I’m sure that you’re aware of the controversy surrounding AC: Unity, but I’m here to explain it to you, I’ll also refresh your memory
Assassins Creed Unity took to the stage at E3 this week, more about that here: https://xblgamerhub.com/XBlog/assassins-creed-unity-e3-reveal
The reveal was rich with exciting content and blockbuster CGI, but there was an elephant in the room that stood out; four similar looking white guys. Of course I’m just repeating what the internet is saying, after doing my research I don’t necessarily agree with it. For me I couldn’t really tell if they all looked the same because we couldn’t see there faces, only the bottom halves, but nevertheless a small voice of the gaming community was upset about the sausage fest, so much so that it forced technical director James Therien to publicly defend the decision in an interview with VideoGamer about the decision to stick with four white male assassins:
“It was on our feature list until not too long ago, but it’s a question of focus and production. So we wanted to make sure we had the best experience for the character. A female character means that you have to redo a lot of animation, a lot of costumes. It would have doubled the work on those things… And I mean it’s something the team really wanted, but we had to make a decision. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality of game development.”
Of course basically this gave the impression that the excuse was laziness, but I happen to think that people don’t truly grasp what he meant:
Assassins Creed Unity is a story driven game which follows a character named “Arno Dorian” during the French Revolution, whenever you’re playing campaign, you will appear as Arno and the rest of your team will appear as the three supporting protagonists, yet to them, they’re Arno as well. They would need to make female counterparts for all four of the male protagonists in the game, imagine how much effort this would take to do and the complications it would cause with the games story. Giving the player the choice to choose between a male and female assassin causes a wide range of problems not just with that formula but with historical accuracy which AC is known for, the franchise always follows real people in real events, this isn’t Mass Effect, this is Assassins Creed, choice isn’t always going to be an option.
I will admit however that this team would look better with some ethnic diversity, some people were complaining about the “lack of colour” as well as the absence of a female, but again we have the problem of historical accuracy;
This is French revolution people, there were no Africans or Chinese people running around France in this time period. I honestly cannot believe myself that anyone could accuse Ubisoft, one of the most ethnically diverse companies, who release some of the most ethnically diverse games to be accused of taking a racist and/or sexist approach with there current title, without giving it some thought first. I myself was on the fence about the subject when I first heard about it because I knew little about the details, but working in the media means it’s my job to research, and upon my research I stumbled on this opinion based off of facts and reasoning. The ironic thing is that being angry about a game for having too many white male characters is racist in itself to white males, yes they do dominate the gaming industry in terms of main characters, but this game in particular shouldn’t have had to worry about that since it has so may valid reason to place us in these roles. We’re talking about a company who constantly reminds us at the beginning of each game how ethnically diverse they are, a company which has placed us in the role of an Arabic, Italian, Indian and then at last, yes a Caucasian-English Assassin. Are we all forgetting Assassins Creed Liberation, and although it carries the drawback of only being released on Playstation Vita the game put fans in the role of a Female half African Assassin, what about the DLC for Assassins Creed 4 which let you take the role of an oppressed African Male and fight for the freedom of his people? These games obviously carried a very strong message; woman can empower themselves and slavery is wrong.
Of course the decision is up to you in the end, but I urge you to think the decision through before you go spreading any ill news about a company which has done so much for fans in the past.
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