Stuffies

Mar. '13

It’s a bit of a tough question. Really early on, we decided to tell the story of the Kenways. So we already had in place the idea to tell Edward, Haytham, and Connor. This was actually years ago, we had this. We actually never thought, ‘could this be a woman?’

—

Assassin’s Creed: Black Flaggame director Ashraf Ismail, in response to IGN asking why there hasn’t been a women lead in the franchise’s flagship title. (At least he’s being honest that the decision to only have male leads in the big titles was a creative choice, resulting from thoughtlessness—the simple idea didnt even cross their minds.)

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has been doing great things with diversity compared to other franchises in the video game industry, creating lead characters of color, casting PoC voice actors, and featuring a woman lead in it’s Playstation Vita side game. Still, this response from the game director is pretty depressing.

Ismail goes on to justify the decision to feature a white male lead in the pirate-themed AC:IV by saying that it wouldn’t be historically/demographically accurate to feature a woman:

“From the pirate perspective, there were a few famous women pirates. But it wasn’t common. So we didn’t want that element to be a detail people got stuck on.”

Which is kind of hogwash because it wasn’t common for there be Native American assassins working in the Revolutionary War and it wasn’t common in history for individuals to successfully outsmart the Borgia family—but ask about why the lead of this game couldn’t have been a lady and suddenly it’s “well, there weren’t numerous girl pirates.”

(And it’s depressing that the people who would are unable to process the idea of a woman pirate are the demo they were worried about.)

When IGN pressed on the issue of having a woman lead character in the future, Ismail said, “I can tell you it’s not a no-no, it’s not something we’re trying to avoid at all.”

When even IGN is asking, and all you can says it that it’s “not a no-no…”

Why is this a “tough” question?

(via racebending)

I remember getting really excited when the opportunity to “play” Connor’s mom was presented (you could run around with her in the loading screen) and super disappointed when I turned out to be kid Connor :(

IGN, I’m calling your bluff on this one. Next protagonist is a girl or so help me I will kick you in the face >:[

Jul. '12

Racebending again?

First read this article: http://geektyrant.com/news/2012/7/9/michael-fassbender-to-star-in-assassins-creed.html

I don’t know how true it is, and I don’t claim to know much about Michael Fassbender or studio decisions, but I’m super disappointed with this development. Hollywood has ONE CHANCE to cast an Arabic character in a lead role and replaces him with a blue-eyed Caucasian looking guy (I say that because I don’t know if he’s of mixed race ancestry or purely European). I’m not hating on Fassbender or anything, he’s a very talented actor and I loved him in X-men but…please, please don’t mess up Altair…

How the heck are they going to cast a movie set in Syria (I think?) with the main ARABIC character being a white guy?

I’m gonna trust Ubisoft’s decision on this, because Ubisoft has done brilliant work in the game itself when it comes to cultural/racial diversity, but still…I’m very disappointed at how whenever there’s a legitimate chance for a PoC to be a main character, they get replaced by a white male because that’s how Hollywood works. I mean, the game was still very popular even though the main character was an Arab—so why do they think that the movie won’t be?

Maybe Fassbender can be Desmond >_>