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[Crossing Eden]

There's a reason to change that, if it you feel you need to change it, if you want a female character in a co-op mode.

There's no reason to change that because everyone is the same character in co-op and this game has a set narrative. The player always sees themselves as the main character and sees everyone else with a different face.

 

[Ascenion]

Except they'd planned on having some of the stand ins be women. But then cut it. Unless the guy was lying about having planned on it. It fits the idea that random assassins are helping you. Just because you see Arno, doesn't mean other people have to. If another player sees some other random dude assassin, it makes 0 artistic difference if it's a woman. It's still a stand in.

They decided they didn't want to spend the resources on it.

Another question, is that when you do co-op, do you always see the same 3 stand ins? Or are there lots of different random assassins?

Looks to be the same 3 stand ins with varying weapons depending on what each player is equipped with.

 

[blankempathy]

Are people really wondering why the annual reheating of assassins creed doesn't seem to have much effort put into it?

Pretty much. This isn't them being sexist etc. I actually believe their claims about cutting women because it is too much work. Thats why you see a lot of corners cut or in this case the removal of female assassin's playable customized characters. Ubisoft wants these games packaged and shipped out at the end of october every year so they can have your money. Thats why we have day one patchs or have games "fixed" later down the road via patching. But hey the general consumer seems to be ok with the industries ship now fix later system put in place.

 

[Doomburrito7]

It fits the idea that random assassins are helping you. Just because you see Arno, doesn't mean other people have to. If another player sees some other random dude assassin, it makes 0 artistic difference if it's a woman. It's still a stand in.

But then the only playable character would still be Arno

 

[Azih]

(Jumping in the middle because can't go through 700 posts of this)

In the end only technical and managerial staff at Ubisoft knows what the technical and budgetary restrictions there are on on AC V. Everybody else is completely and totally speculating. We have to keep that in mind.

Further a story with a character generic enough to be both male and female might be very different than what the AC V writes want to do.

I mean looking at AC 2, it would be incredibly bizarre and off putting to have a female skin of Ezio that does exactly the same things that Ezio does in that game's cut scenes and story bits.

It works for Saint's Row because the characters in Saint's Row make no god damn sense (intentionally and hilariously).

 

[besada]

I'm certainly not telling people that buying or not buying it is the only course of action. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of complaining about missing stuff.

There isn't anything absurd about complaining that a game doesn't have things in it that you want in it. We do it all the time, in nearly every thread. It's usually about resolution, frame rate, or game play elements, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with telling a company that you'd like the option to play as a different gender, orientation, or ethnicity.

 

[ComputerMKII]

In order to make money you have to offer what your customers want so what's wrong with complaining or modifying your game once enough people complain (e.g. the Tomodachi Life controversy)?

 

[Infinite]

There's no reason to change that because everyone is the same character in co-op and this game has a set narrative. The player always sees themselves as the main character and sees everyone else with a different face.

The narrative could have been witten to accommodate for playable female characters.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Option A was snarky, I will admit that. My point in including it was that some people seem so outraged that it seems to suggest they they really think it is option A.

I don't think having a female lead, or "hey we have females on our dev team" is an automatic get out of jail free card. That sounds like the "I have a black friend" defense. The internal biases means that they just express themselves in the way they make decisions and write the story. It is not an active choice of "we can't let a women be our boss" or "we don't want to include playable women" decision.

Again, these options were presented as an ALTERNATIVE to those who say this was a money issue related to rigging and animations. These options were not presented at you.

Oh ok. Well those questions are all easily answered by the track record of the company itself.

 

[J.W.Crazy]

I agree with you that it takes additional resources. It just doesn't mean they have to mo-cap 8000 more animations.

You might think this is pedantry, I just wanted to point out that it's not the same.

I don't think anyone can deny the reality of the 480MB available memory on PS3 and how much everything has been pushed on that system while it's quite easy to deny the way Ubisoft argued their reasoning.

It's the same thing to me. The argument should be that inclusion of female player characters is important and shouldn't be considered easily cut from the game. Attacking their reason for cutting just allows them to deny the issue. The problem is how they prioritize things not that they do.

 

[Zomba13]

Yeah, I was super surprised that not one of the four new characters were female. It' not like being an assassin is a boys club as we can see in Liberation and ACIV there are female assassin's that can rival or out perform the men. They could easily just use one of the male characters animation set for a female character. If they need Arno to be the main man because they've written it that way then I guess it's fine but the co-op character that pop in and out could have had a female or two there.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

So what's the benefit of it when the person playing the game doesn't even see themselves as a female in the first place?

