Poll: Jim Sterling Calls Out New Assassin's Creed (for racism/sexism?)

[LameDuck]

Maybe... just maybe... they are all white dudes because this all plays during the french revolution in a time where "multi culti" wasnt that much of an accepted idea?

No seriously.. i really dont remember all the black people or asian people involved in the french revolution and certainly not native americans.

This man [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas-Alexandre_Dumas] was a general during the revolution, and also happened to be the son of a Haitian slave. He later fathered the author of The Three Musketeers. There was also a full regiment of mixed race.

Have Ubisoft actually gone on record to say this anywhere? Because the four look like different people to me (the beards are all slightly differently styled).

In any case, having one person be in 4 different places at once is... problematic storyline wise, even if it does get handwaved by 'animus'.

Assassin's Creed Unity director Alex Amancio has responded to the outcry about the omission of playable female characters in the recently announced game.

"I understand the issue, I understand the cause, and it is a noble one, but I don't think it's relevant in the case of Unity," Amancio told Eurogamer in an interview at E3.

"In Unity you play this character called Arno, and when you're playing co-op you're also playing Arno - everybody is. It's like Aiden Pierce in Watch Dogs." -- Source [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-12-i-understand-the-issue-but-its-not-relevant-in-assassins-creed-unity]

 

[atavax]

If a AAA developer seriously ran out of resources due to the game landing on the current generation of consoles, then they are hugely incompetent. The platform may have changed, but the methods for developing has not. When you develop a game you do a cost analysis very early on, decide on what features to add or remove and then start working on the game. Character models are relatively cheap to do, so they would not have been cut. Heck, the current generation of consoles is way easier to develop for so it should be even easier to stick to budget.

As for developers disagreeing with me, it's been the opposite these last few days. Even long before this drama we've had developers talking about how they were forced by the publisher to have a man as playable character, as well as studios backing up how easy it is to include female playable characters. Jim Sterling even talks to the dev behind Blacklight Retribution about this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6073-Lets-End-the-FPS-Sausage-fest], as they have both male and female characters. It's a bit of a tangent as the video focuses more on the specifics of FPS, but the point about it being easy to implement is brought up.

Does it take more work to implement a female playable model on top of the existing male model? Yes, as you have to do more character modelling and voice overs, as well as design the game around there being more than one choice, but the reasons the studio/publisher originally pulled were bullshit. And if they had actually planned to have a female character from the very start it would've been way easier and cheaper.

It is so common for games to go over budget. Look at Broken Age and how many point and clicks has Tim Schafer made? Titanfall ran out of money and needed to make the deal to never be released on PS4 to get more money from Microsoft. How many first person shooters has Vince Zampella made? Going over budget is so easy to do and is so common in the industry which is why so many games are released unfinished. Show me a AAA non Nintendo game made this generation that couldn't of benefited from another 6 months of development.

show me where a AAA developer says animating movement is identical to male and female models in a AAA game. That is what you claimed.

i could of sworn they said they were planning on having female characters but had to scrap it due to cost. So they did plan on it from the start but had to scrap it because of they were running out of time and budget. Its not that they couldn't afford to have female characters its that something needed to be cut in order to be released on time and on budget and they thought the thing that would have the least effect on metacritic would be cutting female characters.

 

[Karadalis]

Maybe... just maybe... they are all white dudes because this all plays during the french revolution in a time where "multi culti" wasnt that much of an accepted idea?

No seriously.. i really dont remember all the black people or asian people involved in the french revolution and certainly not native americans.

This man [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas-Alexandre_Dumas] was a general during the revolution, and also happened to be the son of a Haitian slave. He later fathered the author of The Three Musketeers. There was also a full regiment of mixed race.

a) This guy became a general after the initial revolution not during it, there was no revolutionary army during the actual revolution. Thomas came to fame for fighting the italians... not for his role in the actual revolution that dethroned the king.

b) He was an absolute EXCEPTION. He was for a very long time the only person of color who achieved such a high rank in an european military force.

This is the french revolution, a very important event in french history... you play as a french guy... in the french revolution. Now its nice that you found an example of different colored people during that time but im pretty sure the absolutely overwhelming majority of people involved where whiter then cheesecake. (and no.. dirt doesnt count as skin color)

The racism card is completly out of place here and it makes absolutely no sense to force skin tone diversety into a game where race is not even the point.

The french revolution was all about the common man raising up against the monarchy... not about racial or cultural conflict so there is no point in even offering a different skin color kept for pleasing the SJW crowd.. and those most often dont even play the bloody games. It would have absolutely no impact on the storyline and would simply feel tagged on for no good reason. Skin color was a very important thing in ye old times and the developers would have to focus alot of time just to get this across, instead they opted to go with a french dude, in france.. during the french revolution. How dare they?

The question about gender is much more important here since i firmly believe that it wouldnt have hurt ubisoft that badly to give us a option to choose a female main protagonist... heck cut the marketing budget a tiny bit and you can pay off the voice actor without a second thought.

Every damn time a AAA game comes around i swear to god the first thing the people here on escapist do is try to find out how they can tag one of two things onto it:

Its allways either Sexism or racism. Sexy female character? IS THIS GAME SEXIST? Only white dudes as player characters? IS THIS RACIST?

The same shit has happened with hitman and the nuns and can you see all the fucks that where not given despite all the internet outrage stirred up by people whos jobs it is to create internet traffic?

This is why big companies dont give a flying fuck about internet backlash anymore anyways.. because people ***** and moan about these non issues so much that everything gets dismissed as entitlement.

And thats exactly what this is this time: Entitlement. The people who criticise this game for not being diverse enough want to change it or ***** about it despite the fact that they where not promised racial diversety, despite ubisoft showing them what exactly they can expect and despite the fact that they havent even bought the bloody game.

Ubisoft did not break any promises or did any false advertisement (yet... its a big publisher so chances are they gonna fuck up along the way)

The only valid criticism is calling out that BS excuse of female main chars being hard to code.. that indeed is utter nonsense.

The rest is just entitled whining from the "everything must be political correct for the sake of political correctnes"

Oh and heres a random thought:

A black or brown skinned assasin during the french revolution?

Jeez.. guess how long it takes till everyone is onto the super secret assasin that is completly out of place like only a black dude in a crowd of white people can be.