The real significance of female protagonists

[Therumancer]

Snip

You still think that a developer can't have a change of heart of some sort simply by listening to the reactions and reading the news.

You still think that a developer must be forced into including more diverse playable characters. Even if that is the case, you think that it would immediately doom the game because it would somehow gravely cripple the team's enthusiasm for the project instead of hoping that the game would able succeed the despite the changes from the initial concept.

Look I hope that Ubisoft Montreal would take the lessons of this incident to heart, and plan much more carefully and wisely when it comes time to begin their next project. I am not so pessimistic as to think Ubisoft proper would mandate that all of its subsidiary development companies feature female protagonists for 80% of their upcoming projects, and I am definitely not so pessimistic as to think it would immediately ruin the games that were produced under such conditions.

I think creativity happens on it's own, it's not something that can be channeled with politics and political correctness. A creator either has an idea, or he doesn't, you can't say "only have ideas that fit these criteria", that's not how creativity happens. The only way to ensure politically correct changes is for the management that creator works for to modify their work, or reject things out of hand that don't fit the politically correct criteria of the moment. The problem right now is that you already have too much involvement by publishers in game development without demanding more, and there has been a lot said about how it's already ruining games by causing the majority of them to conform to corporate demands. Adding more limitations on top of that is just going to make things worse.

The "changes" needed are already happening with more women getting involved in the gaming industry, without saying that Ubisoft (or any other game company) should take direct action on developers and stifle the creative process even further.

As far as I'm concerned as long as the publishers don't immediately step on an idea for having a female lead, or the option to choose to play as one, everything is fine. As Ubisoft demonstrated, when they get a good idea for one, they will run with it (Liberation). That does not mean that this represents some kind of entitlement, or expectation that
you see an option like this in all games. If Ubisoft gets a good idea for a female character that they feel they can use, and can be made to fit in with their series, they run with it.

Besides, one of the things to understand is that being pseudo-historical the Assasin's Creed series has certain limitations in what it can do while still remaining viable, since the whole point is that even with a "secret history" present behind the scenes, history as we know it still exists. This means you can't use women to do specific things before women were empowered. The women that history shows sticking out because they were women actually work against having female heroes because if there were any who were even more impressive they wouldn't have been a big secret.

Let me put this into context for example here, in "Black Flag" (Spoiler Ahead) the idea is to play a pirate captain and command your own ship. Doing a simple gender swap wouldn't work because they are trying to be realistic, and to be blunt it's unlikely men would ever follow a woman, and they make a big deal about how your Quartermaster can't captain a ship because nobody will follow a black man either (this is pretty close to the beginning). Furthermore a big part of the plot and the characterization is Edward's love for a woman back home (which is used to write around him getting involved in various vices like rape and hookers, probably to keep the ratings down), a desire to earn the respect of her family, and so on. You do a gender swap for this whole thing and then you've got some girl leaving her man behind to go out to sea to earn a fortune and impress his family.... okay, now to be honest here that's not happening in 1715 to put it bluntly society is not going to accept it. Somehow she winds up commanding a ship, where she is going to wind up in a sea battle where she kills and assumes the identity of another woman who is an assassin, who has basically sold out to joing the Templars. In search of a quick payday she is then going to walk up to the door of the mansion of the governor of Havana and present a letter of introduction and just be accepted doing so because you know, women show up all the time in 1715 toting swords and approaching the governor, this all blends perfectly (uh huh). When things go wrong she's going to be then sent off to a work detail on ships full of dudes because you know, that's what guys in the period would do to a lady prisoner... and then further series of events contine (I don't want to spoil much beyond the very beginning of the game. To put it simply this just wouldn't work with a simple gender swap, even if you spent the money to develop the separate model, and re-record an entirely separate dialogue track. The main Assassin's Creed series can't really go there, the way a spin-off did by having it be a propaganda piece that arguably never happened (at least as presented).

