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Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s latest DLC forces something on the player (open spoilers inside)
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Crossing Eden you're cool generally but you need to stop defending Ubisoft's shit on this, it's really not a good look at all. This whole mess is blatantly homophobic nonsense and incredibly hurtful to us LGBT fans of the game and there really is no excusing it. Like yeah I get that the DLC was written by a different person but in that case it's Ubisoft's responsibility to offer an apology and fix shit, not say "we're sorry you were offended, play episode 3 and maybe we'll retcon the homophobia away lol".
The hell are you on about? Crossing Eden isn't defending this. Pointing out that the lead narrative director from the base game was not apart of the dlc project is not defending. Once again people just love to throw out the 'ubisoft defender' banner.
It's not about this. It's about the fact that Ezio have a student, a woman named Shao Jun.
If we can choose our gender, it destroy the lore created by the end of the Ezio trilogy.
And how do you patch this? Maybe episode 3 will involve the baby in the story...
It is so immensely disrespectful to player choice because if the player is in a homosexual relationship (or asexual) then it's pretty safe to assume that they don't want to birth their own child. As a gay woman, I find this so utterly revolting as our sexuality is often seen as a commodity and not as a natural part of ourselves. We are often beaten over the head with demands from men that apparently know what we want better than we do, when all we wish for is to be left alone and allowed to abide by our sexuality unquestioned. Now you have a high profile game suddenly taking that choice away, forcing us into heterosexual intercourse because apparently they have no better story to tell?
To hell with that. That's not a story worth telling, especially not when the game sells itself on its player character being what the player chooses. Between this and Ubi's move with the Epic store and The Division 2, they've assured that they'll never see another cent from me unless this chapter just gets completely wiped.
At this point you'd have to write Kassandra as coming to explicit terms with her sexuality that you choose, and then her saying she was compelled due the desire of a child, that she tried to suppress who she is/lied to herself but can't stay with Nakatas.
Certainly not a great fix by any means, but would be a narrative way out for her sexuality, can't do the same for her desire to have a baby in general though, that is now always cannon.
I never understood those kind of excessive reaction.
If one guy made a big mistake in one game (and more of this, a DLC) that doesn't mean everybody on ubi are bad people and they should all pay for the awul no choice one writer made us.
The company operates as a whole - this wasn't just something that one guy slipped under the radar. This had to be pitched, designed, developed, playtested, and approved as game development goes. That it got so far along without even a hint of awareness of what they were doing is inexcusable, and the response they sent Kotaku is infuriatingly blind to the issue at hand. I will not do business with a company that disrespects who I am, who millions of others are, and if they want that business back then they're going to have to do a hell of a lot to prove that they can be trusted to not let something as tone deaf and erasing as this ever happen again.
Maybe you would understand if you had to endure decades of this, begging for table scraps for actual representation in any form of media and having to feel like you're a blight every time something involving your sexuality suddenly swings heterosexual.
Im very interested to see what they do with episode 3. Its hard to imagine coming back from this but we'll see. Ubisoft have always took pride in their diversity as a company so its even more puzzling to see something like this come from them.
Seeing reactions on internet, i'm expecting a piece of eden that can do time travel
They aren't from the same bloodlines. Ezio, Altair, Connor, are from different bloodlines, and they just all happen to meet in Desmond.
If "the choices aren't that important", don't market the game saying "Hey u can romance whoever u want it's your choice we are going the Bioware way!".
If "they have a main canonical story", don't market the game saying "Hey u can romance whoever u want it's your choice we are going the Bioware way!".
Yeah, the first page is a bad look. I'm sadly used to people caring more about the purity of random sci-fi "lores" than real people, but caring more about spoilers is a new low.
Yeah, that's not very cool whatsoever. Especially since one of the selling points of this game was definitely the focus on player choice. I haven't actually played it, bit I'm familiar with that much just through marketing and the way everyone's been talking about it. So to go back on something like that in this fashion definitely isn't something I can or would ever want to defend.
It has to be their child, though. Continuing the bloodline is a major theme of the story.
They had a child because they wanted a child not because of some necessity to continue the bloodline.
It's ancient Greece, pick a random urchin off the streets and claim it as your own!
Shit, Pheobe should still be alive and we could play mom/dad with her!
What Kassandra or Alexios wants is not necessarily imported. Certain events must happen. The simulation will find a way to make it happen. There is a point it needs to reach, and characters who believe they have free will end of doing what is required of them. Origins has some extensive monologues that go into this theme. One of the most important monologues is:
It seems likely that Kassandra or Alexios having a child is one of those events that they have no control over. The child is necessary for some reason that isn't clear yet. It is what the Isu call a Node. A fixed event that comes to pass eventually, in some form, no matter how much you fight it.