This is because of a story reason, right?

If so, the only thing preventing Ubisoft from having female main characters that appear female to everyone in this game is an Assassin's Creed game's story. Forgive me if I don't consider the AC lore to be sacrosanct. It's only purpose to provide justification for gameplay and it could certainly have been tailored to accommodate female playable characters.

 

[Kinyou]

Except they'd planned on having some of the stand ins be women. But then cut it. Unless the guy was lying about having planned on it. It fits the idea that random assassins are helping you. Just because you see Arno, doesn't mean other people have to. If another player sees some other random dude assassin, it makes 0 artistic difference if it's a woman. It's still a stand in.

They decided they didn't want to spend the resources on it.

True, but in that regard the cost argument gains IMO a little value again. Like would anyone be satisfied by just seeing their coop partner look like a woman? I'd assume most people would want to actually play as one. So by losing a female stand in there isn't much lost. (As long as the game still features good female side characters)

 

[Orayn]

There isn't anything absurd about complaining that a game doesn't have things in it that you want in it. We do it all the time, in nearly every thread. It's usually about resolution, frame rate, or game play elements, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with telling a company that you'd like the option to play as a different gender or ethnicity.

This is what I think, too, but people usually respond to it with concern trolling about the artistic vision of the developers, as if that was even a consideration for a game that releases annually, is heavily focus tested, and farmed out to 1000+ people split between half a dozen studios.

 

[TheWatchGuard]

The narrative could have been witten to accommodate for playable female characters.

Then the game becomes a different game, in fact you then have to in a sense make a separate game. All of that trouble for a small minority of gamers I would add and an even smaller group of AC players.

 

[Zoe]

I guess that can be an issue, but many shooters dont seem to have a problem with putting putting women in the MP. It's only single player where all the enemies are suddenly male.

MP is usually unrated or with an asterisk due to online interactions out of their control.

 

[Silky]

Guys, women are really really hard to animate. Look at Tomonobu Itagaki, for starters. Working on all of those girl fighters in Dead or Alive or Ninja Gaiden Black for so long has taken a toll on the poor man.

But seriously, fuck off Ubisoft. You've done female animation for multiple assassins in AC.

 

[Ramenman]

If Uncharted's gameplay was built for co-op, then yes, I would like the option for the second (or third or fourth) player character(s) to be female.

I understand. Like the way it is in Left 4 Dead or Borderlands.

But here there aren't "other player characters". As dumb as it is, co-op is just 4* the dude from single player. Everyone plays as the single player dude even in co-op (like in Watch Dogs).

Does that fact affect your point of view in any way ?

 

[Kinyou]

This is because of a story reason, right?

If so, the only thing preventing Ubisoft from having female main characters that appear female to everyone in this game is an Assassin's Creed game's story. Forgive me if I don't consider the AC lore to be sacrosanct. It's only purpose to provide justification for gameplay and it could certainly have been tailored to accommodate female playable characters.

They want to tell the story about a single main character. If that's a problem then you can also complain about uncharted not offering a female Nathan drake, etc.

 

[Crossing Eden]

The narrative could have been witten to accommodate for playable female characters.

So you're suggesting all these things
1.that they should completely change how the lore works
2.that they should create tons of different animations including a facial rig that's as complex as Arno while also having to rewrite the story an dialogue to accommodate the pronoun game and redo the motion capture because for the first time they're using traditional facial capture in the series
3.that they should playtest and make sure that all of these new animations work and are just as fluid as the male version, which they can't, because they they have limited time and a budget, yes big triple A companies have budgets too.
^ You're suggesting that they should do all of this for a series was never known or expected to do it in the first place. Have you maybe considered that this series is not for you or that you don't understand what this series is in the first place?

 

[Wiktor]

This is because of a story reason, right?

If so, the only thing preventing Ubisoft from having female main characters that appear female to everyone in this game is an Assassin's Creed game's story. Forgive me if I don't consider the AC lore to be sacrosanct. It's only purpose to provide justification for gameplay and it could certainly have been tailored to accommodate female playable characters.

THe way they could do it would propably be very ugly and not make much sense though. The beauty (from Ubi's POV) of this type of co-op is that it's cheap as hell to make compared to dedicated co-op missions or competitive MP. To have a female character work there properly you would propably need to have separate co-op campaign, intead of throwing just random henchmen into SP mode.

