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ArnheimStephen Totilo
1/16/19 6:30pm
This is the difficulty that any set narrative runs into when it advertises itself as being driven by “player choice.” It is not possible to both have a set narrative line and not do shit that invalidates certain player decisions at some point along the line.

The same thing happened to Mass Effect 3—and has happened in the Dragon Age series.

In a medium that so often inspires fanfic (which I take no issue with, but some people take waaaaay too seriously), shipping (which weirds me out, but whatever makes people happy, I suppose), and fan art, you’d think the professionals working on the script would understand how basic Reader Response theory works—and also that promising full player agency will always be a fool’s errand if you want to have any control over how your story hits major beats.

This, then, is the problem of gaming in the 2010s. Players want and demand more agency, companies try to give it to them—but writers and directors will always have a vision for where the story ends up.

Marrying those two things without one invalidating the other is a titanic challenge, and one that Ubi, like BioWare, has failed pretty spectacularly in this particular moment.
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  EasterosArnheim
  1/16/19 6:56pm
  Yeah, 100% agree with this. I get the appeal of the “choose your own path” concept, but, in games in which you’re likely making dozens of choices that might impact the story or your character over the course of play, it’s just too difficult to maintain the consistency of the story while staying true to the character a player builds. You either end up creating contradictions (here) or you end up with just bland as hell main characters (Far Cry 5 is a loose example). The games that pull off the illusion of free will the best are ones like Witcher 3 or RDR2, where you have an established character who you can make “choices” for throughout the game, but everything is within a framework that ensures the developers tell the story they want without contradicting anything about the character.
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  SplyceArnheim
  1/16/19 6:56pm
  This is straight bullshit.
  This is not that hard. The fact is, they wanted to shoehorn this story into the larger Assassin’s Creed thing about bloodlines after trying to get away from it in the previous title, probably because of the runaway success of this game and the sequel opportunities.
  Is it impossible to write a story that doesn’t involve copulation? Or forcing characters to breed? If that is the absolutely crux of your story, you may want to revisit the plot. This doesn’t require some deep academic, epistemological thought. This isn’t about dedicated artists’ lifelong dream to write an ancient Greek hero/heroine who pumps out babies.
  It’s also far less than Titanic on difficulty. The rest of the entire game managed to do it just fine without any issue. That major games fail at it is not evidence the problem is somehow incredible, just that their desire to homogenize and generalize their content for the greatest possible reach and with the greatest ease of access is at odds with staying true to compelling narratives that are left to the player to develop.
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2Fast2WarStephen Totilo
1/16/19 6:06pm
Disappointing but I guess they can’t put the genie back in the bottle now. Doing it out of necessity makes a kind of sense but like, you can also totally play Alexios/Kassandra as someone who doesn’t give a shit about their Spartan duty and is just along for the ride, the sarcastic joker. So why would that necessarily influence them?
Just don’t force your protagonist who can be exclusively gay into a heterosexual relationship. It's bad, it's unnecessary, and they should've anticipated it.
Malaka.
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  tom dunne2Fast2War
  1/16/19 6:44pm
  Particularly in a game series that has hinged explicitly on DNA and biological ancestry.
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  Rusty_Slav2Fast2War
  1/16/19 6:53pm
  Except these characters are “ancestors”, which implies they had coitus with opposite sex. So not exclusively gay, no.
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Shady JenkinsStephen Totilo
1/16/19 6:10pm
On one hand. I think some of the backlash is too much. “Punch in the gut” cause your character had a baby and got into a relationship is too much. Its not that serious.
Other hand. People spent 70+ in this game and got attached to the characters and believed they could make them however they want, sexuality wise. So I can see the backlash as a good thing. If the game didn’t do a good job of making the characters then no one would care.
So I may not understand all of the backlash. But I respect it. Too much we humans fear and hate what we don’t understand and don’t even try to understand why we do. I’m happy Ubisoft took the criticism and seems to be making it right later. And I have to look at myself for not understand others problem with the choice.
My solution? Create fan fic stories of what should have happen and flood Jason and Stephen’s email with hot and steamy Odyssey humping.
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  Mortal DictataShady Jenkins
  1/16/19 6:15pm
  “Punch in the gut” cause your character had a baby and got into a relationship is too much. Its not that serious.
  When a game decides that your sexuality can’t be as “fulfilling” as a hetero one and out of nowhere suddenly makes your in-game avatar, which was homosexual, hetero for no well explained reason and then gives the impression that the devs only see having biological kids as “growing up”, then yes that would feel like a pretty solid gut punch.
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  softwarepieratShady Jenkins
  1/16/19 6:44pm
  I donno... If the next God of War or Halo games forces the player into a gay marriage, I’m willing to bet there would be a lot less respect.
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Rachel FoggStephen Totilo
1/16/19 6:19pm
What I think happened at Ubisoft-
Person: Hey uh...we kinda hammered in on the ‘free choice/sexuality thing’ with this game. Perhaps we should rethink this DLC’s path/ending a bit?
Ubi: Wha? No its great! Adds in the whole mythical and mystical destiny ooohhhhhhhh ahhhh!
Person: Yeah but like, if the player makes their character lesbian/gay...wouldn’t we be sorta. I dunno, removing the players choice and actions and forcing our own on them?
Ubi: .......
Person: .......so i think we should-
Ubi: NAHHH! DO IT! LET’S SEE WHAT HAPPENS, THEY’RE GOING TO LOVE IT! WHO DOESN’T LOVE MARRIAGE AND BABIES!!?
24 hours later
Ubi: They didn’t love it, why didn’t anyone tell us? We look like fools!
Person:
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  Wolfman_BrownRachel Fogg
  1/16/19 7:03pm
  I like that they painted themselves into a corner. It’s not like you can play the decendant of a historical figure who was gay and never had children. How else are you going to relive their genetic memories?
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  Rachel FoggWolfman_Brown
  1/16/19 7:27pm
  LIKE...I...
  I don’t think Ubisoft knows exactly what they’re doing anymore.
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SpderwebStephen Totilo
1/16/19 6:26pm
First of all, I haven’t beat the game, so no spoilers please.
My main beef with this entire game is that there’s choice at all.
AC has always been about going into the DNA and following the history of a character, not deciding what that history is. It’s a fun game, and (i play a straight guy in it) I love the back and forth with characters like Alkibialik (spl?). It’s just not how Assassins Creed was designed to be treated. Decision making shouldn’t be a factor when it comes to the story telling.
As an aside, I would be totally fine if the character was a man,woman, straight or gay. I don’t care about that. In Mass Effect, I played as FemShep and had her fall for the Turian. My only beef is that there’s choice at all in an Assassins Creed game.
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  MikeSpderweb
  1/16/19 6:41pm
  Not to be pedantic (and I only offer this because of the spl with a question mark), but it’s Alcibiades. With a hard c. Real historical person who they probably took a lot of license with, but the effect is pretty hilarious.
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  looselyhumanSpderweb
  1/17/19 10:30am
  “The Turian?” You earned pro cred with femshep and then plebed out fantastically.
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mouseclickerStephen Totilo
1/16/19 9:24pm
This whole story makes me happy in a way. Even though Ubisoft messed up, the critiques from fans were passionate and reasoned, without any of the developers getting harassed or doxed. And then Ubisoft actually understood why people were upset and acknowledged a need to do better, instead of dismissing the players’ complaints.