You might be saying "well what about Anne Bonny and Mary Read" well Anne is already in the game and in doing so kind of makes the point. What's more neither of these lady pirates ever commanded a ship, rather they were the mistresses of one "Calico Jack" Rackham who was actually the captain of the ship (and in the game), and despite numerous enhancements of the legend, Anne was pretty much his bed warmer, though she was known to be a nasty piece of work herself. When eventually captured she pleaded mercy based on being pregnant with his baby. Famous yes, but largely as an extension of another pirate's legend, which they played around with in the game with to make her a bit more assertive already, but there are limits to how much you can see. Basically if you had Captain Edwina sailing a ship around sinking ships, nobody would ever have heard of Anne Bonny because there would have been someone far more impressive, and logically not even the Templars could cover up someone who would be that famous (not to mention it killing the entire "stealth" angle of this thing).

Things would be even worse in the upcoming "Assassin's Creed" game because your dealing with a somewhat more civilized environment (Revolutionary France) where your in the shadow of an actual famous female French revolutionary or three who stick out because they are women, and of course perhaps most importantly because if you so much as walked around with a sword as a woman or wore a pair of pants you'd probably wind up being horsewhipped into submission, and then confined to an asylum or cloistered nunnery. Basically all of these things women today claim about being done to keep them in line in past centuries are exactly why in historical games it limits your options. The women who got away with stuff in these time periods usually occupied very unusual social positions to begin with, typically the kind of things that would prevent them from being a "forgotten figure" or invite any kind of stealth, especially as the people of the time were not viewing them with the same fondness that they are seen with through the lens of history.

All of this aside, one of the creators DID come up with a way of doing a female character in an Assassin's Creed type game by creating a spin-off series pretty much dealing with a fictional creation within the world. Ubisoft already did sort of "step up" by not saying "no, you can't do that" someone came up with a decent idea and they ran with it. That's what they should be doing. You shouldn't be making arguments that say "Black Flag" should have let you play an Edwina as well as an Edward and "all your would have had to do is switch the models and the voicework" because that's really not true.

What people should be demanding is to continue to push for Assassin's Creed games set in a more modern time period, that will open up those doors. For example during the 1920s and 1930s you could easily have Templars involved in organized crime (bootlegging, etc..) and while the crime syndicates are very sexist and male dominated (which is why genuine "gun molls" are so rare and became famous for it), you at least have flappers who are fairly autonomous and can justify a woman running around more or less freely, and it being well established by this point that women can inherit the money of their family they can even have the resources to be financially independent (though actually working and being directly involved in business would be very unusual, but that's rarely an issue for an Assassin).

Personally I always thought it would be a natural duology to have one game set in the 1920s and taking out a huge group of Templars running world finance being the secret cause of "The Great Depression", followed by an aftermath in the 1930s. Given that it seems that The Assassins are pretty much decimated by the new millennium, doing the sequel in the 1930s playing a Templar who counter-exterminates them in retaliation could set the stage for later games as they catch up with the game's present and the presumed ultimate showdown between Asassins and Templars.

This is getting well off topic though, but basically, the point is that given time I'm sure Ubisoft will do more female protagonists on their own, one way or another. There are plenty of ideas where one can work, without having to harass them. Just be patient and I'm sure it will happen especially seeing as Ubisoft mentioned that they were happy with the sales of "Liberation".

 

[SAMAS]

[

Which is why games have never, ever, had more than one motion model for the protagonist in the entire history of 3D gaming.

Shut up Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

You too, Monster Hunter.

Get back behind that curtain, Street Fighter IV, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive, etc...

Hey Ninja Gaiden, ninjas are supposed to be silent and invisible! And you stay out of it, Tenchu!

Quiet, Super Smash Bros!

TLDR: Multiple motion models have been around as long as 3D animation has. Yes, it's a little more work, but it ain't impossible. Or even all that difficult. It's been done before.

It's not just about the model though, it's about the interaction with the environment. Love them or hate them, one of the big things about Ubisoft's games is the amount of freedom they give you to run around the environment, climb, run up walls, jump across ledges, etc... the thing is that every bit of that environment needs to be compatible with each usable model and it's style of animation. The games your mentioning have a comparatively limited scope.

