Assassin's Creed's First Transgender Character

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

www.gamespot.com/articles/assassins-creed-syndicate-has-series-first-transge/1100-6430884/?ftag=YHRe6a6b70

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For the first time since the series debuted in 2007, this year's Assassin's Creed Syndicate will feature a transgender character. This character is Ned Wynert, a transgender male, and one of a handful of quest-giving NPCs in the stealth-action game.

"Inclusiveness is something that's super important for us as a team," Assassin's Creed Syndicate creative director Marc-Alexis Côté told Eurogamer. "We've made a good push towards diversity and how we approach different subjects in the game."


Last year's Assassin's Creed Unity drew a fair amount of criticism regarding its lack of playable female characters. Syndicate, meanwhile, has two main playable characters, the brother-sister due of Jacob and Evie Frye.

It's also been revealed that the Assassin's Creed opening statement, which runs before every game starts, has been amended to say: "Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations, and gender identities."

Previously, the second half of the statement said: "designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs."

Eurogamer recently played two missions involving Wynert, and report that his gender is never referenced. Côté says he wants players to form their own opinions about him.

Syndicate is not the first high-profile game to feature a transgender character. 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition featured the character Cremisius "Krem" Aclassi, the first transgender character that BioWare had ever created.

Due out October 23 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Syndicate's PC edition arrives on November 19. The game is not coming to Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

GameSpot recently played a few Syndicate missions. You can read our impressions here.

[JACK-2]

Make it stop God please!

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

I take it you don't like diversity then you male pig!

[magicattack]

I don't see it as a big deal. There have been crossdressers throughout history. If the game makers want to include one, then that is there choice.

Im not paying for it, so really who am I to complain?

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

In and of itself, I don't care about it as a game choice. I think the annoyance many people have from it stems from them shoehorning characters like this more and more into various media for the sake of "diversity" (much like the black character in the new FF movie). That I always find annoying. It serves no purpose and I don't need a black character thrown into something for me to like it. Just make a good game.

[magicattack]

Agreed. But if the main character happens to interact with a historical figure that is  generally accepted to be a crossdresser, then I don't see any issue. Take Mary Read for instance. 


But again, its their choice to put whatever content they want in their games. If the games don't sell, then that will only hurt the game manufacturers.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Well of course if it's based on something real life or based on something that exists it should have some relevance in accuracy. What I hate is just arbitrarily changing stuff just for the sake of political correctness.

And yes they can do whatever they want and hurt their own sales. Every company can do that. People who buy the game have the freedom to express their own opinion as well. Nobody is saying it should be illegal but voting with your wallet is best.

This is much like the censorship issue where many companies have annoyed long term fans to appeal to a larger base of people who don't play the games anyways. Just a side effect of gaming becoming mainstream.

I'm not seeing this done for "accuracy" but for the sake of "diversity" and other politically correct BS that's been in more of our games. Other western developers have done this as well. That's why they report it as some "victory" otherwise it wouldn't be a big deal.

[magicattack]

I agree that the F4 change was dumb. But if the movie was good and the only detriment was a black Johnny Storm then we would be looking forward to a second movie.


I look at it as just a different npc to interact with.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Nov 19, 2015 12:41:24 GMT -5 magicattack said:

I agree that the F4 change was dumb. But if the movie was good and the only detriment was a black Johnny Storm then we would be looking forward to a second movie.


I look at it as just a different npc to interact with.

Well if it's a phenomenal movie I'd ignore it. Just seems like they care about pandering to SJW types than making good content. I mean I'm black and Wally West is one of my favorite characters, but did they have to make him black? What did it accomplish other than to get us "dumb black folk" to read it more? I'm intelligent enough to like a good story without caring if a person is black. Now I'm sure there are people who are black who seek out stuff with black people (like some of my family members), but they are in a minority. I just don't feel it turns out good most of the time.

Yea the problem I have is with developers catering and artistic freedom of expression being pushed to the side to cater to the likes of people who complain about every other game being racist or sexist. If they just added the character and didn't make a big deal about it wouldn't be as annoying. "Look at us we're celebrating diversity" is just an insult in disguise.

Japanese games have had ambiguous characters (like Guilty Gear) where the character is a boy but looks like a girl. They were added in there because the artist really wanted them there and the characters are good. They weren't shoehorned in to be politically correct. This idiocy has gotten out of control the past 5 or so years and now Japanese developers are starting to buckle under.

Assassin's Creed has gone downhill but I'm looking at it more as an industry thing than just this game.

[magicattack]

That I agree with. There is no reason to draw attention to it. I don't really care what the NPC's sexuality is, just tell me who to kill.

Some things have gotten better in AC though.

Although I wish they would fix the fighting, especially the countering. Once a person masters how to counter its basically like watching a Bruce Lee film. The player is surrounded, and the enemy attack one at a time only to end up in a pile of corpses.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Nov 19, 2015 13:09:53 GMT -5 magicattack said:

That I agree with. There is no reason to draw attention to it. I don't really care what the NPC's sexuality is, just tell me who to kill.

Some things have gotten better in AC though.

Although I wish they would fix the fighting, especially the countering. Once a person masters how to counter its basically like watching a Bruce Lee film. The player is surrounded, and the enemy attack one at a time only to end up in a pile of corpses.

