Thanks to Mass Effect, Skyrim, and Fallout, I’ve reached a point in my life where I just won’t play an RPG if I can’t play as a queer woman. It’s the same as my character alignment in non-video game RPGs: I’m Chaotic Good in my real life, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t play a character who’s Neutral or Evil. I’m not going to watch a barn full of people burn to death in the hopes one of them will drop a magical weapon. And I’m not going to inhabit the mind and body of some animated white dude who was created to advance the power fantasies of real world white dudes. So when Ubisoft announced that Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate was finally adding a playable female character to the main AC canon, I was overjoyed — and then I found out she’d be sharing the story with her twin brother.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate tells the story of Jacob and Evie Frye, twin Assassin’s working together in Victorian London to free the oppressed working class and to keep Crawford Starrick, a Templar and the main guy who exploits The People, from getting his hands on an arcane artifact that will make him unstoppable and possibly immortal. I skipped Syndicate when it came out last fall because I’d heard that you have to play the majority of the game as Jacob, but when my girlfriend brought it home a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t help myself. I had to try.
Good news: You can actually play the majority of Syndicate as Evie! Each sequence has a couple of Jacob- and Evie-specific memories you have to play through — Jacob’s trying to disrupt Starrick, while Evie’s trying to track down the Shroud of Eden — but nearly all the open world stuff like bounty hunting Templars or ghost hunting with Charles Darwin or saving lives with Florence Nightingale or ending slave labor with Karl Marx can be done with either character. I finished my first play through just a couple of days ago and spent 85 percent of my time as Evie. Syndicate also boasts a couple of excellent female villains. And women are just as powerful and prevalent in the street gangs as men. Plus, Evie is easily the best character in the game. She’s smart and fierce and kind and whimsical and eager to learn and prove herself. (She’s Hermione with a knife!)
I did face a handful of feminist conundrums while playing, though. Here are seven of them.
1. Does gender equality include gear?
And none for Jacob, bye.
Jacob and Evie share money, which means whatever one of them racks up out in the field, the other one gets to use when its their turn to adventure. Because I was always playing with Evie, I was constantly upgrading her to the best outfits, cane swords, assassin gauntlets, etc. I resented every second I was forced to play with Jacob and double resented that he had use the money Evie earned (FINE, or: stole/looted) to buy the weapons to fight off Blighters and Templars. So I only gave Jacob the minimum of what he needed to survive, and while Evie ended the game arrayed in such finery, Jacob was still in the patchwork suit he started in. Yes, yes, everyone wins when the gender pay gap is closed, but Jacob spent most of his time lounging on the train while Evie was saving the world.
2. Why is everyone so white?
She just saw the Faking It midseason trailer; she needs to lie down.
Syndicate adds a main character named Henry Green (more on him later) who’s an Indian immigrant, and also it adds an ambassador from India who exists for about ten minutes in a side quest. Progress! But every other person in the game is as white as driven snow, or an episode of any ’90s sitcom. Remember when Ubisoft’s developers said Unity wasn’t going to include playable women, even though every other major open world RPG on the market was starting to include women, because it was “double the work”? Maybe the idea of not-white skin tones just exhausted them.
3. I’ve got to participate in gendered violence?
#Misandry
One of the reasons I won’t play RPGs as a dude is because you have to kill a lot of women in all video games and I don’t like the way it feels when gendered violence is such an enormous problem in the real world. In one of the big storylines in Jacob’s sequences, he has to kill one of the main female villains, and the way it plays out, his motivation is retaliation over hurt feelings as much (or more) than the cause of taking down the Templars. Stacy was watching me play that part and she was like, “Whoa, are you really going to do this?” I did and I hated it.
4. A boyfriend for Evie? Seriously?
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!
Evie’s relationship with Henry Green dominates her sequences by the middle of her storyline, and, in fact, she spends one entire mission trying to save this guy she’s driving around in her carriage while yelling back and forth with him about whether or not it’s cool to get romantically involved with your Assassin partners. Forcing the first playable female character in a main AC title into a romantic storyline that takes over her characterization and causes a rift between her and Jacob is crazy-making! The unchanging, built-in dialogue in the final quest includes Jacob scoffing at Evie about chasing the Shroud of Eden around London and flirting with Henry all day every day, while he’s been ridding the city of Templars and Blighters, which assumes you’ve been playing most of the open world with Jacob. Evie is the one who cleared every open world mission in my game and she only spoke to Henry when she needed to advance the main storyline!