 

[TheWatchGuard]

Yeah, I was super surprised that not one of the four new characters were female. It' not like being an assassin is a boys club as we can see in Liberation and ACIV there are female assassin's that can rival or out perform the men. They could easily just use one of the male characters animation set for a female character. If they need Arno to be the main man because they've written it that way then I guess it's fine but the co-op character that pop in and out could have had a female or two there.

There is only ONE new assassin, everyone needs to read the actual E3 reports and what developers said about the game and stop watching a trailer thinking they know everything about a game.

 

[Azih]

The state that in co-op everyone that jumps in plays as Arno to keep it consistent with the single player campaign. Arno's a dude in the single player campaign.

 

[figadapaura]

Then the game becomes a different game, in fact you then have to in a sense make a separate game. All of that trouble for a small minority of gamers I would add and an even smaller group of AC players.

How would you know how different it'd have to be without playing it?

 

[Crossing Eden]

This is because of a story reason, right?

If so, the only thing preventing Ubisoft from having female main characters that appear female to everyone in this game is an Assassin's Creed game's story. Forgive me if I don't consider the AC lore to be sacrosanct. It's only purpose to provide justification for gameplay and it could certainly have been tailored to accommodate female playable characters.

Read my latest post please to see why this is a nonsensical and ridiculous notion.

 

[glimmerman]

There isn't anything absurd about complaining that a game doesn't have things in it that you want in it. We do it all the time, in nearly every thread. It's usually about resolution, frame rate, or game play elements, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with telling a company that you'd like the option to play as a different gender or ethnicity.

There is a difference between missing features like framerate, resolution, quality, and missing content, like missing an ethnicity or gender, or orientation.

When the complaint about missing content is used to drive a particular agenda, it leaves the door wide open to drive wedges into the gaming community for no good reason, as the gaming community is extremely diverse, and certainly some agendas will clash with others. Social and political forum dramas are far too easily driven by the "game x offends me because its missing something that represents my particular agenda".

This has happened many times on neogaf, particularly because of the whole "game x is missing y" thing. Its almost a meme at this point. How many people have been banned over this stuff?

We're here to talk about games. Isn't Offtopic for all the politics and social agendas?

Talking about games should unite people, not divide them.

 

[Infinite]

Then the game becomes a different game, in fact you then have to in a sense make a separate game. All of that trouble for a small minority of gamers I would add and an even smaller group of AC players.

Yes the game would be different, duh. The point being made here is ubisoft could have done that for this particular game but they choose not to because they didn't deem it a priority.

So you're suggesting all these things
1.that they should completely change how the lore works
2.that they should create tons of different animations including a facial rig that's as complex as Arno while also having to rewrite the story an dialogue to accommodate the pronoun game and redo the motion capture because for the first time they're using traditional facial capture in the series
3.that they should playtest and make sure that all of these new animations work and are just as fluid as the male version, which they can't, because they they have limited time and a budget, yes big triple A companies have budgets too.
^ You're suggesting that they should do all of this for a series was never known or expected to do it in the first place. Have you maybe considered that this series is not for you or that you don't understand what this series is in the first place?

I own every entry in this series, try again. My point is if ubisoft set out to do this from day one of development then it would have been done.

 

[captainnapalm]

Development team came out and said that's not true yesterday just gear and skills will be customized.

http://kotaku.com/ubisoft-responds-to-assassins-creed-female-character-co-1589413130

I see.

Let me just say, I would be totally for making the lead assassin of a future AC game in the main franchise a woman. It's not like they don't make enough of these games not to be able to try something different.

They could even have her future counterpart be a woman and go into the animus - either working for the assassins or templars. They could introduce another man in the future with a male ancestor as well, and then have a future game split between the stories of the male and female assassins, with the man and women's stories intersecting in the future as well. They could have a lot of fun with it.

I really enjoyed the last Tomb Raider's attempt to create a believable, thinking, feeling female protagonist. And I think most gamers, including male ones, enjoyed it too.

What I'd be against is forcing the issue without good story and character motivations in place, or swapping to RPG-like characters where you choose the gender, race etc.

 

[RockTurtle]

How would you know how different it'd have to be without playing it?

going from a male main character to include both a female and male main character wouldn't make it different right off the bat?

Yes the game would be different, duh. The point being made here is ubisoft could have done that for this particular game but they choose not to because they didn't deem it a priority.

they could have, but why this particular title?

 

[Wiktor]

Yes the game would be different, duh. The point being made here is ubisoft could have done that for this particular game but they choose not to because they didn't deem it a priority.

