Assassin’s Creed Unity – No Girls Allowed

Day One of E3 has just passed and we’re already into our first controversy of the season with the new Assassin’s Creed. “Unity is about carving your own unique path,” said Alex Amancio during the Ubisoft briefing.

Unity completely changes the way Assassin’s Creed feels by allowing you to play through the game’s story in online co-op with up to three friends. You’ll always see yourself as Arno in the game while your co-op buddies will appear as their own, customised avatars. The game will continue the Assassin’s Creed tradition of gear upgrades and this will also be reflected on your avatar in your friend’s game.

Essentially, you get to choose the face that you present to the world. As long as it’s the face of a man.

Talking to Polygon, Amancio said that female playable characters have been dropped from Unity due to the cost of development.

“It’s double the animations, it’s double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets,” Amancio said. “Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work.”

In the game’s co-op mode, players will have custom gear but always view themselves as Arno, Unity’s star. Friends are displayed as different characters with the faces of other assassins.

“Because of that, the common denominator was Arno,” Amancio said. “It’s not like we could cut our main character, so the only logical option, the only option we had, was to cut the female avatar.”

And so, Arno becomes a man with no female friends. No women allowed in his brotherhood.

Ubisoft technical director James Therien was pressed by Videogamer on the reason for this choice.

“Again, it’s not a question of philosophy or choice in this case at all I don’t really [inaudible] it was a question of focus and a question of production. Yes, we have tonnes of resources, but we’re putting them into this game, and we have huge teams, nine studios working on this game and we need all of these people to make what we are doing here.”

I get that yes, female characters require different animations or you run the risk of the famous FemShep Dress Incident.

And I get that you’d need to create two models for every item of clothing that the player can choose.

It’s just so galling to hear the cost argument made for one of the biggest, best-selling video game brands in the world. They have nine studios working on this project.

The Assassin’s Creed series has included female assassins in the multiplayer for years now. Assassin’s Creed Liberation is centred entirely around a female protagonist. They know how to do this. They made such positive steps.

With Unity, Ubisoft could finally make women feel like they’re part of the game world. They’ve created a game where you get to be both the male, story-driven protagonist and your own creation. They could let me show my friends my own, ass-kicking Assassin self during the French Revolution, like they do for their male fans.

They’d rather spend the money somewhere else.