What is considered "cool or natural" is based on an individuals personal tastes and experiences. Personally I do not see any problems with a woman wearing any of the outfits that have been shown thus far.
Developers call out Ubisoft on their stance regarding playable female characters
- Thread starter MagicWithEarvin
- Start date
What is considered "cool or natural" is based on an individuals personal tastes and experiences. Personally I do not see any problems with a woman wearing any of the outfits that have been shown thus far.
Razgriz-Specter
Member
Why are people getting upset with Ubisoft over this but as I recall DICE said the exact same thing about BF4 and got a pass.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
But see the other characters as different people. So the "personality" of their movements is not unique to them.
#YesAllWomen happened.
Zoe
Member
You're not asking for a woman though, you're asking for a man's body with a woman's (hooded) head.
Don't be dismissive of a perfectly legitimate comparison. Despite your off-hand dismissal, the clothing options in the Souls games are quite varied, and the weapon options completely change the attack animations of the characters. The animations of the character are completely central to the gameplay of the series, far more than can be said of the AC games, a series which also had multiple player characters sharing the same animation sets as well as female player characters in multiplayer modes.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The other characters just have a swapped out face. That's it. It's still Arno. No one will think or come up with a new story for a character or say "Oh Arno doesn't feel unique because this npc that I know looks like Arno on another person's screen has the same animation." No one said that about Big Boss in Peacewalker, and no one said it about Aiden in Watch Dogs.
How is it possible to have four Arnos in the fiction of the game? Why does he have a face transplant whenever he works with other assassins?
ab.aeterno
Member
Actually, there were absolutely people who took DICE to task. They did not get a pass.
sickvisionz
Banned
It's kinda ironic that the only developer with a E3 conference not hosted by a white guy and who recently put out a game featuring a Native American male lead and an african-american female lead is getting spun as this sexist racist company.
Especially insane from Naughty Dog who puts nothing but white male leads in their games, even ones set in fake worlds with talking animals and elves.
Especially insane from Naughty Dog who puts nothing but white male leads in their games, even ones set in fake worlds with talking animals and elves.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It's not a perfectly legitimate comparison. Dark Souls
-Does not have character animation anywhere near as complex as this game or even a past game like AC3.
-Does not have a main character who has their own personality and story.
-Isn't open world
-Doesn't have the same seamless MP that Unity has
-Isn't built from the ground up
AC2, when it was made, was built from the ground up. They then were developing AC3 behind the scenes while producing a definitive end to Ezio's plot so they reused assets from AC2. AC3 was built completely from the ground up. AC:Liberation, being a spinoff, had Aveline reuse tons of Connor's animations, AC4's world was completely built from the ground up, not only was it huge, it was full of content, and Edward used less reused assets from Connor. AC:Unity is completely built from the ground up. So no it's not the same thing. Or a valid comparison. Because they're two completely different games. You're comparing a game where you create a completely custom character with lower than high quality character rigs and animations to a triple A game made for next gen consoles. That's not a valid comparison.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
ab.aeterno
Member
You should probably expand on this thought.
Stormhammer
Member
I think the difference with AC:U and Souls though, in regard to the multiplayer is that Souls uses character created avatars and AC:U is the actual main character that's been made to fit into cutscenes and the like being used for story co-op. It's a completely different task, imo. The games are setup up completely different.
That's probably because Big Boss is Big Boss and Watch_Dogs is brand new. The AC franchise has become so big in popularity and a blur that being your own Assassin is long overdue and they've had 4 years of experience of inclusiveness and equal representation to just have a playable Assassin in a...fuck, I even know what a main AC title is anymore.
They did explain the whole thing further
http://www.gamefront.com/assassins-creed-unity-devs-truly-didnt-see-controversy-coming/
So ubisoft does agree
While I agree with some of your points, a few things you claim about Dark Souls are completely untrue.
It's no less open world than AC. You can continuously travel between areas without any loading screens, and some areas are quite large.
You can enter another player's game world for co-op or invasions without launching any sort of separate mode. How is that not seamless?
This is a marketing term and it really doesn't mean anything.
