Ubisoft responds to lack of playable females in Assassin’s Creed: Unity

By Stephany Nunneley

The Internet was all a twitter yesterday when Assassin’s Creed Unity’s technical director James Therien stated that adding a female playable character to the game would have “doubled the work” despite the fact it’s being developed by 10 Ubisoft studios.

Cue an official response from Ubisoft handed to Kotaku:

We recognize the valid concern around diversity in video game narrative. Assassin’s Creed is developed by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs and we hope this attention to diversity is reflected in the settings of our games and our characters.

Assassin’s Creed Unity is focused on the story of the lead character, Arno. Whether playing by yourself or with the co-op Shared Experiences, you the gamer will always be playing as Arno, complete with his broad range of gear and skill sets that will make you feel unique.

With regard to diversity in our playable Assassins, we’ve featured Aveline, Connor, Adewale and Altair in Assassin’s Creed games and we continue to look at showcasing diverse characters. We look forward to introducing you to some of the strong female characters in Assassin’s Creed Unity.

As mentioned above, Assassin’s Creed Unity is in development at 10 Ubisoft studios: Montreal, Toronto, Singapore, Quebec, Annecy, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kiev, Montpellier and Bucharest.

This led Assassin’s Creed 3 animation director Jonathan Cooper to state today on Twitter (via Gamespot) that adding female playable characters to the game would have taken the teams two days, tops.

“In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two’s work,” said Cooper who now works at Naughty Dog. “Not a replacement of 8000 animations. Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone at Ubisoft tried to bullshit me on animation tech.

“[Liberation’s Aveline] shares more of Connor Kenway’s (AC3) animations than Edward Kenway (AC4) does.”

Furthermore, Cooper stated on Twitter that in the last Assassin’s Creed prototype he worked on, “entering your name as Aleissia [female developer] allowed you to play as a female character.”

Anyway. Assassin’s Creed Unity is PC and new-gen only and out on October 28.