing 3D Chess with this thing. Why else would they reveal this?!

 

[JerryinSoCal]

Yeah Alexios comes across more natural to me. Kass just sounds like she is trying to put on a manly voice. Idk. Guess I’m gonna say what again.

She was a terrible voice actress for the game, she sounded like someone making up an accent and she was. The guy who played Alexios wasn't going to win an award for his work but when the serious parts happened he sounded much more believable than she did.

 

[cormack12]

I feel Ubi could have done a full duality with Odyssey. Kassandra being Deimos would mean all that sexism shit was out the windows cos she was basocally a fucking god. And you would have had the same story but from two perspectives. This would have took some work though.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

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.

She was terrible, sounded like a cartoon character doing an accent.

 

[diffusionx]

She was a terrible voice actress for the game, she sounded like someone making up an accent and she was. The guy who played Alexios wasn't going to win an award for his work but when the serious parts happened he sounded much more believable than she did.

Alexios reminded me of Balki from Perfect Strangers, which I found hilarious and somehow it worked.

 

[GrayFoxPL]

Evie was the best.

I'd loved AC Syndicate 2 with Jacob and Evie again.

Or maybe not, they would've messed the characters up now.

 

[carlosrox]

Sometimes executives make the right decisions!
Good on em in this case.

 

[GymWolf]

She was terrible, sounded like a cartoon character doing an accent.

This is the price you pay when you make historical games, do you think that most greek people trying to talk english are less hilarious? Especially with the writing from ubisoft??

There is a reason why people mock italians or indians etc. when they talk english, foreign accent make not native english talker sound funny.

If cassandra sound like a cartton character, alexios sound like a porn actor or a cheap villain in some z tier movie, they are both hilarious in a way but kassandra was at least charming for me.

 

[Guileless]

Evie was the best.

I'd loved AC Syndicate 2 with Jacob and Evie again.

Or maybe not, they would've messed the characters up now.

Evie is definitely hot. It's the accent I think. I always preferred her to the guy.

(I got sick of the game after about 8 hours though).

 

[Xenon]

How fucking dare they cater to their primary customers!

I have loved the Tomb Raider series from day 1 not for teh boobies, but because she was a bad ass character. If they went this route I'd be fine with it. But something tells me we'd end up with like the cybxrg in Battlefield V. So they probably made the safe choice. Since its not so much the gender switch that is the problem, but rather the identity politics baggage that comes with it.

 

[Red Rackham's Revenge]

She was terrible, sounded like a cartoon character doing an accent.

I think they were told to put on the accents.

This is the price you pay when you make historical games, do you think that most greek people trying to talk english are less hilarious? Especially with the writing from ubisoft??

Yes. Either have them speak Greek with subtitles, or have them speak without an accent. We're suppose to hear them speaking as though they're speaking their own language. They wouldn't be speaking with an accent in their own language so they shouldn't be in English.

 

[PleaseWaitStation4]

All games should give me the choice, so when I play I can not choose the female HAHAHAHHAAH!!!!

 

[idrago01]

Evie is definitely hot. It's the accent I think. I always preferred her to the guy.

(I got sick of the game after about 8 hours though).

Same here, she's got a cool personality, attractive, and feminine and I preferred to play as her, I also liked 2B from Nier automatica. It's not limited to guys either, most girls want to play as attractive people. I wouldn't want to play a game as doughnut nate either. Also, it seems the general trend recently is straight beta men who loudly promote female empoerment and deny that female attractiveness is important or talk about the "male gaze" are usually the worst closeted deviants or abusers.

 

[idrago01]

That's a pretty sad commentary on the gaming community, if true. But I don't think it's true. This forum is not representative of anything, other than the online enthusiast community. That's a fraction of gamers out there.

So hollywood doesn't use attractive females to promote their movies? neither does general marketing and advertising? What do you think happened to comics when the milkshake women took over marvel and decided to make superheroines look like chubby or androgenous boys? As I said the straight beta men who speak loudest for female empowerment and try to be against the "male gaze" are ususally the worst closeted deviants and abusers.

 

[Roman Empire]

Just give me a good game, then you can think about what to insert or remove.

 

[NullZ3r0]

I think their decisions were data-driven. They didn't think their core demographic would want to play with a female.

IMHO Evie and Kass were cuties and I'd rather play with them.

 

[Gerdav]

Give it a couple more years, and all main characters will be “non binary” to avoid offending the snowflake nation.

 

[ThePhantomKnight]

I'm not big into Assassins Creed, how many of the games are female protagonist only?

None I think ,at least not on console. Maybe I’m misremembering, but there may have been an assassin creed set in China or India on a handheld device that had a woman protag

 

[DragoonWalker]

Man I miss the days when games could cater to a purely male audience and no one would question it, or if games had a female lead also no one would question it. Sure the latter was in far smaller number but if they had continued down that path and just slowly increased the number of female protagonists without raising a fuss about privilege and making men out to be the enemy, maybe we wouldn't be in this unpleasant culture war we're in right now...

 

[JimmyRustler]

With the series going more RPG with Origins and Odyseey it would say it does make sense to not cut out the male protag.

I can only speak for myself of course but ingame decision making makes a huge difference whether I am willing to play as a female or not. For instance, I do not have a problem whatsoever to play an action adventure like Tomb Raider as a women but an RPG... nah. Can't do it. Tried to play as fem shep in Mass Effect once and couldn't take it very long. I just don't feel it.

Guess many people look at this the same way.