I concocted my own headcanon which was that Jacob was jealous of Henry and Evie’s relationship because it was Jacob who was in love with Henry, and obviously Henry was in love with Jacob too and just getting close to Evie to try to get to know him better, and that was fine with Evie, of course, because Evie was super into British suffragist and human rights activist Millicent Fawcett (who isn’t in this game but those two are made for each other).
5. Do I really need Henry’s help?
Maybe Henry should have STAYED ON THE TRAIN if he didn’t want to be in danger.
I’m a completist and so I like to do all the little sub-challenges in each quest to get maximum rewards. In one quest, Henry (who is not a field agent!) accompanies Evie into the field and Syndicate challenges you to “use Henry’s distraction” to defeat your enemies. We’re talking a hundred XP difference and enough money to fill up my supply of Voltaic Bombs (thanks, Alexander Graham Bell!) if I “use Henry’s distraction.” But look, Evie is perfectly capable of defeating every enemy in this quest on her own and she’s not going to make it harder on herself just so she can make a man feel included in her triumphs! I did not “use Henry’s distraction.”
6. Save the cats or save Henry?
Initiate Bobbi
During the quest when Henry stupidly follows Evie into the field, he gets kidnapped. It was during that quest when I also discovered there are cats in this game! The clock was ticking on Henry’s life but I could not get over these cats! This one was walking around in a circle, giving himself a little bath, pawing at the ground, sitting still and gazing at me. I loved him. I wanted to adopt him. I wanted to scour the rooftops and find all the other cats and adopt them too! In my perfect world, Circle would scoop up a cat and make it yours, while holding down R1 and pressing X would summon Jacob to go save his boyfriend. (Is this a feminist conundrum? It’s definitely a lesbian one.)
7. What the literal fuck is with this dress?
:ghost scream emoji:
In the final sequence, Evie is forced into this dress which, as you see, restricts her movements and so she spends half the time walking slowwwwwwly around Buckingham Palace with no weapons or the ability to jump while Jacob runs wild and free on the rooftops with knives and his gun looking dapper as heck in his tuxedo. This, more than anything else, made me want to set Assassin’s Creed on fire.
I’m going to play through a second time and just take off my headphones when anyone is talking about Henry and Evie, and say my own dialogue instead. And I’m never going to “use Henry’s distraction.”
WTF at that last one. I mean is it supposed to be ac commentary on women’s agency and the overbearing weight of social expectations ?
Because for some reason, from your reaction I think they did it wrong ?
She *did* get her assassin’s gear back and she said out loud that she f-ing hated that dress, but still! It drove me mad! I do like your interpretation; when I get to that part again I’ll think of it that way.
I’d wager the assumed realism of wearing the dress at the palace was something the game designers thought they had to add in order to show the overbearing weight social expectations of the time period, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the best/only approach.
For example, Emily (at least in the Dishonored 2 trailer) doesn’t really have the same problem even though both games represent Victorian-ish time periods. She goes about in pants all the while kicking butt. Agency is her jam.
I’m curious what prompted the need for the dress – like what was the context thereof? I haven’t played an AC game since the first.
In case folks haven’t seen the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixvxiYLENk
I’m not a dress person but I’d wear one as a costume if I were a spy. It helped get her where she needed to go. So I was ok with Evie’s dress.
I think that’s probably what they intended, especially since the dress “mechanic” was introduced in AC III: Liberation and that was DEFINITELY the intent there. The main character, Aveline de Grandpre, is a free black woman in 1700s New Orleans, and she has the ability to dress as an assassin, a lady, or a slave, with varying stealth/notoriety/freerunning capabilities. I haven’t played more than a few minutes of that game, so I don’t know how effective it actually was there. It was definitely frustrating in Syndicate, especially because it only appeared in that one segment of the game. I don’t think it appears enough to really *say* anything about women in Victorian society. But if they add it too much, gamerbros would be like, “Evie sucks she has to wear that dress hurr durr hurr durr,” completely missing the point.
I think it would work for dudebros if they mirrored it with complications from expectation on masculinity. But let’s face it i dont think Victorian men suffered from the patriarchy as much…
This is even more disappointing then when I bought Syndicate and it wouldn’t run on my computer. Assassin’s Creed 3 seemed like they were actually pretty good at minority storylines! I learned more about Native Americans playing that game than I have my whole life.