One of my go-to examples for this, and part of why I understand the problem, is because of MMOs. In MMOs you might literally have dozens of playable character models with all kinds of customization as opposed to height, weight, etc... but in these games they get away with it by having a very limited number of things the characters can do, especially when it comes to environmental interaction. This is why it's fairly rare to see MMOs where characters can sit in chairs (and it's a big question people ask about) for example, because that means that each type of chair has to be tested with all model variants. Most MMOs don't bother, and create very few items in the world you can interact with as a price for the number of potential models and such you can have. As I've pointed out a few times before also, the problem was illustrated with "The Old Republic Online" where during E3 Bioware's guys themselves pointed out a problem with getting the female models to mesh well with the vehicles due to height and positioning differences, a problem they arguably never solved as their fix is allegedly responsible for the horrible clipping problems the entire vehicle/mount system continues to suffer today which is jarring in an otherwise pretty well polished game.

Basically, I'll concede that it would be relatively simple to create a female model that could do the fighting stuff and probably interact with the other killable models, especially if there is a decent size variance among the possible enemies to begin with. However with the rest of Ubisoft's game it's a much bigger deal, because they would have to adjust the position of all the handholds, platforms, and other things to ensure it works with both models, and in a
game this saturated with interaction points that would be tantamount to re-developing the entire game. The model itself isn't really the problem, it's everything else that goes with it. As I've said, imagine for example that your playing "Black Flag" and Edward jumps for a platform, and makes it, but there is like 6" of space between his graphic and the edge because the model is shorter than the jump was designed for... that's the kind of problem your looking at. In a game like this having a girl whose say 5' 6" as opposed to 6' (six inches shorter) in proportionate scale is going to be enough to muck up everything in a game based around pinpoint measurements and environmental interactions.

Now yeah, they could go the MMO route and say "okay, we'll give you tons of models but you can't do anything but run around and do the same basic fighting animations based on your class", but that wouldn't be "Assassin's Creed" where the entire game is based around the sheer interactivity of the environment and the mobility it allows you.

You'd think it's be easier to adjust the movement and position of the models to fit the world (you know, like we do in real life) rather than the other way around, but I guess that's videogames for ya. I mean, which do you think would take more time and energy to do? Hell, if you realized that you'd have models of varying sizes, you could've worked it out from the beginning.

People seem to mostly be complaining because of a feeling of entitlement stemming from how Ubisoft created a female character for "Liberation". Since they did it once, people feel Ubisoft is committed to presenting that option in all games. Ubisoft's answer was brief, but was not unreasonable, people argueing with it and talking about how cheap alternate models would be just do not get it (it goes beyond the cost of just a basic model), and frankly would not have been satisfied with any answer Ubisoft gave. For that matter, why does Ubisoft have to justify itself in the first place? If it doesn't want a female protagonist option, it doesn't HAVE to make one.

It's not entitlement, it's a minority deciding that they don't want to be marginalized anymore, and a portion of the majority agreeing with them. While it's nowhere near (and I want to stress that) the size and importance of the Civil Rights and current Gay Rights movement, it's still the same feelings and events. Just, again, on a smaller scale in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Therumancer]

[

You'd think it's be easier to adjust the movement and position of the models to fit the world (you know, like we do in real life) rather than the other way around, but I guess that's videogames for ya. I mean, which do you think would take more time and energy to do? Hell, if you realized that you'd have models of varying sizes, you could've worked it out from the beginning.

People seem to mostly be complaining because of a feeling of entitlement stemming from how Ubisoft created a female character for "Liberation". Since they did it once, people feel Ubisoft is committed to presenting that option in all games. Ubisoft's answer was brief, but was not unreasonable, people argueing with it and talking about how cheap alternate models would be just do not get it (it goes beyond the cost of just a basic model), and frankly would not have been satisfied with any answer Ubisoft gave. For that matter, why does Ubisoft have to justify itself in the first place? If it doesn't want a female protagonist option, it doesn't HAVE to make one.