 

[CitizenX]

Are we still talking about Ubisoft here?

Yea, their knees are so bent they can barley crawl into work. They have some of the best environmental artist in the world you cant deny that, just wish they would hire a good writing team.

 

[idrago01]

Man I miss the days when games could cater to a purely male audience and no one would question it, or if games had a female lead also no one would question it. Sure the latter was in far smaller number but if they had continued down that path and just slowly increased the number of female protagonists without raising a fuss about privilege and making men out to be the enemy, maybe we wouldn't be in this unpleasant culture war we're in right now...

Video games used to be about a group of men and some women who would make games for other like-minded people to enjoy. No fake outrage, no SJW's or feminists pushing their agenda, no cancel culture, no twitter. It was indeed good times and it's sad to see this happen to every male dominated hobby.

 

[Victoria3D]

New report claims Assassin's Creed developers were pressured into minimising female protagonists

Alexios was never meant to be playable.

www.pcgamer.com

Assassin's Creed Syndicate was originally going to feature a more even split between its two playable leads, twins Jacob and Evie Frye. After meddling from executives, including recently-resigned Serge Hascoët, the balance became much more skewed in Jacob's favour. In the final game, it is a rough 40/60 split between Evie and Jacob

Assassin's Creed Origins. The original story saw protagonist Bayek killed off early in the game to be replaced by his wife Aya. In the final game, Aya has a massively reduced role.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey was going to originally only feature Kassandra as its player character. Hascoët, and unnamed people within Ubisoft's marketing department, claimed that games with women leads wouldn't sell, and so Kassandra's brother Alexios was included as an alternative lead .

Wow. All I can say is, good riddance to those executives. Those games would have been way better without the male characters pointlessly shoehorned in. I always found Jacob's quests to be a major downer after finishing an Evie quest. Never even touched the male character in Odyssey and I played Origins with Bayek swapped out to Aya's character model using the Animus Control Panel. The game always felt more natural to play with Aya. The biggest issue of course was that she still had Bayek's voice.

Three games irreparably damaged by meddling from bad suits. The story of capitalism.

 

[checkcola]

I remember the first game I had a gender choice in was KotOR way back when and I tried playing as female Revan, but I couldn't get into it. I only ever did dark side/light side options as male Revan. That's just me.

I have a handful of AC games, but mostly on my backlog I've gotten from sales here or there. I did play that one game on Vita way back when as it came with my Vita. I liked it fine. These games do seem like the most stereotypical gaming 'products' out there. Almost like those yearly sports games.

It doesn't/wouldn't surprise me if the big wigs wanted to maximize customer base by giving gender options. It also wouldn't surprise me if some people talking about it this year at this point, wanted to score internet woke points.

 

[SentientStone]

So they created the entire cancel culture movement just so that they can harmonize the outrage of pizza.

 

[Spokker]

In games where you choose your character, I play as a female 99% of the time. However, I've come to the realization I'm in the minority every time I've tried to research it.

You can search for statistics on what gender Mass Effect players chose and they are overwhelmingly for male Shep, even for Mass Effect 3 which had a reversible cover featuring femshep and dedicated advertising for her.

The executives were correct on this one.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

This *writer* is smocking crack.

There were no gender roles to be explored in ancient Greece: women had no legal personhood and were considered part of the household much like cupboards and pottery. They were forcibly married in their early teens amongst other things so the husband could chose a husband for his window after his own death. The only place where they had some semblance of status was Sparta and that was mostly because the men would always be out there fighting.

Obviously that sucked and we're all glad things have changed for the better but that's the historical truth.

 

[Elcid]

Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield are two of the best female protagonists. God they were well done. Strong and feminine, a little cliche but still felt real. That is all.

 

[MisterBrimstone]

Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield are two of the best female protagonists. God they were well done. Strong and feminine, a little cliche but still felt real. That is all.

Look man I love those characters but they didn't look like special forces even one bit. Jill looked like the waitress for some weird luxury airline.

 

[Gp1]

...but that's the historical truth.

Kingdom come: deliverance tried that way and got hammerd by the gaming "media"

Although i have almost every single game of the AC franchise, i've never cared too much about the series...
I didn't even knew that Odissey could be played with alexios until i began game. The entire marketing campaign/hands-on/media photo etc, almost exclusively only showed Kassandra.

 

[Megatron]

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.

‘a small minority of people would bat an eye’ is highly unlikely given that 2/3s of players chose to play as Alexios. Those are the people buying the game. I think it’s fine to let them play as the character they want to. (Full disclosure, I played as Cassandra) I don’t think there’s any problem with choice. Like you say, they need to a better job in Creating variance in the choices. However, putting in choices means creating differences. Can you imagine how offended a certain segment would be if the male character was stronger and faster than the female character? So instead, we get a stripped down experience, a lack of choices in order to keep people from being offended, and predictably, they are offended anyway.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

Kingdom come: deliverance tried that way and got hammerd by the gaming "media"

Although i have almost every single game of the AC franchise, i've never cared too much about the series...
I didn't even knew that Odissey could be played with alexios until i began game. The entire marketing campaign/hands-on/media photo etc, almost exclusively only showed Kassandra.

Well, my point isn't that the game should reflect the reality of life in ancient Greece. It's just that pretending that Pericles Athens was a time and place where gender roles could be successfully explored is just pure ignorance on the *writer* who couldn't even bothered to quickly browse the wiki before hitting publish on a pice of low quality wokebait.

Hell, they even had wife jails in their homes to lock the woman away when there were guests being entertained.