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I don't really see a problem with this. The arc of social and political correctness is slowly bending towards eqauilty, and when certain key players temporarily impede that progress, like Ubisoft for instance, they get the backlash they deserve, and we move on. Look, we got 'em. They wanted to cut some costs so they didn't put women in the game? Okay, that was stupid, because now female gamers are mad. And contrary to popular belief, the video game demographic is now split about 50/50 between genders. And I don't think Ubisoft would have ever dreamed of only doing female characters, because that would make the men mad.
But anyways, they know now. But you can still play as women in this upcoming game, in the versus multiplayer, just not the main story line. The whole thing, this assassin brotherhood, er, sisterhood, it's all fantasy anyways. If there really were a hidden league of assassins, the women in that league wouldn't be parkouring around, doing backflips and stabbing dudes femme fatale style. They'd be using their looks and charm to infiltrate and poison people. In fact, no one would be parkouring around, everyone would be using their looks and charms to poison people, women would just be better at it. Though that's not the game, that game would be far more ambitious. Instead, we have this crazy interpretation of what an assassin is circa the 18th century and all women wanted was to be a part of that fantasy, but now they have no creed to live by and Ubisoft fucked up.
It's funny because about six years ago four-player co-op was really starting to catch on and no one could have cared less about whether you could play as a woman or not. I mean, a lot of games offered it but some didn't, and they didn't get chewed out for it. But now that Ubisoft's getting crap (and they should, what? this massive company can't hire a voice actress?) I don't doubt that this will be the last time an all-male cast will be offered.
Ubisoft churns out these shitty games every 8 months anyways, by January 2015 there'll be a new Assassin's Creed announced with a female lead I'm sure.
And I'm sorry to ramble on, but what the hell? The were trying to cut costs because they didn't have a voice actress and they didn't want to pay for designers to model the female characters? Like I said before, these games always have multiplayer in which you can play as a huge variety of characters, 10 or 12 or so, four of five of which end up being female. In other words, those female models are already in the game! I think this whole "we wanted to cut costs thing" is a half-assed excuse. It was "never in the plans" to put female characters in the story line, they simply forgot to. That's my conspiracy theory anyways.
But yeah, Ubisoft fucked up, brave new world, gender equality, yada yada yada, Damsels are bad. Let's all move on. |
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