The whole point it shouldn't be treated as blanked priority for all games though

 

[AdmiralMikey]

I'm not crazy, right? I'm not just imagining that there were plenty of female characters in Assassin's Creed multiplayer going all the way back to Brotherhood, right? So we have at least 4 previous console Assassin's Creed games with models and animations for female assassins already, right? And from what I saw, the new assassins in THIS game animate pretty closely to the assassins in all the previous games.

The "not enough development time" excuse just sounds like crap. I don't know what the actual reason is, I assume it's just negligence and NOW we're at the point where it would take too long to add in, but we didn't have to be.

 

[Azih]

Yes the game would be different, duh. The point being made here is ubisoft could have done that for this particular game but they choose not to because they didn't deem it a priority.

Sure, but 1. We shouldn't downplay how much work would be involved
2. It shouldn't be used as an attack on Ubisoft.

 

[Kinyou]

MP is usually unrated or with an asterisk due to online interactions out of their control.

Ah right, thought that was only about potential stuff that could happen over online chat, but I guess that's also something they consider

 

[ab.aeterno]

I'm certainly not telling people that buying or not buying it is the only course of action. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of complaining about missing stuff.

Really? Because you certainly keep saying that like it's the only choice people who are upset should have.

I guess we shouldn't do it because then we have to satisfy every agenda in every game forever, because inclusiveness is an all or nothing affair.

 

[figadapaura]

going from a male main character to include both a female and male main character wouldn't make it different right off the bat?

That's not the suggestion. It's to make female assassins in co-op make sense.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Yes the game would be different, duh. The point being made here is ubisoft could have done that for this particular game but they choose not to because they didn't deem it a priority.

Because it's literally not a priority when there's so little to gain. And that's not an issue.

 

[Galactic Fork]

But then the only playable character would still be Arno

I agree.. Unfortunately there are 2 arguments. What ubisoft said, and what many are complaining about.

Ubisoft said they were going to add women assassin models for the multiplayer, but it was too hard, so they gave up. (paraphrasing).

That sucks, having random assassins help you in game, and having them be a variety of people would have been a nice show of diversity while still having a white male main character. Plus it would show that not all available assassins in France at the time are dudes. From the offending interview:

Assassin's Creed Unity's four-player co-op will not offer female assassins due to the pressures of production work, Ubisoft creative director Alex Amancio told Polygon during a recent interview.

Amancio said that though female assassins were planned for the game, Ubisoft ran into "the reality of production."

"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.

Many are complaining about having a lead that's a woman. Which isn't what Ubisoft said, but I do endorse more women main characters.

 

[The Librarian]

There's no reason to change that because everyone is the same character in co-op and this game has a set narrative. The player always sees themselves as the main character and sees everyone else with a different face.

I don't know the precise nature of the co-op, but in co-op I don't see why they can't give the option to play as a girl. I don't care if it doesn't fit with the story.

I understand. Like the way it is in Left 4 Dead or Borderlands.

But here there aren't "other player characters". As dumb as it is, co-op is just 4* the dude from single player. Everyone plays as the single player dude even in co-op (like in Watch Dogs).

Does that fact affect your point of view in any way ?

I don't see why the option for a female character can't be there.

Because it's literally not a priority when there's so little to gain. And that's not an issue.

That's a really poor view to take on the matter. *sigh*

 

[JDSN]

Really? Because you certainly keep saying that like it's the only choice people who are upset should have..

Ethered.

Then the game becomes a different game, in fact you then have to in a sense make a separate game. All of that trouble for a small minority of gamers I would add and an even smaller group of AC players.

But how does exactly ends up becoming a radically different game to the point that is like a separate one? Are you saying that Ubi would have to actually bother put some effort into this usually undercooked endeavours?

And as it has been pointed out is not exactly a small minority, its a big percentage of the market that at the sight of seeing more games cathering to them will ultimately end up being even larger. Theres also some people liking to play as certain specific kind of characters, im not black but I sure as hell hope that Ubi decides to give a strong role on this game to one of the most interesting people of that era, but I know it will probably end up not being the case.

 

[Crossing Eden]

That's not the suggestion. It's to make female assassins in co-op make sense.

It already makes sense the way it does now. So there's literally no benefit to changing it. A pat on the back and a very small increase in sales is not a benefit to a large billion dollar company.

 

[The Librarian]

It already makes sense the way it does now. So there's literally no benefit to changing it. A pat on the back and a very small increase in sales is not a benefit to a large billion dollar company.

The benefit is that female videogame players would enjoy playing the game more.

 

[Azih]

Really? Because you certainly keep saying that like it's the only choice people who are upset should have.

