LONDON AC.

… I think we’d be all over that, actually. I too would like to climb Big Ben.

I definitely agree that we need to see a game with a female assassin, and I’m not the only one. However, I can see a logic to the choice of hero for this particular game – it would be pretty challenging at that time for a woman to interact in a way that the assassin needs to with the (not exactly feminist) historical figures that they’ve announced for the game. That’s not to say that it couldn’t be done, nor is it an excuse for snubbing women heroes for 5 major games – just an acknowledgement that it would be a big burden on the story that they’ve decided to tell, and I guess they decided to focus elsewhere.

I don’t think that’s at all true in every historical setting, however, or even in most, and I’m very hopeful and pretty confident that we’ll get that she-assassin eventually.

I more wanted to point you to the parts of the articles that deal with other issues that were raised in this piece: the British/American conflict, and how they are handling historical accuracy; i.e. the Americans-to-be aren’t necessarily the “goodies”, and they put a fair bit of effort into making the main character’s heritage meaningful.

p.s. I think markgraf hasn’t played it yet, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Altaiir is much better handled in Revelations – they gave him a more fitting voice, and his own face.

I must say I was quite :( when I read his recent Kotaku interview where he says the Revolution is “a men’s history”. It’s up to him what history he wants his games to focus on, but it was kinda classically myopic. Sadface!

I just caught this one, too – Alex talks about the game really well.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/03/the-assassins-creed-iii-revolution/

In particular, you might enjoy the video on this article:
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/03/21/assassin-39-s-creed-iii-39-s-historical-secrets.aspx

Like I said, I think studying trailers is a worthwhile activity in itself, and since that’s what you guys were doing here, you won’t get any complaints from me about the conclusions you drew. I was a little off-topic (when am I ever on topic?) in discussing the wider situation, but your discussion raised that question for me, and I still think it’s a pertinent one: is it enough to have strong female characters who are not the protagonist?

Personally, I’d argue against the idea that Claudia, Sofia, or (better example) Rebecca are tokenistic. Whilst Claudia is supportive to Ezio, she’s a pretty essential support, handling as she does his entire financial operation. I was disappointed she never got to suit up and go assassining, but I felt her portrayal was sensitive and realistic for what it was. It certainly didn’t feel like the designers were thinking “better have a female character in here somewhere… there we go, Ezio’s got a sister!” It felt like she was the best and most interesting character for the role. IN Sofia’s case, she’s not even a support to Ezio – instead, she’s a love interest, but the game is careful to show that she’s a love interest because she has her own interests and is already following, in her own way and without knowing it, the titular creed, as exemplified when Ezio explains it to her. Rebecca, again, is a whole ‘nother can of worms, and feels as though she has her own agenda and interests quite apart from Desmond. The impression I got from the entire Team Assassin crew is that Desmond is helping them, not the other way around, and that seemed to be particularly the attitude of Sean and Rebecca. In fact, when you think about it, despite everything, Desmond is actually a very passive participant in the story, spending most of the time sat in a chair playing (essentially) a video game, while Sean, Lucy and Rebecca take care of the work. As for Lucy, I think it’s pretty clear that, whilst a love interest and whilst a support for Desmond, she’s also a badass who infiltrated the Templars and stole their technology and research guinea pigs, not to mention a good bit of information. The question remains as to whether that’s enough. We all know the problems with “strong female characters” who are all ninja rocket boob scientists, but what about when you actually do flesh out the ladies a bit, but they’re still in service to one central protagonist? In part, this is a weakness of narrative within video games; they’re bound to being first person for the most part, and that person is normally a Straight White Male (obviously a bad thing in itself, but not specifically what I’m trying to get at here). If that SWM is aided and assisted by a number of characters, male and female, who are well-developed and have their own personalities, goals, and motivations, is the effect of the main character mitigated, or is it worsened? In part, this goes some way towards what Miranda was saying about marketing, and who things are marketed to. In the same way that the trailers avoid any non-whites (apart from the main character), the central character is often an SWM for similar marketing reasons. By having people of different backgrounds support him, do you send any kind of message? Is it worth sending that sort of message to the sort of people you are marketing to by choosing that protagonist and that kind of trailer?

Regarding the British thing, I sincerely hope that the developers have made a deliberate choice to make the character a native to demonstrate exactly the kind of thing you are talking about, Rai. I have faith that they have; this is AssCreed, after all, and liberalism is inherently tied up in the design of the games.

Re: The British Thing.
Yes we all know full well that our ancestors were evil bastards so it’s a given that they’re going to be portrayed as such in the respective time period. However, given the propensity of games made “across the pond” (and films, tv programmes, books, songs etc) to utilise strong and hefty dollops of hyperbole when dealing with “The Brits” I am particularly cynical on this issue. My concern is they’ll be painting the hyperbole on thicker than required. Furthermore I am sceptical as to whether they will accurately portray the evil bastardry of the Independence lot – given the atrocities they committed for hundreds of years against Native peoples (even after they gained their independence). If they portray the Brits as evil gits they ought to portray the Americans as equally evil gits.

Female Thing:
The question, for me, is not whether we need a female protagonist moreover it is that we were, essentially, promised one. Yet, she is nowhere to be seen. Will the renege on their own word?

But, no, I don’t think it is enough to have Lucy/Claudia/Sofia as to me they are relatively tokenistic (when you actually see them) and used only in a supportive function to Glorious Desmond Saviour of All.

Lots of sense here, and I’m enjoying the comments :)

I think trailers kind of exist to make people judge books by covers. There’s a whole post I’ve got on draft about how they can engineer different impressions, sometimes inaccurately – for example, there are two movie trailers for A Single Man, a film which is all about a gay protagonist and the most important relationship he has had. The one which was released more widely depicts the film as a heterosexual love story through some clever editing and by centralising a clip of a m/f kiss and leaving out any sense that there are gay characters. This was clearly a ploy to get bums on seats who would not have wanted to go to “a gay movie”. (Similarly I was blandly turned off by the trailer for X-Men: First Class, in which the women barely speak, despite the fact that Mystique is really nicely rendered by Jennifer Lawrence – but in the end I saw it three times.)

I guess what I’m saying is, the aim of a trailer is often precisely to engineer certain kinds of cover-judging, and can tell us a lot about who it is the film company is most interested in marketing to. This was one of the reasons a portion of the Mass Effect fandom began to campaign for “FemShep” – because when you judge the game on the trailer, the impression you get only tells half the possible story. If the trailer bears little resemblance to the actual gaming experience – that’s really interesting. If the trailer is bang-on, that’s also interesting. These are choices companies can deliberately make – so trailers kind of fascinate me in and of themselves. :D

So I think it’s good to have a space where you come out with what the trailer has made you think, because even if the game is very different, it’s interesting to explore why that might be – and then following on from that, we might then look at the game itself (we wouldn’t bother posting on the trailer if there weren’t people likely to buy the game on the team).