Pro tip: Playing Assassin’s Creed 3 with the Hamilton soundtrack in the background feels AMAZING
Ugh the patriarchy, I called women minorities. I meant people underrepresented in videogames
I’m a little tougher on what games I choose to play nowadays (mainly because I have so little time) and even skipped Fallout 4 because of the force heterosexual marriage sequence at the start of the game (I might buy it when it’s cheaper and get the mod that avoids that).
Assassins Creed is something I’ve never played or had any interest in.
The way round this is to read the fanfic that makes it clear that they were married because of social expectations and they were both gay and just good friends who had a kid… Then date the female companions and all is golden.
Actually fallout 4 turns out quite good. You just need to ignore that initial sequence. And apparently there is a mod to make it a girl girl relation ship if you want.
One of my biggest problems with Syndicate is that it actually got…boring… Liberating every section of London got so repetitive that I just stopped playing for a little while because I wasn’t motivated to finish the storyline.
Other than that, Evie was so much more fun to play as than Jacob, and the main redeeming quality of this game in my opinion! I was worried they would make her somehow “weaker” than Jacob or that she would need to constantly be “saved”, but she pretty much saves Jacob’s ass every time.
But yeah, in the last sequence wearing that dress was pretty terrible, but in my mind I tried to explain it as she’s forced to wear this because of societal conventions of the time but really Evie is desperate to get out of it and put some pants on.
**SPOILER ALERT**
Yes, and I do love in the very final battle they kill Starrick together (like literally, at the exact same time), and he finally acknowledges that he’s been fucking stuff up the whole game and she’s the one who kept saving the day.
I didn’t buy Syndicate specifically because I’ve found every other AC game I’ve played to get repetitive and boring.
I love Assassin’s Creed but have ALWAYS had a problem with the way they treated women. Fridging Élise in Unity was a disaster, the deep lack of any women characters in AC3 — I think they “”””tried””” to rectify some of the problems with Black Flag by giving us LADY PIRATES, especially one of my all-time historical lady pirate faves James Kidd/Mary Read, but then still Anne Bonny was BOOBS ALL OVER THE PLACE (thanks, the male gaze) and Mary ALSO GOT FRIDGED.
I can’t get past the fact that AssCreed keeps using the deaths of women to motivate its men who, for huge chunks of the game otherwise, were ALREADY MOTIVATED TO DO STUFF. Like, they’ve already been killing and pillaging and assassinating and solving weird political plots… I actually got nervous at one point in Syndicate that Evie was going to die, since the game forces you to play both siblings.
And yes, it’s kind of “””cool,””” I suppose, that Syndicate finally added Big Female Villains as well as some sort of “gender parity” amongst the Blighters and the Rooks, but I’m so with you, Heather, on feeling really uncomfortable killing women. >:C
Separately, I LOVE your reinterpretation of the Henry-Jacob-Evie dynamic. New headcanon achieved!
I really hated how you could hire prostitutes as camouflage in the early games too. Enzo is pretty respectful of them, on the spectrum from feminist to GTA, but it is still literally objectifying.
I don’t understand this, this game did what a lot of you wanted, strong female charcters and now the thought of them dying is a problem? Even though the men also die?
And wtf Heather, seems like you’ve got some serious hatred for men by some of the stuff you said.
Really why give Jacob the bad stuff just cause you used Evie more? It’s not that it’s cause you couldnt afford it, you did that purposely…
That’s not equality. I play with either character depending on my mood and give each of them tbe best depending on how u want them to fight.
And as for killing women in tbe game… to me they are like the men, pixils that are trying to kill my chatcter to I don’t hesitate to kill them in the slightest.
To me this is a good step for TRUE equality in media and games especially. It’s not perfect but it’s a good step on tbe right direction.