The lack of player choice could be the DLC team being sloppy. In that case, it is a fair criticism for an RPG to get sloppy like this. I personally think it's not great writing for an RPG to force the protagonist character into a relationship. It was really glaring when The Witcher games did it, or tried to do it in TW3's Heart of Stone DLC. Or it could be a deliberate piece of "You didn't actually think you were in control, did you?" This is a core story theme that appears in both Far Cry and Assassin's Creed. And this is the kicker, I think. Ubisoft aren't like Bioware. Their idea of narrative choice once involved, in Far Cry 2's case, letting players shoot themselves in the head or blow themselves up. There was no option where you didn't kill yourself. (And people thought Bioware were being rude with Mass Effect 3.)
Desmond has a son. A lot of people don't know this because he was never directly featured in any of the games. I kinda wonder if people would have minded as much if Alexios/Kassandra's child was never mentioned in Odyssey and instead popped up in later media, Desmond-style. "Oh, hai, BTW Kassandra has a daughter. She's super important to the plot. And she's 100% canon."
I feel like there's also a bit of a clash because Ubisoft do seem to consider certain things to be canon. Alexios is not canon. Kassandra is also not a blank slate. Bioware protagonists are very blank slate-y. Kassandra has a predefined history, predefined beliefs -- this is evident when she makes remarks about politics and philosophy when you're wandering around the game world. For example, someone who is a believer in the healing power of prayer might dislike that Kassandra trusts medicine over prayer and says as much when you're exploring one of the temples. Kassandra is her own person. Players, via Layla, can nudge her, manipulate her, but they are not the only forces manipulating her. Players are not really in control of her past, and they're not in control of her future. The ending of AC: Odyssey has Kassandra performing actions of her own volition regardless of how the player might feel about them. What they are in control of is the stuff that happens in the middle.
Ubisoft's biggest mistake was talking about romances/relationships in interviews and claiming that you would never be forced into a relationship. One could argue this only applies to the main game, but story DLC would have been planned out long before the game released. There's no way they didn't see this problem coming in some aspect.
This is an awful lot of text to excuse a super shitty plot contrivance.
Yeah I already know about the Nodes and the like but my response was based off what we've been shown so far, you have a baby, not born out of necessity like Kassandra/Alexios was but one born out of a desire to start a family with Darius's son/daughter.
It's been done in a sloppy and offensive way and the lore can't really explain that away. If the kid is an important node have it in the mainline story and explain why it's needed, and if the game isn't going to respect peoples choice about their relationships then maybe it shouldn't have been implemented the way it has been. The fact that the dlc has been split into 3 parts with us being left with this hanging thread has also not helped matters either.
OP
OP
Stop arguing that lore requires Kassandra to fuck a dude and carry a child. Lore could easily be used to have a Piece of Eden create a child (or alter the DNA of an adopted child) that combines Kass' and Darius' bloodlines if they really felt the need to do that at all.
This is some grade A bullshit from Ubisoft. I'm a big fan of the direction they took with the main game, and felt the player choice was a step in the right direction. But this just sets that all back and then some. Astonished that this somehow made it to the first draft, let alone to release.
I f the next game don't allow you to choose your gender (like every game before AC8) would it be a set back?
And this is where i do not stand.
I can understand truly you feel hurt.
But i can't imagine the writer to be a 4chan or a trump-guy secretly plotting for this to hurt the LG community.
I'd imagine it was probably more along the lines of " I'm straight and i want to have kids, this would make me happy, lets put it in!" In other words, I doubt they gave a thought to the LG players and the fact that a lot of people really DONT secretly want to settle down with the right guy/girl.
Lol, because no other RPG has ever handled these issues in any successful way.
What a ridiculous thing to state in a universe where there are literally magic apples, space aliens, and people can leap from 200 foot in the air and land in a pile of straw with no harm.
so you wouldn't mind if in AC China you can choose between Shao Jun and another guy?
Wouldn't mind in the slightest, watch me solve your precious lore in 20sec.
Let's say,
-Shao Jun is a secret twin separated at birth from a brother.
-She is taken in by assassin's while the brother is raised by templars.
-After you choose gender you then have 1-2 playable moments of their different youths.
-Then you see her travel and meet Ezio, while the brother has some other cool templar event.
-Quickly after this their paths meet up for some reason and are thrust into working on the same side.
-The other one who you don't play dies, in an event which paints the world in grey.
-New morally grey protagonist is free to side more assassin or templar from this point.
-Most of the game is here.
-And be gay without kids if they choose.
-The end.
Take my money.
There's already been a China game, how is this being used as an argument against gender choice in future games?
So EACH new entry will have to be with siblings?
that China game hint a lot about a bigger adventure.
Well, fuck. This was going to be my first Assassin's Creed game specifically because I wanted to play an open world game with a lesbian protagonist. This is infuriating and heartbreaking.
