Ubisoft's reasoning for not providing female Assassins in "Assassin's Creed: Unity" new co-op mode may not be valid.
Former "Assassin's Creed" Animation Designer Jonathan Cooper tweeted his opinion on how long it would've take the studio to animate a female Assassin.
"In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations," Cooper said on Twitter. "Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone at Ubisoft tried to bullsh** me on animation tech," he added in a later post.
Cooper is referring to the comments made by Ubisoft Creative Director Alex Amancio during an interview with Polygon. According to Amancio, the studio had to cut the female animations after running 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 my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations. https://t.co/z4OZl3Sngl
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) June 11, 2014
"Because of that, the common denominator was Arno," Amancio added. "It's not like we could cut our main character, so the only logical option, the only option we had, was to cut the female avatar."
Ubisoft has since released a statement regarding the outrage of the lack of female Assassins in the co-op mode:
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.
"Assassin's Creed: Unity" will be released to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on Oct. 28.