This is ridiculous. Ok let’s work our way trough each of these. DISCLAIMER: I am female, I am lesbian, I am all for equal rights/pay/etc among men and women. First one is ridulous in and of itself. I played the whole game and made enough money to fully upgrade both of them EQUALLY. Everyone is white because this is england in the late 1800’s which was dominantly white. So what if Jacob had to kill some women? Ever had to kill some men. The women were powerful and influential people that held importance to the templars. It isn’t like it was a pathetic helpless woman being killed. Adding a lot be interest humanize a rather stoic and serious character. It showed that she wasn’t just this uptight woman focused on following every single rule. She had her own stuggles with what she was taught and what she should be believing or feeling. Would you be conplainging if it was a lesbian love interest? Boyfriend or girlfriend, the outcome would be the same. Henry’s distraction i do agree with a bit. It was a little pointless and I am not completely sure how much it truly influenced the storyline. Something had to happen to keep Evie from achieving her goal in that moment and that’s what the writers came up with. Yes, stupid. I don’t even know where that cat thing came from. Once again though, humanizing the ever so serious Evie Frye. Feelings for him or not, she would not leave a fellow assassin to be tortured and killed by Templars. Last, but not least, the dress. Look at the time period. Late 1800’s. As much as it horrifies me, this is what was worn by women in that time. They both had to dress in order to enter the mansion undetected. Jacob wore a suit because in that time, men wore suits. Evie wore a dress because in that time, women wore ridiculous dresses. It’s simply being historically and culturally accurate. What a ridiculous little article.
Thanks Lil. Nice to see that when you say you’re all for equality, you actually mean it (specifically when you bring up that yeah, you’re going to kill female enemies because they’re enemies, and males are brutally killed in droves in every video game out there). Nice to see some people in sites like this who aren’t constantly contradictory and hypocritical.
I’m just going to comment on the black flag part here. It was historical accuracy with Mary/Kidd and Anne Bonny. Both were captured along with Rackham due to Rackhm and his crew being drunk. Both were pregnant. Mary had her child in prison but the child was taken away and she died. Anne Bonny, well I have nothing to say about that. They did flaunt her boobs in the game. However, all of the pirates featured in Black Flag were historically accurate in terms of lives and deaths (minus templar/assassin/kenway relations).
I just find it disturbing that you gals have a problem with hurting women in video games when said women are thugs and evil people, but seem to relish in brutally killing and generally using violence on men (especially as female characters). On one hand you cry for gender equality and parity and representation, but decry when women are shown as being equally capable of evil and deserving of punishment at the hands of the protagonist – and in equal numbers of characters as to that of male bad folks.
“All people are equal, except women never do wrong and even when they do, they do not deserve to face punishment” seems to be what you gals, and many in the feminist movement, profess.
YEah, its not like Aveline De Granpre exists or anything
I like the mechanics of the Assassin’s Creed games but after the first three I had enough of their protagonists. It’s nice that they’ve included a female playable character in the latest installment, though! Apparently some of the other games in the franchise (AC Liberation and AC Chronicles: China are the ones I can think of) have a female protagonist, but I have no idea if they’re any good compared to the main games.
I wish there was a way to opt out of the dumb obligatory romantic storyline so many video games feel the need to include. I’ve lost count of how many games I’ve looked into and gave up on when I found out they had romance. Finding games where you can play as a lady who doesn’t make googly eyes at some boring dude is hard!
Did you ever play the Dark Souls games? They’re pretty awesome, you can have a kick-ass female PC in each one, and there’s pretty much no romance whatsoever!
I own the first one! Haven’t played it yet though. I’ve read so many good things about Dark Souls, but I hear it’s nearly unplayable on PC without a controller so I need to buy one but I’ve been putting it off. It’s definitely something I want to play at some point (soon).
Oh yeah, I can’t imagine playing the DS games with a KB/M. They weren’t set up to be played like that.
For more PC gaming, Undertale is an interesting one, if you’ve never played that one. =)
Oh Undertale looks like something I’d enjoy! Adding it to my list, thanks!
Great! I hope you enjoy it. =)
This pretty much sums up all of my thoughts RE: Syndicate. I love that Evie exists in the franchise but I just wanted more of her. And even though you can do 85% of the game as her, the main missions are like 75%-25% Jacob, with Jacob getting all the awesome final Assassinations, save the Lucy Thorne one. Why couldn’t Evie pretend to be a cadaver and shank a guy in front of a bunch of med students?
I loved that there were female villains for once, but for most of the game, the dynamic was Jacob vs. Crawford and Evie vs. Lucy… dude vs. dude, woman vs. woman. Thankfully, the final battle was equal parts Jacob and Evie, but I don’t like the pattern of female protagonists always having female rivals while the dude hero gets the often-more-dangerous dude bad guy.
And ugh, the romance. Like, yes, Indian assassin navigating life in Victorian London! That was great. I like Henry! And as much as I wish every female character was queer, I think Evie + Henry could be cute. But I didn’t want it and I resented its inclusion and how it chewed up prime Badass Evie time. If they’d hinted at that shit and not let it creep all up in Evie’s story, I’d have had less of an issue with it.