It's not entitlement, it's a minority deciding that they don't want to be marginalized anymore, and a portion of the majority agreeing with them. While it's nowhere near (and I want to stress that) the size and importance of the Civil Rights and current Gay Rights movement, it's still the same feelings and events. Just, again, on a smaller scale in the grand scheme of things.

The thing "minorities" need to understand is that they need to get involved in the industries they are complaining about and produce their own writers and creators. With women, as The Escapist covered, your already seeing more women getting involved in the industry, which means that you'll see more writers and creators over time, who will probably write female characters primarily.

Again, it doesn't matter how you label something, at the end of the day you cannot force things, no matter how well intentioned, onto the creative process while maintaining it's integrity. One should not punish a creator, or interfere with a work, simply for not being all inclusive.

As I also pointed out the setting also matters, I suppose one could argue that by definition nobody should set a game or book earlier than the mid-late 20th century when the intent is to be at least fairly realistic to avoid discrimination and allow for a potentially varied cast, but I think that opens up tons of problems on it's own. I pointed out for example why a simple gender swap wouldn't work within the time frame of 1715 (and be ridiculous for a game trying to ground itself in being something that could potentially have happened with history being viewed as we understand it after the fact) by pointing out the plot points in "Black Flag". The time frame in the new "Assassin's Creed" game is arguably worse for it.

As far as the realities of programming go, the problem is the size of models, again as I pointed out women are shorter on average and unless your going to make all the women unusually tall and with manly proportions, simple things like how far their arms reach and such become an issue when dealing with all the jumping and climbing and such in a game like "Assassin's Creed", especially when your dealing with all these jumps that involve "barely making it" and holding on by your fingertips and so on. One can argue that if you plan for both models to begin with it seems like it should be easier, but that's not really the case as what's supposed to be a harrowing jump for one model would look comical for another. If say doing the same jump with a 6" height/proportional difference it would look silly if both are hanging from their fingertips when say the male model should have made it with more distance to spare. What's more as "The Old Republic Online" showed with it's vehicles, getting more than one model to work for everything is harder than it sounds, even when you do plan from the beginning. The point is there is a reason why "Assassin's Creed" has generally been a "one player model" game at least as far as the main stories are concerned. Albeit they DID do a chapter with a playable female lead (where there was no male option) called "Liberation".

It's easy to say "I want something" than it is to see it realized, especially when what seems like a "simple" change could basically amount to 10s of millions of dollars of work when you consider voice acting (not just for the character but to change NPC reactions for the entire cast), area revisions, and perhaps creating an entirely separate plot alternative for the gender swap to make it fit in so you might approach historical situations from a perspective a woman might have fit in during (at least overtly).

Don't get me wrong, variety is a good thing, but nobody should claim it's an entitlement, or be making arguments about "how easy it would be to do", not to mention that argueing that the creators should have their freedom impinged for the sake of political correctness is counter-productive to the much greater issue of keeping corporations and regulators out of the creative process entirely.

 

[Netrigan]

In single player, I'll concede (sometimes reluctantly) that it makes sense to go with a singular hero... and that market forces are such that it will be far more likely than not to be a white guy. That's the problem with big money, it plays things horribly safe and you can't make someone risk a pile that big.

But there are virtually no reasons why there aren't a variety of options for multiplayer. Oh, it's so unbelievable to have a girl soldier running around with the boys in Call of Duty... as if anything in MP mode relies on fidelity to reality. Assassin's Creed has regularly included non-white and non-male assassins in the mix, so there's absolutely no reason not to include some females in the co-op and other MP modes. At the very least, make it a Day One You Bought It New So It's Free DLC. It'll still be a dick move, but then the "we didn't have enough time to do it right" excuse sounds slightly plausible.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I can sort of almost have pity on Ubisoft. They don't make games so much as they spew DLC every once in a while and market it as a full game. However, they have an incredibly tight grasp on the "white teenage male" demographic mentioned above. They lose that by having a female character with EE breasts and a wide load, then they lose. Simple as that. They're stuck.