I just feel like we don’t get these positive outcomes to kinda crappy situations.
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  rogueIndymouseclicker
  1/17/19 6:53am
  It does feel like a far cry (no pun) from “women are expensive to animate”, doesn’t it? Maybe they’re learning. Sorta. -ish.
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  mouseclickerrogueIndy
  1/17/19 11:43am
  Yeah, exactly! It’s not great that Ubisoft had to go through that learning process, but they at least seem to have legitimately learned from it and earnestly want to do better and be more inclusive now. That’s just such a rarity from big game publishers.
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Mortal DictataStephen Totilo
1/16/19 6:08pm
If they wanted to check that they’d “distinguished” enough between the two options (and I can understand the logic of the concept) maybe they could’ve... oh I don’t know... asked a LGBT+ focus group what they thought about this idea first...
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  EnlilMortal Dictata
  1/17/19 12:35am
  Even leaving the whole sexual orientation aspect out, it sucks to force a romantic choice onto the player after previously having had freedom. I would have hated it if my Commander Shepard had left Liara for Ashley without me being able to prevent it.
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  DehTommyEnlil
  1/18/19 6:32am
  Heck, imagine if Shepard of any gender was forced to break up with their SO and get with Liara offscreen.
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Gene JacketStephen Totilo
1/16/19 6:36pm
Well, I guess it’s good that I’ll never finish the game and get to this dlc, because my Kassandra ain’t into no dudes.
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  BlazeKingNJGene Jacket
  1/16/19 6:45pm
  My Kassandra is into both; because she’s got it like that!
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helios396Stephen Totilo
1/16/19 7:28pm
Honestly, Ubisoft should have seen this backlash coming from a hundred miles away. I don’t understand why they didn’t.
Forcing a romance/relationship and a major life decision like having a kid into a game that has been giving freedom to choose romantic encounters for the whole game (until now)? Romance in an RPG is a huuuge deal for many people, as seen as what happened in Bioware games.
It's great that at least they acknowledged their missteps, but the damage is done.
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HiemothStephen Totilo
1/17/19 3:48am
To me, what continues to be most stymifying aspect here is how this is such a basic failure at narrative design in a game where you tout certain choices. I mean I understand and support constraining choices, but this was bizarre.
The explanation even makes it worse from that perspective as I think the plan itself, by having the main character examine their mortality, is a good one and I can see it being a justified story. However, if the end point of that is for the MC to have a child, then that needs to be a big decision that is built towards in advance. You can’t pull a kid out of nowhere and try to retroactively figure out the justification for it as at that moment there is not actual narrative weight on the decision. I just can’t fathom what the hell happened in the planning phase of htis.
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