Look, there’s no denying it. Women can be just as vicious and deadly as guys. Hell, we’ve all seen a blood-thristy woman open up a guy’s jugular and leave him bleeding out on the floor for the pure sport of it. You probably saw it last night at the bar…
But don’t expect to find female assassins to play with when Assassin’s Creed: Unity finally hits in October.
As Ubisoft creative director Alex Amancio told Polygon (in a story re-reported by Crave gaming site Destructoid), allowing players to field female killers in the game’s four-player co-op mode just won’t happen…because it’s just too damn much work to make it happen.
“It’s double the animations, it’s double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets…especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work.”
In fact, level designer Bruno St. Andre estimated programmers would have to re-do about 8,000 animations on the female skeleton to bring female assassins to the game and while it’s an idea “dear to the team,” the added work just wasn’t in the cards for AC:U.
Scream sexism all you want, but when you start talking dollars and cents, Ubisoft will stand by this decision despite any backlash. Hopefully, the Assassin’s Creed series continues to be such a scorching success that they’ll eventually be able to devote the resources to creating usable female killers…but don’t hold your breath.