Oh wait, no they're not, because they could afford to lose 65 million euros and they're still strong.

I think if a story would do better with a female protagonist with a nice booty or not, it should have a female protagonist.
I think if a story would do better with a male protagonist with a nice booty or not, it should have a male protagonist.

But Ubisoft is being very stubborn: instead of saying "we fucked up sorry will make more female characters" they're effectively pinning the blame on their animation and art teams, and all of those horrible bloggers who are bullying them. And now people are being fired because things aren't going well in the company.

...Really, I just want people to make good games, Y chromosome-tastic or not.

 

[SAMAS]

You'd think it's be easier to adjust the movement and position of the models to fit the world (you know, like we do in real life) rather than the other way around, but I guess that's videogames for ya. I mean, which do you think would take more time and energy to do? Hell, if you realized that you'd have models of varying sizes, you could've worked it out from the beginning.

People seem to mostly be complaining because of a feeling of entitlement stemming from how Ubisoft created a female character for "Liberation". Since they did it once, people feel Ubisoft is committed to presenting that option in all games. Ubisoft's answer was brief, but was not unreasonable, people argueing with it and talking about how cheap alternate models would be just do not get it (it goes beyond the cost of just a basic model), and frankly would not have been satisfied with any answer Ubisoft gave. For that matter, why does Ubisoft have to justify itself in the first place? If it doesn't want a female protagonist option, it doesn't HAVE to make one.

It's not entitlement, it's a minority deciding that they don't want to be marginalized anymore, and a portion of the majority agreeing with them. While it's nowhere near (and I want to stress that) the size and importance of the Civil Rights and current Gay Rights movement, it's still the same feelings and events. Just, again, on a smaller scale in the grand scheme of things.

The thing "minorities" need to understand is that they need to get involved in the industries they are complaining about and produce their own writers and creators. With women, as The Escapist covered, your already seeing more women getting involved in the industry, which means that you'll see more writers and creators over time, who will probably write female characters primarily.

I take it you have forgotten the whole thing about publishers not letting even male developers make and market female protagonists, [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7044-The-Creepy-Cull-of-Female-Protagonists] then?

Again, it doesn't matter how you label something, at the end of the day you cannot force things, no matter how well intentioned, onto the creative process while maintaining it's integrity. One should not punish a creator, or interfere with a work, simply for not being all inclusive.

First of all, nobody is putting a gun to Ubisoft's head and forcing them to put female characters in the game. They did this, people voiced they didn't like something about it. They are free to ignore what their customer base is asking for if they're willing to accept the consequence of less sales.

As I also pointed out the setting also matters, I suppose one could argue that by definition nobody should set a game or book earlier than the mid-late 20th century when the intent is to be at least fairly realistic to avoid discrimination and allow for a potentially varied cast, but I think that opens up tons of problems on it's own. I pointed out for example why a simple gender swap wouldn't work within the time frame of 1715 (and be ridiculous for a game trying to ground itself in being something that could potentially have happened with history being viewed as we understand it after the fact) by pointing out the plot points in "Black Flag". The time frame in the new "Assassin's Creed" game is arguably worse for it. [/quote]

Ubisoft has already established precedent of Assassins working in that time period in III and Liberation. Brotherhood and Revelations beat even that to the punch showing female Assassins and Templars in Ezio's time. So any claim that there weren't women operating in that time period goes in the face of four games that say otherwise.

As far as the realities of programming go, the problem is the size of models, again as I pointed out women are shorter on average and unless your going to make all the women unusually tall and with manly proportions, simple things like how far their arms reach and such become an issue when dealing with all the jumping and climbing and such in a game like "Assassin's Creed", especially when your dealing with all these jumps that involve "barely making it" and holding on by your fingertips and so on. One can argue that if you plan for both models to begin with it seems like it should be easier, but that's not really the case as what's supposed to be a harrowing jump for one model would look comical for another. If say doing the same jump with a 6" height/proportional difference it would look silly if both are hanging from their fingertips when say the male model should have made it with more distance to spare. What's more as "The Old Republic Online" showed with it's vehicles, getting more than one model to work for everything is harder than it sounds, even when you do plan from the beginning. The point is there is a reason why "Assassin's Creed" has generally been a "one player model" game at least as far as the main stories are concerned. Albeit they DID do a chapter with a playable female lead (where there was no male option) called "Liberation".