All that said, this ended up being one of my favorite ACs, partly because of Evie and how friggin’ awesome she is and partly because they fixed a lot of the frustrating gameplay issues I had with certain games. AC: Brotherhood is still my perfect AC, but this was pretty good.
It doesn’t hurt that Evie is fucking hot during the fight club missions. #misandry indeed. *le swoon*
The reason the ” male hero gets the often-more-dangerous dude bad guy” is because he can’t get a female bad guy of the same caliber. The reason behind that is listed right here in the article and from a lot of responses from women on here – it’s just unfathomable to have male characters defending themselves from, or killing to defend others from, or deliver justice to, even the most evil female characters. Ever notice how in most games the ultra-evil female bad guys get their justice by being knocked out? If they do die, it’s almost never directly at the hands of the protagonist (especially doing it yourself, it’s almost always in a cut-scene). They get blown up, or fall down a cliff, or something else where there’s no actual brutal violence like you see used against just about every video game character that possesses a Y-chromosome.
It’s because many women are very comfortable with inflicting violence on men, but conversely feel that women should never suffer physical consequences of inflicting evil on other humans.
If you want female characters to get to fight the more-often-dangers dude bad guys, you’re going to have to start talking to women and let male characters actually defend themselves, or save the day, from evil women without getting media flack and fallout and having to feel bad about equality.
I could believe the whole dress thing restricting your movement. It’s too uncomfortable to move in, there is a very cold breeze in your Templar Free zone and I am willing to bet the shoes hurt too. Then again, as an assassin, you get hurt a lot. Besides, I am sure if you ran around in a dress, you would call a lot of attention from people. That is not the assassin way. Eh, I could care less about the dress now that I think about it.
Go Templars!
I don’t know about you Yanks, but we Brits would be outraged if you didn’t wear proper clothing in a place as posh as Buckingham Palace. Do you get that, mate? Buckingham freaking Palace. In the game, that is the Seat of Power of the most powerful Empire on the planet! No offense, but I expect people to have the common sense to know the proper articles of clothing to wear in a formal dinner organised by the freaking Queen of England, in the largest inhabited mansion on the planet-three-piece suits or formal gowns.
I’ve long since learned to not expect anything from Ubisoft on that front, personally. My favorite character from AC was Ezio anyway. I’m a bit burnt out on the series.
Interesting that the same company that made Assassin’s Creed also made Child of Light, which is amazing, and I highly, highly recommend!
I never really had any interest in Assassins Creed (though Aveline in Liberation is amazing), but I absolutely LOVE Child of Light. It’s so pretty, nice story, and the characters have a lot of depth.
Child of Light was really pretty, but it was SO slow.
I still completed it 100% because I have to, but I was mad at the characters and enemies all along for not hurrying their little asses. Also way too easy, but I’m getting they were aiming at a younger demographic than lil’ old me.
Yeah, I thought it was a bit short for an RPG, and probably for the same reason you suggest (younger demographic).
Gorgeous graphics and music though, eh? =)
I have played through AC Liberation and while it was fun and refreshing to play as a female assassin, the outfits were very frustrating. Aveline has three “personas” (outfits): Assassin, servant/slave, and “proper lady” I guess? Going in I knew that I would never be changing out of my assassin outfit, because, let’s be honest… Why be a proper lady or a slave lady, when you could be a badass assassin lady? Unfortunately the game does not actually let you choose outfits per mission. Each mission has an outfit requirement and every time I had to wear a dress I basically spent the entire time yelling at my screen “BUT I DONT WANT TO WEAR THIS DRESS I WANNA BE AN ASSASSIN AHHHHH”. Brought back childhood memories of my mom forcing me into a dress on Sundays for church. I had pretty much the same reaction back then, too.
Any game that enforces heterosexuality on me or makes me play as a dude is a no. Still not over my rage quit of Beyond two souls. Hence my deep enduring love of Bethesda and Bioware games. I applaud you for seeing this through HH!
I told Ubisoft to go fuck themselves when they stopped giving me female characters in franchises that previously had them… Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six. Assassin’s Creed just drove me over the edge when I couldn’t even play as a female character in multiplayer. Same with Splinter Cell. As far as I’m concerned, the studio can still go fuck themselves. They don’t give a damn about their customers who aren’t white men. They used to… and that’s what made it sting all the more.