Exactly.

That part has to do with games becoming interactive movies. I hear even Fallout 4 feels less like an RPG and more like an FPS with just tacked on RPG elements. More and more dumbed down. Glad I have my classics at least.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Nov 19, 2015 18:26:28 GMT -5 MGNoxa said:

The Transgender character in Syndicate isn't based on anyone from history. I actually really liked Syndicate and thought Evie was awesome.

Neil the transgender man isn't in it that much and you can tell that this was a last minute decision. His character model isn't as detailed as others and the voice acting feels rough? I don't know how to describe it other than everything about him feels last minute.

Assassin's Creed claims it uses real history but they are so far off everything that I don't care if they include a transgender man and everybody acts like it's normal. I would have some problems if this was supposed to be realistic but it's not.

I think games can be enjoyed by everyone and should be but as soon as you start forcing characters in stuff then you have a chance of causing more damage than harm.

Seeing as Fantastic Four was mentioned (I enjoyed that movie I don't know what's wrong with me I might die if it's a brain thing.) I had a problem with the casting of a black actor as Johnny Storm because Johnny Storm is white but then that problem went away and turned into Susan Storm needs be black because I don't want a dumb adoption story. Now after a while that problem went away and turned into just give me a good movie. However the actor and other people involved with the movie felt the need to keep bringing up that he was black and that people who had a problem with that were racist. People were starting to calm down and just hoping the movie would be good but they wouldn't let it calm down and the actual racist people were getting angrier because to them it probably looked like gloating and then I was getting angrier because my problem was that he didn't look like Johnny Storm.

This could happen in games, I'm ok if Call of Duty features a gay lead I'm not going to complain as long as he's awesome. But when this stuff is forced on writers and developers you get characters that are borderline offensive. Look at Dragon Age Inquisition they have some of the best gay and lesbian characters ever but there's a quest in the game about a Lesbian that is so in your face and annoying that any actual homophobic people who have been won over by Dorian have now probably got angry again.

Plus you have the other end of the equation. Evie is awesome in this game but Anita Sarkeesian has two big problems with her "She sways her hips when she walks" that's something women naturally do, some do it more than others. "She kills people" Apparently that makes her more male than female. It's a game about Assassin's of course she's going to kill people!

Look at Linkle, a new female character added to Hyrule Warriors. Everybody loved her, then Anita Sarkeesian said she's bad/not good enough and now everybody has turned on Linkle. This does more damage than actual homophobic/misogynistic/racist people (I fully believe these people can be won over, growing up I was homophobic then I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and realised not all gay people are the stereotype I thought they were and then in College I was friends with two people who were gay.) Now Nintendo may not attempt to do another female character because of the backlash.

It's a careful balance and something that can't be rushed or forced. More diverse characters is awesome but not when it starts creating problems. Stuff takes time, change takes time. Instead of forcing censorship or the inclusion of characters, let Developers want to make the games that appeal to new markets that way you get better characters and better games.

That's the worst part. They shove it in your face and if you find it annoying "then you must be a racist". They should have focused on making the best movie possible. All of the di-WORSE-ity didn't help in the end.

Western programmers and developers are bad about this. Dragon's Age Inquisition was another game that was blasted because of that. The complaints were that they made the female characters less attractive and just forced in gay and bisexual stuff just to be PC. I noticed in Borderlands that most of the characters seem to be gay or bi. It's getting really annoying.

Make good games and stop being PC. Only morons need to have a character just like them to enjoy a show. These people were likely never going to buy the product anyways.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Nov 19, 2015 18:56:21 GMT -5 MGNoxa said:

Nov 19, 2015 18:46:35 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

That's the worst part. They shove it in your face and if you find it annoying "then you must be a racist". They should have focused on making the best movie possible. All of the di-WORSE-ity didn't help in the end.

Western programmers and developers are bad about this. Dragon's Age Inquisition was another game that was blasted because of that. The complaints were that they made the female characters less attractive and just forced in gay and bisexual stuff just to be PC. I noticed in Borderlands that most of the characters seem to be gay or bi. It's getting really annoying.

Make good games and stop being PC. Only morons need to have a character just like them to enjoy a show. These people were likely never going to buy the product anyways.

I just recently finished the first season of Ray Donovan (it's great and please don't spoil it for me) that show was created by a Woman. There's a lot of unattractive nude ladies in it but there's also attractive women (lots of unattractive nude old men too), but the moment when I was like "Brilliant" was when the daughter in the show complained about a ring girl at a boxing match and her Mother laughed and said "Where did you learn that Feminist Theory class?" and then told her to lighten up and have fun. That made me laugh I was like "YES! someone that understands!"

I have no idea if the creator was responsible for that line but if she didn't like it, it wouldn't of made it in. Now unless her opinion has changed since 2013 I'm going to watch whatever she has a hand in as long as it's a genre I like.

Maybe she has more traditional values and understands that a woman being beautiful isn't bad. That or she could be foreign.

I find it funny that these PC groups whine about fictional characters while actresses and female musicians wear little to nothing in tv, movies, and music videos. Just shows the ironic behavior of these groups. All cognitive dissonance.