Actually, it ain't that hard. I can tell you the solution right now (and here it goes).

Once you've play-tested the stage for the default model, you have a set of default paremeters for jumping distances, climbing spaces, and the like. Then if you have a smaller or larger model, you design their movements and parameters to fit that default. If you really wanna take it a step further, you can even have paths that they can't traverse, and make alternate paths that only they can. For example, a Heavy character may not be able to jump a wide gap, but can force locked doors open. Or a Smaller character can't reach a high ledge, but can walk over ropes or chains stretched over gaps.

It's easy to say "I want something" than it is to see it realized, especially when what seems like a "simple" change could basically amount to 10s of millions of dollars of work when you consider voice acting (not just for the character but to change NPC reactions for the entire cast), area revisions, and perhaps creating an entirely separate plot alternative for the gender swap to make it fit in so you might approach historical situations from a perspective a woman might have fit in during (at least overtly).

Overinflated costs is an entirely different problem, one that the AAA industry brought on themselves.

 

[Therumancer]

You'd think it's be easier to adjust the movement and position of the models to fit the world (you know, like we do in real life) rather than the other way around, but I guess that's videogames for ya. I mean, which do you think would take more time and energy to do? Hell, if you realized that you'd have models of varying sizes, you could've worked it out from the beginning.

People seem to mostly be complaining because of a feeling of entitlement stemming from how Ubisoft created a female character for "Liberation". Since they did it once, people feel Ubisoft is committed to presenting that option in all games. Ubisoft's answer was brief, but was not unreasonable, people argueing with it and talking about how cheap alternate models would be just do not get it (it goes beyond the cost of just a basic model), and frankly would not have been satisfied with any answer Ubisoft gave. For that matter, why does Ubisoft have to justify itself in the first place? If it doesn't want a female protagonist option, it doesn't HAVE to make one.

It's not entitlement, it's a minority deciding that they don't want to be marginalized anymore, and a portion of the majority agreeing with them. While it's nowhere near (and I want to stress that) the size and importance of the Civil Rights and current Gay Rights movement, it's still the same feelings and events. Just, again, on a smaller scale in the grand scheme of things.

The thing "minorities" need to understand is that they need to get involved in the industries they are complaining about and produce their own writers and creators. With women, as The Escapist covered, your already seeing more women getting involved in the industry, which means that you'll see more writers and creators over time, who will probably write female characters primarily.

I take it you have forgotten the whole thing about publishers not letting even male developers make and market female protagonists, [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7044-The-Creepy-Cull-of-Female-Protagonists] then?

Again, it doesn't matter how you label something, at the end of the day you cannot force things, no matter how well intentioned, onto the creative process while maintaining it's integrity. One should not punish a creator, or interfere with a work, simply for not being all inclusive.

First of all, nobody is putting a gun to Ubisoft's head and forcing them to put female characters in the game. They did this, people voiced they didn't like something about it. They are free to ignore what their customer base is asking for if they're willing to accept the consequence of less sales.

As I also pointed out the setting also matters, I suppose one could argue that by definition nobody should set a game or book earlier than the mid-late 20th century when the intent is to be at least fairly realistic to avoid discrimination and allow for a potentially varied cast, but I think that opens up tons of problems on it's own. I pointed out for example why a simple gender swap wouldn't work within the time frame of 1715 (and be ridiculous for a game trying to ground itself in being something that could potentially have happened with history being viewed as we understand it after the fact) by pointing out the plot points in "Black Flag". The time frame in the new "Assassin's Creed" game is arguably worse for it.

Ubisoft has already established precedent of Assassins working in that time period in III and Liberation. Brotherhood and Revelations beat even that to the punch showing female Assassins and Templars in Ezio's time. So any claim that there weren't women operating in that time period goes in the face of four games that say otherwise.

