The next big Assassinâs Creed game and the first to appear exclusively on next-generation consoles wonât let people play as female assassins in a new cooperative multiplayer mode, Ubisoft said this week at E3.
Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Unity creative director Alex Amancio said that while they originally planned to include female assassins, the âreality of productionâ made adding the additional characters too costly.
The studio âhad toâ cut female assassins from the co-op mode, Amancio explained in response to a question from Polygonâs Ben Kuchera, because keeping them in would have doubled the cost of pretty much everything: âitâs double the animations, double the voices, all that stuff, double the visual assetsâespecially because we have customizable assassins.â
As a result, âit was really a lot of extra production work,â Amancio continued. âAnd itâs not like we could cut our main character Arno.â
The developerâs explanation struck many Assassinâs Creed fans as odd since Ubisoftâs popular series of historically-themed open-world murder simulators has featured female assassins in a number of playable and non-playable roles for years now. Since 2010âs Brotherhood, players have been able to suit up as female killers in competitive multiplayer modes and enlist female recruits into the team of assassins they amass during single player campaigns. Assassinâs Creed: Liberation, a 2012 installment for the PlayStation Vita, even had a women of color in its starring role.
Other game developers such as Naughty Dog animator and former Ubisoft animation director (for Assassinâs Creed III, no less) Jonathan Cooper have been raising their eyebrows at the logic here:
In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations. http://t.co/z4OZl3Sngl
â Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) June 11, 2014
Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone at Ubisoft tried to bullshit me on animation tech đ
â Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) June 11, 2014
And while Amancio highlighted development cost as a deciding factor here, his comments donât jibe so neatly with other stuff Ubisoft has been saying this week about the new game. First, as a next-gen exclusive Assassinâs Creed game, Unity is being developed for fewer systems than last yearâs pirate-themed installment, Black Flag.
Also, the developers told Kotakuâs Stephen Totilo this week that the gameâs version of French Revolution-era Paris âwill be the largest city in the seriesâ history,â so Ubisoft has clearly pulled the stops out on other parts of the gameâs development.
Oh, and one more thing: Ubisoft also said that there wonât be any competitive multiplayer in Unityâthe first time a core Assassinâs Creed game hasnât had it since the mode debuted in 2010âs Brotherhood. Since the co-op is effectively replacing it as Unityâs multiplayer offering, why is rehashing something that already existed in previous titles prohibitively expensive for a spiffy next-gen-only sequel?
This is hardly the first time a major game company has waved off including a more diverse set of characters by citing logistical hurdles, however. Earlier this year, another set of Ubisoft developers said that the company wonât be introducing gay protagonists any time soon âbecause of fears that itâll impact sales.â
Kotaku is still on the ground at E3, so weâll continue to look into this issue as the day progresses.
Update 2:30 PM EDT: Ubisoft has issued a response, which you can read here
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