It's no less open world than AC. You can continuously travel between areas without any loading screens, and some areas are quite large.
You can enter another player's game world for co-op or invasions without launching any sort of separate mode. How is that not seamless?
This is a marketing term and it really doesn't mean anything.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
No one advertised this series as a "make your own assassin" game. That's not what this series is or what it's going to become. So no that's not "long overdue" when that's not even part of the series in the first place.
The character animation is completely central to the actual gameplay of the series, is extremely varied between weapon types, and to the best of my knowledge is not awkward or unbalanced depending on the gender you choose.
Irrelevent, as we're discussing co-op which already has the animation set shared between different people as perceived by your avatar.
It is an open world action RPG.
The multiplayer is technically pretty similar.
The first one wasn't? This has what to do with sharing animations between characters, something which every AC game including this one does?
Your "explanation" doesn't make sense in context. This is why no one buys it. You're saying he has a unique personality, even though that personality is shared by other characters from his perspective.
Has anyone called them a "sexist racist company?" Just because they have a relatively good track record (and only relatively) doesn't mean they're immune from criticism if they come up short.
Why do you continue to cling to the underpinning mechanics of the multiplayer as your reason for dismissing the desire for female characters?
By Ubisoft's own admission they had given thought to allowing players to do this, they straight up acknowledge, word for word, that they "cut the female avatar."
Not because it "Didn't make sense if people weren't all Arno" but because they claimed it would be more work. Ubisoft's own statements conflict directly with your stance that it doesn't make sense on a mechanical level, because they've already indirectly said they'd have made it work by stating that mechanics weren't the reason they cut the feature.
HoodWinked
Member
dark souls character is more a vehicle to see the story you barely interact with it there isnt even any voiced dialog for the main character. so its rather easy to do a mesh swap. also i think the bulk of development of the souls games was done for demon's souls and every souls games has just built on top of that. also these are all inter-generational games and yet it took 2.5 years between DS1 to DS2.
where as AC unity is the first AC to really make the jump you can see it in its lighting, environmental detail and npc density.
where as AC unity is the first AC to really make the jump you can see it in its lighting, environmental detail and npc density.
I pretty much agree with this, I know there's a lot of misogyny in gaming but I just don't think ubisoft is in the forefront or really a good target for peoples hatred.
That's not even to mention the freedom cry dlc which touched on some very important minority issues which most publishers would avoid like the plague.
I wonder what the break down of men to women is at ubi.
You don't know how they wanted to implement the female character. Back then they might not even have been interested in creating a seamless experience.
Portugeezer
Member
Ok mr go out and watch people, I am sure many do. Women have larger hips, larger pelvis, for child birth, women move differently to men, sure they could move like a man, but if I move like a woman I am sure people would find it at least a little bit strange, nothing mind blowing but strange nonetheless. If you want to represent the character to not be weird then they should move like the average man/woman and that would involve new animations if they don't have female animations in place already.
I don't think it's a good excuse from Ubisoft however, they make some ambitious games so this animations stuff is BS, but to imply you can simply use the same for men and women is wrong.
But I also don't think developers should need to justify their reason for a male lead, I don't know how the co-op works, but I guess the story campaign is with a male lead character, and you can do some missions co-op as the same character? If so, I can understand why they wouldn't have female PC's, this is not multiplayer, just seamless integration of co-op in which the PC of the main game is a male.
No need to justify that, Ubisoft fucked themselves by mentioning animations though.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Darks Souls isn't even as expansive as AC2 so no. It's not open world. It's about as open world as Skyward Sword. Not to mention that they said that the city in this game is bigger than every island location in AC4 combined. Dark Souls carefully crafted paths and level design are it's claim to fame. Not the open expansive areas. And we're not even considering the climbing..the seamless MP in Dark Souls has a different goal than the seamless MP in ACUnity. Similar yes, but not the same. And built from the ground up=doesn't reuse any assets from previous games. Not exactly a marketing term for a series known for only doing that once. This is the second time they've built a game from the ground up.