Same reason I abandoned Activision/Blizzard and even my once beloved BioWare. While Dragon Age is possibly the queerest franchise ever, their refusal to open up Mass Effect until the 3rd game and BioWare Austin’s homophobia, transphobia, and sexism with Star Wars: The Old Republic just killed it for me.
I’m also a gamer who prefers to play as a queer woman character whenever possible, but I’ve got to disagree with you on #3. In the VAST majority of games I’ve played, every single stock enemy has been male. Bethesda games are pretty much the only major exception to this I can think of. Every other recent game I’ve played (other AC games, Witcher, GTA, Dragon Age, Shadow of Mordor, Dishonored, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands, etc…) it’s been wave after wave of only male enemies with the occasional female major antagonist/boss thrown in there.
I think having female enemies is actually a step TOWARD gender equality because the women NPCs aren’t just pretty background decoration. But yeah idk what games you’ve been playing cause “having to kill a lot of women” isn’t really something I’ve experienced a lot.
Thanks Morgan. Most women who complain about video games scream that there aren’t enough female characters, but are “horrified” when they run across female enemies. I find it disturbing that so many of these women seem to relish the fact that they’re brutally killing so many men simply because they’re male…
Personally, I hate being railroaded into a man/woman romance plot, but there’s also historically been an issue in games where protagonist woman/npc man romance plots haven’t been allowed to take place because most players are assumed to be straight men who’d feel weird and uncomfortable if the character they were controlling kissed a guy. (See: http://www.themarysue.com/remember-me-nilin/)
It’s not like the uncomfortable straight man audience is great about visibly queer women, either, but it’s something to keep in mind.
Is it bad that as a lesbian, I’d rather play as a male character with a heterosexual subplot than as a female character with a heterosexual subplot? Lol
Looks like we’re adding this to the long list of reasons why autostraddle is my favorite website of all time. As soon as I played this game I knew there was going to be some brilliant related pieces on AS, and as usual, HH, it was even better than I ever could have dreamt.
i’m so removed from the world of video games post-duck-hunt that i’d never really thought about how it’d feel to be playing a realistic-feeling game as a man killing women. this was really interesting to think about even though i will probably never play a video game except pac-man
My question, Reise, is how would you feel playing a game as a woman killing droves and droves of men? Or, as a man doing the same thing? We’re talking female ENEMIES here – bad women who assault and kill and rob and sexually assault innocent people, and are trying to do the same to you.
I guess they should get a pass, because they’re women. Just like in the real world, if a woman assaults, maims, or even murders a man, she shouldn’t face any serious punishment for it. He probably deserved it.
Has anyone seen a list of game where you can pop may a female protagonist anywhere.
And there level of queer friendliness.
Add-ons creed seems awefull, dragon age was great ame I mass effect and fallout 4(ignoring the initial scene)
You should play Dragon Age! Amazing RPG and you can play as a queer woman who basically sleeps w everyone
Oh, definitely. The Dragon Age games are awesome!
@alarae
what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
HAHAHAHAHA! Not only are you so correct, but you used possibly one of the best movie quotes ever to deliver it! +1 to this comment.
I believe that Henry Green was actually a woman called Davidè Green. I also believe that Jacob and Davidè had something together
I don’t think everyone in the game being white is necessarily a problem. In fact, too many people of colour would have been more of a problem because the game is trying to represent a historical period and location accurately. The fact is, the majority of people in Victorian London simply were white, and as much as you want a game to be inclusive it would not be historically accurate. People who were openly gay went to prison back then, so it’s also no surprise to me that the game has no obviously gay characters. In games representing the present or a possible future having more diverse characters is laudable. But if it’s a historical representation I would hope the studio wouldn’t just throw in a bunch of POC just to expand the market potential. If a game was set in modern day Japan, for instance, I would not expect and would even find it off-putting to see a bunch of white people walking around because it’s just not accurate.
