Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and its newest DLC chapter raised some hackles last week. The story shoehorned its protagonist right into a relationship to provide an inheritor, whether or not or not the participant had determined their hero was straight, homosexual, or simply disinterested within the lover the game had picked out. After gamers complained, Ubisoft apologised, admitting they’d dropped the ball on writing that exact section. In a press release on the Ubisoft forums yesterday, Ubi introduced that an upcoming patch would partially alter a cutscene, some dialogue and the naming of an achievement, reportedly after session with LGBT media advocacy group GLAAD.
While it sounds just like the adjustments are going to be comparatively minor, I really feel Ubisoft have dealt with this nicely. I undoubtedly wouldn’t attribute their misstep to malice, simply clumsy writing, as they’d backed themselves right into a nook on that plot level. In permitting gamers to outline the sexuality of their primary character, it ended up clashing a bit with the recurring theme of particular bloodlines (together with some extraterrestrial stuff happening) needing to be continued. The achievement that’ll be renamed was the slightly galling ‘Growing Up’, which gave the unlucky impression that Kassandra or Alexios weren’t correct adults till they’d gone and made a child.
We are happy that Ubisoft has listened to LGBTQ gamers and shall be making adjustments to Assassin’s Creed. This is a vital first step towards mitigating the harm finished by the game’s newest DLC. https://t.co/2l5CeXI3JV
— GLAAD (@glaad) January 25, 2019
Ubisoft additionally say they’re investigating how decisions made within the Shadow Heritage chapter might resolve within the third and last chapter of the present story arc, Bloodline. Hopefully it’s the final time they’ll need to take care, as the following story arc – The Fate Of Atlantis – sounds prefer it’s going to be a much more fanciful journey. Of course, because it’s diving deeper into the foolish science-fantasy features of the Assassin’s Creed collection, that’s certain to upset some folks as nicely, though on a extra common degree. As for me, I’m a kind of terrible trash-beasts that likes the foolish Ancient Aliens conspiracy nonsense surrounding all of it.
Despite fumbling the LGBTQ+ ball a bit, GLAAD are nonetheless nominating Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for certainly one of their Media Awards, stating that “progress can sometimes be messy”. You can read their full reasoning here.