As far as the realities of programming go, the problem is the size of models, again as I pointed out women are shorter on average and unless your going to make all the women unusually tall and with manly proportions, simple things like how far their arms reach and such become an issue when dealing with all the jumping and climbing and such in a game like "Assassin's Creed", especially when your dealing with all these jumps that involve "barely making it" and holding on by your fingertips and so on. One can argue that if you plan for both models to begin with it seems like it should be easier, but that's not really the case as what's supposed to be a harrowing jump for one model would look comical for another. If say doing the same jump with a 6" height/proportional difference it would look silly if both are hanging from their fingertips when say the male model should have made it with more distance to spare. What's more as "The Old Republic Online" showed with it's vehicles, getting more than one model to work for everything is harder than it sounds, even when you do plan from the beginning. The point is there is a reason why "Assassin's Creed" has generally been a "one player model" game at least as far as the main stories are concerned. Albeit they DID do a chapter with a playable female lead (where there was no male option) called "Liberation".

Actually, it ain't that hard. I can tell you the solution right now (and here it goes).

Once you've play-tested the stage for the default model, you have a set of default paremeters for jumping distances, climbing spaces, and the like. Then if you have a smaller or larger model, you design their movements and parameters to fit that default. If you really wanna take it a step further, you can even have paths that they can't traverse, and make alternate paths that only they can. For example, a Heavy character may not be able to jump a wide gap, but can force locked doors open. Or a Smaller character can't reach a high ledge, but can walk over ropes or chains stretched over gaps.

It's easy to say "I want something" than it is to see it realized, especially when what seems like a "simple" change could basically amount to 10s of millions of dollars of work when you consider voice acting (not just for the character but to change NPC reactions for the entire cast), area revisions, and perhaps creating an entirely separate plot alternative for the gender swap to make it fit in so you might approach historical situations from a perspective a woman might have fit in during (at least overtly).

Overinflated costs is an entirely different problem, one that the AAA industry brought on themselves.[/quote]

Oh, I agree, the costs are overinflated and a problem with the industry, but it's still a problem that exists, and one has to deal with those realities until the changes are made to address it. At the end of the day though game developers love their fairly cushy jobs and relatively large paydays, nobody has yet decided to crack the whip, go with smaller teams that work harder and get paid less. This is a whole different discussion though.

You yourself are pretty much positing suggestions that would involve re-defining the entire game, and adding a lot of complexity and options, such as alternate character paths and abilities. All of which would involve a huge amount of design work.

As far as Jim's comments on the "cull" of female protagonists, how good a source that is depends largely on how much you agree with Jim Sterling. It's been a while but I seem to remember having a few things to say about that one. Not to mention that female protagonists aren't exactly rare, it's just that there isn't one in the new "Assassin's Creed" when people feel entitled to one. .

As far as female Assassins being present in some of the other games, it should be noted that these characters also didn't come to the forefront as protagonists and thus weren't involved in behaviors that were as overt, or would overshadow women involved in the period. They were for the most part present, but were not superhumanly skilled to the extent of the main character (at least not consistently) and largely filled out the background. See there is a difference between say having a female Assassin who runs support and say disguises herself and hangs out pretending to be a normal person most of the time, and for whatever reason managed to never be spotted, and the protagonists who is pretty much being chased around by guards constantly, cuts down half a dozen guys as a matter of routine, etc...

That's sort of my point, it depends on the game and how the character works, you can't just simply use the plot for a dude like say Edward Kenway and make it a girl.

As far as Aveline goes, she arguably never existed or at least not like the game presented, which was kind of the point of the game. Aveline was present in a piece of propaganda about Assassins created by Templars. This was their way of doing a female character pulling things off in a way a woman of the time never could have without making waves just by being there. It should also be noted that Aveline's game was written specifically for her, and had disguise play a fairly large role. All of the above aside, she approached situations a bit differently than other characters in the series, and indeed a good portion of the game was based around that.