When Ubisoft finally gave us an extended look at Assassin's Creed Unity at E3, the game showed four male protagonists committing various assassin activities. Now, of course in this day and age that drew a lot of attention, with many wondering why there were no playable women assassins. Ubisoft has now explained why that is.
Speaking to VideoGamer, technical director James Therien said making female characters is just too much work.
“It was on our feature list until not too long ago, but it’s a question of focus and production. So we wanted to make sure we had the best experience for the character. A female character means that you have to redo a lot of animation, a lot of costumes. It would have doubled the work on those things,” he said, and I hope he was wiping sweat off his brow as he did it.
“And I mean it’s something the team really wanted, but we had to make a decision. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality of game development.”
“Again, it’s not a question of philosophy or choice in this case at all I don’t really [inaudible] it was a question of focus and a question of production,” he said.
“Yes, we have tonnes of resources, but we’re putting them into this game, and we have huge teams, nine studios working on this game and we need all of these people to make what we are doing here.”