Right, but thats exactly my point. If they opted to drop female characters because they felt the seemless multiplayer wouldn't work with them they should have said that from the get go, but they didn't. They talked about how much extra work it would have been to add them.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
False. The stated that the amount of work involved was PART of the reason why. There's other stuff involved that we as consumers simply don't know anything about but sexism isn't part of it.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...but-its-not-relevant-in-assassins-creed-unity
Vermillion
Banned
Eh, it implies that the female is secondary.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It kinda is because the main character is a male. That doesn't imply that the female characters who will inevitably appear in the game won't be important. A female playable character just isn't a super high priority in this game specifically. For all we know, another Ubisoft team is creating a next gen AC with a female assassin.
Vermillion
Banned
All true. It still reflects the attitude that a male character will always be standard. "A playable female character was planned but didn't make the cut" is getting common. I don't think Ubi should be getting attacked for this, but there you are.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Neither do I because things like this happen all the time. Things get cut from production. That's a fact of life, gamers would be in an uproar if they learned just how many characters are cut from narratives.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
You have been talking and talking in the thread about the technicals and the vision of this game but this (bolded) is a huge problem. The females that this game will portray that are "high priority" is for the entertainment of these men, or whomever the main character is.
You know, now that I think of it... In AC brotherhood, I can recall that there were female models in there that would help you in battle. Ironically enough, I had a squad of nothing BUT female assassin's. All this animation excuses sound real real dull when previous games show that is definitely not the case.
Ubisoft would have just been better off saying that they didn't want a female lead and called it a day.
However which brings me to this. Every time I envision a game with a 4 piece team, there is always 1 women. Left 4 dead comes to mind, JRPGs as well, even some 3rd person games like Gears ... So what could of been so important in the story line that would have caused them to not even test the picture with a female?
The Librarian
Banned
Why not? It shows they don't value inclusion to a great degree.
Zoe
Member
Resources aren't infinite. You're never going to get 100% inclusion in games with set characters.
The Librarian
Banned
Razgriz-Specter
Member
Oh ok, I remembered some on here(myself included) complaining but I didn't know it was a big thing.
Zoe
Member
In the single player?
The Librarian
Banned
RadarScope1
Member
I think it's less about the game itself and much more about the horseshit answers the dev team is giving when asked. I guess this is why publishers employ PR handlers. I would think someone who holds a job at any level above fast food cook would have more common sense than these guys, but I guess not. Hence why other devs are stepping in to call BS. Someone at Ubi's PR dept is having a really bad E3.I just think that it's really ridiculous imo to target this series for this type of discussion when it's represented woman more so than a lot of other game franchises. Including a bundle as the reason to buy one of the new handhelds at the time while advertising their female character. Who's story was so good that it was the only one in the series to ever win a writing award while some of the other ones were nominated.
Not to mention the fact that most of the people up in arms about this were misinformed about many different mechanics of the game in the first place.
All that being said I'm not trying to sound patronizing though so I apologize that last post was rude.
Vermillion
Banned
True.
I believe that we should try to change the industry as a whole to the point where developers don't see a straight white male as the standard. I don't feel like singling them out for not doing that is the way to go about it, though. Especially since we know Ubisoft isn't the only one doing it.
Besides, Ubisoft has given us diverse characters, in ways that are better than what people have been suggesting they do here (unless someone suggested replacing Arno outright). I don't think "good enough" is good enough... I just believe that the anger is misplaced.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
I don't find a clear focus and production schedule to be a huge problem. Dude, you're acting like every woman in the game will be a hooker or just a plot device. Anyone who's played AC before knows that that just isn't true. AC is full of strong female characters.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The fact that they've represented females and especially minorities more so than a large majority of triple A developers. Btw, this isn't halo reach or game where you customize the main character's gender. You may ask why, but the answer is because this series has been going for seven years and has a set plot and lore.
The Librarian
Banned
And that's great, but I'd still like to play as a girl.
Zoe
Member
No, I haven't. It appears to be a dual protagonist that doesn't require anywhere near the amount of resources that this series would to implement.
Ascenion
Member
But that was different. That game was like Mass Effect they only ever called you 6, or any of the other swapable pronouns. Plus reach isn't really about noble 6 he's just a window to the story not the story.