I guess we shouldn't do it because then we have to satisfy every agenda in every game forever, because inclusiveness is an all or nothing affair.

No what we should be doing is advocating for MORE games to be made that offer diverse perspectives. Not pounding on people who make games currently as is happening here.

There's nothing wrong with boy adventures like The Hangover in the movie world because there's also a ton of stuff like Bridesmaids.

There's nothing wrong with Ubisoft making CO OP JUMP IN CHARACTERS ON A SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN being male or AC V featuring a male lead. The problem is that enough other games (specifically AAA ones) aren't being made which offer different perspectives.

 

[TheWatchGuard]

How would you know how different it'd have to be without playing it?

Well Arno would have one story and "Arnette" would have another . I could go into more historical reasons why a female wouldn't work in this situation but I would prefer not to get banned. Also don't forget how diverse the Assassin's we've gotten before are just give them time.

 

[glimmerman]

Really? Because you certainly keep saying that like it's the only choice people who are upset should have.

I guess we shouldn't do it because then we have to satisfy every agenda in every game forever, because inclusiveness is an all or nothing affair.

Or alternatively we can just accept that a game includes the content that it does and move on.

 

[sentry65]

they can just retarget the motion capture to account for any differences in proportions. That's how they motion capture people who play weird creatures that have different proportions.

I don't get it. Ubisoft's games pride themselves on having one of the largest budgets on the market, yet everyone else can do it.

 

[Kinyou]

I don't know the precise nature of the co-op, but in co-op I don't see why they can't give the option to play as a girl. I don't care if it doesn't fit with the story.

I don't see why the option for a female character can't be there.

Because it simply doesn't fit with their design vision of integrating it seamlessly into the sp experience. You also can't play as anyone else than the main character.

You might take issue with that design vision in general, but that's simply how they want to make the game.

 

[Oersted]

So you're suggesting all these things
1.that they should completely change how the lore works
2.that they should create tons of different animations including a facial rig that's as complex as Arno while also having to rewrite the story an dialogue to accommodate the pronoun game and redo the motion capture because for the first time they're using traditional facial capture in the series
3.that they should playtest and make sure that all of these new animations work and are just as fluid as the male version, which they can't, because they they have limited time and a budget, yes big triple A companies have budgets too.
^ You're suggesting that they should do all of this for a series was never known or expected to do it in the first place. Have you maybe considered that this series is not for you or that you don't understand what this series is in the first place?

Wasn't it you, who used " it is an entire new game, build from the ground up" as an excuse for Ubisoft? They could have included women in sake of representation of gamers in that from the beginning. But women are an afterthought, and that is why people are complaining.

 

[Zoe]

I don't know the precise nature of the co-op, but in co-op I don't see why they can't give the option to play as a girl. I don't care if it doesn't fit with the story.

From all the descriptions it sounds like co-op is seamless with the main campaign. If you want to play as a girl in the co-op, you have to be able to play as a girl for the main campaign.

 

[figadapaura]

It already makes sense the way it does now. So there's literally no benefit to changing it. A pat on the back and a very small increase in sales is not a benefit to a large billion dollar company.

Just because it makes sense now doesn't mean they can't do better. Any of my complaints have very little to do with the financial benefit for Ubisoft.

 

[besada]

There is a difference between missing features like framerate, resolution, quality, and missing content, like missing an ethnicity or gender, or orientation.

When the complaint about missing content is used to drive a particular agenda, it leaves the door wide open to drive wedges into the gaming community for no good reason, as the gaming community is extremely diverse, and certainly some agendas will clash with others. Social and political forum dramas are far too easily driven by the "game x offends me because its missing something that represents my particular agenda".

This has happened many times on neogaf, particularly because of the whole "game x is missing y" thing. Its almost a meme at this point. How many people have been banned over this stuff?

We're here to talk about games. Isn't Offtopic for all the politics and social agendas?

Talking about games should unite people, not divide them.

We are talking about games. This is something we're going to continue talking about. Games are a medium that exist within the context of the culture. Like every other medium on the planet, they're open for critique on any number of levels, from technical issues to content issues.

As for how many people have been banned? Lots and lots of people, largely because they're engaging in dishonest argumentation -- as you are doing here by drawing an imaginary bright line between technical and content complaints -- or because they attempt to shut down conversation on the topic, which you are also doing here.

If you don't like discussing these issues, I can only suggest that you don't discuss them. GAF will continue to discuss them, and we will continue to ban people who engage in open bigotry, people who attempt to stifle discussion, or people who argue in a disingenuous manner, just as we do in all threads.