Assassin's Creed Odyssey Dev Wants Future Games To Feature Male And Female Protagonists

This year's Assassin's Creed Odyssey allows players, for the first time in franchise history, to choose to play as a man, Alexios, or a woman, Kassandra. Game director Scott Phillips said in a new interview that he hopes future games developed by Ubisoft Quebec, the lead developer on Odyssey, will also offer players the ability this kind of choice.

"I think it would be a mistake to limit our players, limit our fanbase from as many people as possible," Phillips told GI.biz. "I don't know why we would go back. We should continue pushing in this direction, bring in more players, more fans to enjoy this experience and make it their own experience."

Ubisoft Quebec's last Assassin's Creed game, Syndicate, also featured male and female protagonists, but not on the level of Odyssey. That older game featured brother and sister assassins Evie and Jacob Frye with a character-swapping setup throughout. In Odyssey, you get to choose right at the start if you want to play as Alexios or Kassandra.

Playing as either Alexios or Kassandra does not affect the story or gameplay. However, both characters have different voice actors and character models, similar to how the male and female Commander Shepards were treated in Mass Effect.

The spinoff Assassin's Creed III: Liberation features a female protagonist, Aveline.

At E3 2014, Ubisoft made headlines for stating that none of the playable characters in Assassin's Creed Unity are women because it would have doubled the workload.

The quote from Scott Phillips, the director of Odyssey, seems to suggest that he's talking about future games from Ubisoft Quebec and not necessarily Ubisoft overall. Development on Assassin's Creed games is headed up by one studio with Ubisoft's other teams globally acting as support teams. For example, Ubisoft Montreal led development on last year's Assassin's Creed: Origins.

Odyssey launches on October 5 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The game is also coming to Nintendo Switch, but only as a streaming title in Japan.