Ubisoft claims to be unable to include playable female characters in its upcoming game, Assassin’s Creed Unity, as it would have required double the work of the developers to implement, according to Ubisoft technical director James Therien in an interview with VideoGamer.com.
Speaking to the website while at E3 2014, Therien explained that female characters “[were] 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 [inaudible].
“It would have doubled the work on those things,” Therien continued. “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.”
The interviewer pressed the Ubisoft developer on the issue, stating that the excuse wouldn’t hold water with the game’s community at large given how much resources publisher Ubisoft had at their disposal.
Therien replied: ”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. Yes, we have tons 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."
Assassin's Creed Unity is out on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on October 28.
