Open spoilers for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey! This is including the DLC. There’s no way to discuss this issue without spoilers. Be warned.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
The end of Legacy of The First Blade sees your Kassandra or Alexios have a child with the son or daughter of Darius. This is upsetting some players. First, let’s look at what the game director said before the game launched:
“Since the story is choice-driven, we never force players in romantic situations they might not be comfortable with,” Dumont says. “Players decide if they want to engage with characters romantically. I think this allows everybody to build the relationships they want, which I feel respects everybody’s roleplay style and desires.”
By the end of the second chapter of The Legacy of the Hidden Blade DLC, that’s no longer true. You will have a child with one of Darius’ kids no matter what dialog choices you pick. LGBTQ players feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under them. They played their character as gay throughout the campaign and now it’s off to heteronormal land! Even if you played your character as straight but sexually active, the game implies that you haven’t “grown up” until you have a child.
Major misstep by Ubisoft, or an overreaction by LGBTQ players?
How about both. Should have had the option to adopt the kid, or have some socially progressive way to have the kid as an option, but that’s a lot of work so perhaps the LGBTQWTFBBQ people should tone down the dramatics and be happy Kassandra (and Alexios) are what they are. It’s art, not a political treatise. Artists are free to express themselves, aren’t they?
I think in this case, the issue isn’t whether or not it’s art, but that Ubisoft encouraged players to define their character’s sexuality via campaign choices, then forced them into a hetero relationship in DLC.
…and being the creators of the work, that’s their prerogative. We, as consumers of the work can only go meh, that sucks. Not worth raising pitchforks over imo, especially not because Ubi (strangely also the publishers of the pretty darn right-leaning Tom Clancy franchise) have done some pretty progressive things in their work.
I’ll confess that I find it disappointing to know that my sexually healthy bisexual Kassandra settles down to have a kid. Lame!
It doesn’t even make sense in the fiction of the Animus since starting with Black Flag you didn’t need a direct descendant of the historical character to jump back in time. In Odyssey, they mention that the Animus works via the DNA from the spear.
I haven’t played the DLC yet, but at first blush this isn’t too far-fetched historically speaking.
Whatever your sexual orientation in ancient times, it was nevertheless expected for men to eventually marry and for women to produce offspring. And the men at least could/would happily carry on with trysts on the side with members of whatever gender took their fancy. (Women adulterers, by contrast, were not treated as understandably, and men had generally to sneak around when it came to cheating on their wives – but considering the context of the game, no gender roles need to be assigned as rigidly as our usually male sources would have us believe.)
Edit: But yeah, I should make clear that it sucks that players are having this choice forced down their throats anyway.
It also doesn’t make much sense, since you can start the DLC during the main quest. This means Kassandra takes a year out of her cultist-killing revenge spree to have a tiny person.
If you finish the main campaign first, then the story is really bonkers.
I wonder if your sarcastic lack of real outrage about that particular thing is an apparent real rascism? I am always upset my character cannot be “black” as you say. Perhaps when my character can’t be “white” you’ll be outraged in real life?
I got this game free with a video card purchase and it’s still sitting in my backlog. I didn’t even know sex was an option in this series. Maybe I’ll stick with the Shadows of Mordor series for my beat-em-up and decapitation needs. Much less drama.
Uh I’m a POC who doesn’t mind playing these games through as their developers intended. I was apparently unaware this iteration of the already animus woo flavored franchise was a Sims spin-off or the next mass effect that promoted player agency. I admit I missed that whole marketing angle beyond gender selection. Don’t project onto me. Maybe you need to unwind in the Gillette ad thread?
“We strive to give players choice whenever possible in Odyssey and apologise to those surprised by the events in this episode,” a company spokesperson told Eurogamer. “Without spoiling it, you will engage in an important relationship as part of a set story. The motivation behind this relationship is yours to explore in game and will be reflected in your character’s story arc. There is one episode left in Legacy of the First Blade which will tie your character’s actions together.”
