The inclusion of Evie Frye as a playable protagonist in Ubisoft's upcoming Assassin's Creed: Syndicate isn't a response to the criticism Unity received for having a male protagonist.
Ubisoft creative director Marc-Alexis Cote said that the decision to implement Evie and Jacob as playable protagonists was one that the studio made from the very start. It wasn't a response to the uproar at E3 last year, and the game itself had been in development for at least a year before any of that happened.
“Cynics will be cynics, and it’s unfortunate, but we’ve been so focused on build this game the way we want with those two characters,” said Cote in an interview with GameSpot. “It’s not done to pay lip-service, it’s done to build a great game.”
Cote said that the inclusion of twin protagonists allowed them to explore a new perspective with storytelling in the series.
“That’s where we came up with the idea of having two protagonists, which evolved into having twin protagonists, and a brother/sister relationship that we’ve never explored,” he said. “That started two and a half years ago.”
Adding to what Cote said, level design director Hugo Giard said that if Evie had been added as a response to the controversy, Evie would have felt "completely shoehorned" into the story. This isn't the case with her.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate comes out on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 23, 2015. The PC release will follow a few weeks later.