by Joseph Knoop
After a comment made by Ubisoft creative leads regarding the exclusion of playable female characters in the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Unity -- that modeling and animating females would have taken too many resources -- led to widespread criticism from fans and industry figures, Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot has said the company is working to increase diversity in their games.
"We knew it would be polarizing," Guillemot said, referencing Watch Dogs' protagonist Aiden Pierce. "Some people loved the characters and some didn't. It was difficult to please everybody with that character. Now, having seen the reaction, we know what we will do next to improve that."
According to Guillemot, we'll see fewer cliches and more diverse characters in future Ubisoft games, too.
"We are working on that," he said. "We want to spend more time on the worlds and characters in our games... you will see more and more of this at Ubisoft. We'll try to be less like we have been in the past with some characters. We'll try to extend more diversity."
Guillemot also said he wasn't sure if gamers would see Aiden Pierce return in future Watch Dogs installments.
Watch Dogs sold more than four million copies its first week, making it the best selling new IP at launch in the industry. Beyond criticism for its lack of diversity, Watch Dogs has also been lambasted for graphical cutbacks, resulting in versions of the game looking far lower quality than the 2012 E3 demo. Modder TheWorse discovered code within the game that, after minor tweaking, returned the game to levels of quality at least close to the 2012 demo. Ubisoft has also yet to address the issues experienced by PC players, promising a patch "soon."
Source: CVG
Image: VG247