Wtf is wrong with you people Jacob is not gay at all when that guy randomly kissed him you could see the disgust on Jacobs face, also he is married with a women and has a daughter who becomes a Assasin named Lydia, also all of this is ex paid bull shit from damn feminists I preferred playing as Jacob because I generally like play as a badass guy then a badass women not because I’m gay but because it’s just because I relate to him more also just because they share the same cash wtf does that fuck have anything to do with anything ? Also the Davide green was the single most retarded thing I ever heard. The dess was how women dressed back then and the gear argument you had was retarded also just because they didint show Jacobs wife that doesn’t mean that females in games always have to have relations
Wtf is wrong with you people Jacob is not gay at all when that guy randomly kissed him you could see the disgust on Jacobs face, also he is married with a women and has a daughter who becomes a Assasin named Lydia, also all of this is ex paid bull shit from damn feminists I preferred playing as Jacob because I generally like play as a badass guy then a badass women not because I’m gay but because it’s just because I relate to him more also just because they share the same cash wtf does that fuck have anything to do with anything ? Also the Davide green was the single most retarded thing I ever heard. The dess was how women dressed back then and the gear argument you had was retarded also just because they didint show Jacobs wife that doesn’t mean that females in games always have to have relations. It’s just my opinion to you honestly this has nothing to do with feminism
It was confirmed by the lead developer he might be bisexual
https://38.media.tumblr.com/79596ff21e01fe2a0fc93dafe30561c6/tumblr_mgbr2gjZz61rlo1q2o1_400.gif
Nobody gives a shit about dykes. plain and simple. This is EXACTLY why we must stand up and fight the mancentric manocracy
Crappiest article I’ve read in a long time.
This whole game is a piece of feminist silliness, and yet you complain.
How ridiculous.
Oh well. I’d have liked if Jacob wasn’t so stupid but you can’t have everything. They kept it historically correct. Evie was the least likely to cause a ruckus, while Jacob caused mayhem constantly. So it only figured she would be the one to actually be on the ground trying to find the target. On top of that, being lesbian was taboo and highly unlikely. I’m glad they brought a female character into the story. Try out the WWI DLC. Evie is pivotal in saving London, and Jack the Ripper DLC is almost completely Evie with a slight introduction to the story where Jacob is captured by Jack the Ripper. It’s a good story line and poetic in its outcome.
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And now, with Assassin’s Creed Origins, we’re back to the same old Ubisoft misogyny: a male protagonist with a female who gets a couple of missions, because, hey, they did the equality thing last time, so now it’s okay that they relegate women to the sidelines for another few games.
It’s been ten major releases now, and not a single female-only protagonist. It almost seems like genetic memories are kept on the Y chromosome.
All the points in this article are very invalid.
Why are so many people white? ITS CALLED VICTORIAN LONDON. When you are making a game set in a past time period your #1 goal is to establish historical accuracy.
For #7, again, historical accuracy. Evie is trying to seem like a noble woman at the party, and dresses like those are what noble women would wear. In fact, woman back then would even break their bones to make their waist look smaller
For #4, its called story telling. If you had even the basic understanding of what appeals to many people you would know that a romantic story appeals to many, especially when executed well.
For #5, are you seriously complaining about that? WHATS SUCH A PROBLEM ABOUT GETTING HELP FROM ANOTHER CHARACTER. Its not “sexist” for them to include that, but rather a thing called GAMEPLAY MECHANICS. They include another character to follow you along so that you can take advantage of that character’s skill set.
Basically, this article was a waste of my time and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost brain cells from reading it
yo its ya boy Bobby Shmurda, and i wanted to say thanks. the police are on there way so i gotta go but thank you for making these points.
Every single point you said about the game absolutely no sense at all for example from what I heard feminist support lgbtq but in the first point you said that you hated playing as Jacob and that you got him the bare necessities to survive even though he’s bisexual.
For your second point “Why is everyone so white” it’s based in London in 1868 just in case you couldn’t get that in your dense head.
For your third point”Gender Violence”Jacob didn’t kill her for hurt feeling, if you somehow missed the fact that he killing all of Starricks associates male or female, Pearl was in direct contact with Starrick and was helping him. Jacob had to get her out of the picture so starricks grasp on London would loosen making him easier to take out.
Your fourth point “A boyfriend for Evie” this one is easy as hell to explain. You expect a 21 year old woman to not notice someone who shares a common interest with her.
Your fifth point “do I really need Henry’s help” yeah Evie could easily take them on her own but this was a heavily guarded location putting Evie at risk of getting killed without help of another so for plot purposes the developers most likely put Henry there so it looks more realistic.
Sixth point “save the cats or Henry” this ones just fucking stupid
Seventh point “what the literal fuck is with this dress” the whole point of the fucking dress is so Evie doesn’t get her cover blown, that was also the most common dress wear at the time period which did
restrict the users movement because they have this insane amount of fabric in front of the not allowing them to move around as much. Jacob can run around because he is in clothes that don’t have as much fabric around him allowing him to do what he does.