I'm speculating, but probably the queer folks who worked on this game/dlc either were either so far down the ladder that they had no say whatsoever in this narrative decision, or they were in a position to speak up, did so, and were overruled/ignored by people above them. They might have tried to raise the issue but were worried that really pushing it might jeopardize their working relationships/jobs. My (very queer, feminist) wife works for a large game studio and as a minority in the company (because of gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, etc.), her political capital is often so limited and she has to be so careful how she spends it. It's exhausting. My guess is that the queer folks who worked on Odyssey 1) saw this coming, 2) tried to warn people as best they could, 3) are seething about how this preventable this backlash was and 4) can't say shit about it publicly unless they want to risk their job. The tweet from the narrative lead on the main game really makes me think this is the case - she apologizes and just states she didn't work on this dlc; I'd bet anything that she's not happy about this narrative development (or else, why wouldn't she defend it in her response?) but can't publicly badmouth it because of how unprofessional that would be. All she can do is try to distance herself from the mess.
The DLC was made by a completely separate team, so you'd think there would be some form of communication between them and the ones that worked on the main game regarding player agency over certain aspects of the narrative - most especially romantic entanglements, which was HEAVILY marketed leading up to the game's release. You'd also think they would make the utmost effort to reach out and consult with their LGBT employees about what they think of forcing heterosexuality in a game that they decided to market as highly encouraging of player agency in the romance department, regardless of gender, and allowing us to develop the misthios's sexuality.
I mean, shit, even if the player does choose any and all things against the forced romance in the game, the love interest still comes back and there are still heavy implications of the misthios being in love with them - and yeah, the unavoidable animatronic baby. :/ It's a slap in the face to anyone who expected to have some form of agency over the same shit they had control over in the main game; but it's an especially bigger slap in the face for LGBT gamers, many of whom already have to deal with compulsory heterosexuality IRL. To have that shit shoved in our face after touting "player choice!" and "you can be gay/lesbian/bi/straight in this game!" is equal parts disheartening and enraging.
I'm sure Ubisoft doesn't mean to be nefarious, but the major disconnect between the marketing, the player agency afforded in the main game, and the subsequent release of a DLC that robs us of it - shows a case of oversight and glaring ignorance.
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So because people (including a mod) don't want to be spoiled in a title that could have easily been worded differently, they now care more about spoilers than LGBT representation? No.
Ok but some here are implying that if the next game won't allow them to choose the gender or the relationships, it will be a step back and so a "no"...
I agree about Odyssey, i'm talking about next games.
There's a second Ubisoft statement (from the Eurogamer article) which I don't think it was posted here:
Can't wait to buy the 3rd dlc to choose the motivation for which my lesbian Kassandra was explicitly shown falling in love and kissing with boring-face-dude.
Can't wait to buy the 3rd dlc to choose the motivation for which my lesbian Kassandra was explicitly shown falling in love and kissing with boring-face-dude.
Hater again? You don't have to ""buy" the third dlc... It's arc sales not chapter
That's technically already in the game though (of a sort), with a picture that was posted earlier - you can either 'choose' to have the baby because you love the dude/lady (which, you've known for like 3-6 hours at most, and the guy, at least is not at all charismatic compared to some romance-able characters in the main game), or because you wanted a kid/a bloodline.
But there are several problems with that, ranging from continuity, to sexuality, to wanting/not wanting kids.
But the main egregious thing is the sudden outpouring of 'I really like/love you' that Kassandra's dialogue has, even if you don't want to get involved with him.
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This DLC and its take on people role playing Kassandra / Alexios as queer are bad. Barfing a plot spoiler in the thread title is also bad. People reacting to that as a drive by post doesn't mean they're not pissed about the writing. Come on, now.
What? No. This is a weird take. It's possoble to respect player choice and still provide a solid narrative.
Yes, truly this will be the thing that unravels the tightly-plotted, meticulously- crafted, overarching narrative that the series has treated with such reverence up until now.
I actually deleted that reply because I'd misunderstood what you & the person you quoted were saying but I guess you'd started replying before I did it.
If Ubisoft want to go back to a single defined protag and write a narrative that requires them to be hetero & a parent then that's up to them, providing they don't say otherwise pre-release. If people don't want to play those games for those reasons then that's up to them.
Since the Animus no longer needs a direct bloodline to work then I don't see why Ubisoft should feel the need to establish these things anymore. Crafting an RPG where the player choice matters in terms of their character's personality necessitates the writers having less to define about those characters. They can't have it both ways.
I feel like the only real solution is to come out and say "Kassandra and Alexios are canonically bisexual, every one of their possible relationships is canon."
Is it a bit late to do this? Sure. Would it suck for the people who played their character in a very specific way? Absolutely. But, in the end, there's really no other option other than altering the storyline of DLC they've already released. At least it could be chalked up as a win for bisexual representation in hindsight, not the worst outcome.
Is it a bit late to do this? Sure. Would it suck for the people who played their character in a very specific way? Absolutely. But, in the end, there's really no other option other than altering the storyline of DLC they've already released. At least it could be chalked up as a win for bisexual representation in hindsight, not the worst outcome.
That would open them up to false advertising, were they said again and again that players were able to make a character that could be straight, bi, gay, lesbian or ace. I suspect the only reason that they aren't being done for that at the moment is technically the DLC is a seperate product.