In recent weeks, there has been several reports cycling out sharing a magnitude of sexual misconduct and other lingering allegations surrounding the executive staff throughout video game publisher Ubisoft. In the height for the anticipating next-generation of console hardware, the firm has addressed to be investigating internally to resolve the issues reported at hand from what is told to be years of predatory behavior from several leads at the company.
Most notably, there has been abrupt departures of leavings from large profile employees at Ubisoft since the notion of investigations began. Such as Assassin’s Creed Creative Director Ashraf Ismail, Product and Brand Marketing Manager Andrien Gbinigie, and Public Relations Director Stone Chin are just some of the individuals ousted during the start of the investigations.
We have started by launching investigations into the allegations with the support of specialized external consultants. Based on the outcomes, we are fully committed to taking any and all appropriate disciplinary action
Ubisoft
Now in a new report from Bloomberg that surfaced this week, it is told that these actions made by other leading individuals involved with development for the recent batch of Assassin’s Creed titles have faced sexist remarks ultimately affecting the lead cast, discounting the attempt to bring a larger, female-centered role.
In that, employees involved with the early stages of development for projects dating as far back as 2014’s Assassin’s Creed Unity shared that some degree of prejudice to include female roles for the game’s playable characters. The creative director insisted that including a playable, female role would add “extra production work” to design clothing and animations that the lead deemed unnecessary and ended up not happening.
The same remarks can also been told to be shared with the following year’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Elaborating on the matters, the 2015-shipped entry offered a two-sibling cast featuring brother Jacob and sister Evie Frye. However, despite the outline for the script emphasizing equal screen time for both characters, Jacob was ultimately presented as the leading protagonist.
After the year break from the company, Ubisoft’s 2017 Assassin’s Creed Origins was also proposed to feature a female lead early on as well. Initially, protagonist Bayek would be killed off during his ventures and his wife Aya would overtake the role. However, two individuals involved with the project disclosed that her position on taking the helm of the project was minimized overtime and the male lead remained.
The story continues forward with the most recent entry for the series, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Close to a handful of employees that were working on the project told Bloomberg that the female character was initially the proposed lead for the game. But of course, management issued that to not be applicable to the game and resulted with the player to choose the lead’s gender.
Most interesting would be to see how management responded to the reception of the most recent release. Majority of the fanbase for Odyssey favored Kassandra over Alexios vocally online and is presumed to be very upsetting for the former leads at Ubisoft. Looking ahead, it looks their ambitions might also have affected the coming Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as the new project will offer the choice for both male and female protagonists.
Would you have been fine with more female-focused roles in Assassin’s Creed if they were executed in the mentioned titles?
Source: Bloomberg
