Ubisoft, Step Your Female Game Up!

     Last week Ubisoft released a new trailer introducing a new character, Elise, in their upcoming game Assassin's Creed: Unity. According to Ubisoft:
"As an independent young noblewoman, Elise is determined to secure her place in the Templar dynasty amidst the chaos of the French Revolution. Her quest leads her to cross paths with Arno and establish an unlikely bond with him."
     She is the romantic love interest for the lead character, Arno, and assists him in battles in the game. This seems to be a response to the outcry from fans had back during E3 when there were acusations of Ubisoft being sexist for not including female characters in the Assassin's Creed games. To recap, the Creative director for Unity, Alex Amancio said the following:
"It's double the animations, it's double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets," Amancio later said. "Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work."
     So they have obviously learned from their mistakes and with Elise, things should be fine, right? Not so much.
     Elise, even though she sounds like she is a good addition in the series, is a minor character. She shows promise, but just as much potential for her character to stand out, Ubisoft can easily ruin that. While can be truly the independent woman Ubisoft wants to present her as, but there could be times where she can be considered helpless and be deduced to glorified damsel in distress character the main character has to rescue her or the writers will develop her character poorly. It would've been nice if she was the protagonist or at least had a bigger role. It Almost seems that there is an issue with how Ubisoft in putting women in bigger roles in the main Assassin's Creed series.
     In Ubisoft's defense, they did give us a female protagonist in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation but, there are some issues about that. The female protagonist for Liberation, Aveline de Grandpré, was almost a thrown-in character and Elise could possibly be. One, Liberation was for the Vita which nobody plays , and two it was a spinoff. This is kinda lazy. It's almost like Ubisoft isn't really listening to the demands of their fans. The idea that they can just throw in a girl in the games and thinking that will shut people up isn't going to cut it. There is a high demand for better women characters in the series and even a female assassin in the main series but, then again, they just don't care. Why is that?
     Ubisoft, like other developers in the gaming industry, seems to be stuck in the past when it comes to diversity in games. They still believe that it is mainly men who buys video games. This isn't true anymore. There are more female gamers then there was before. The demographic of who buys and plays video games is changing and Ubisoft needs to realize this and get with the program that they need to upgrade with how they write and design women in their main titles. Interestingly enough, Nintendo is taking notice to this and have responded by giving more and better roles for women in their upcoming games like Hyrule Warriors with not only Princess Zelda being playable, but showing a more larger female cast to help Link on his latest quest and an including more female characters in the upcoming Super Smash Bros game. So yeah, you need to do better Ubisoft.

This Is a Hot Video Game Character Post

     On Thursday, Nintendo did a direct conference for its upcoming game Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. It presented a ton of news about the new game, most importantly, one announcement was that not only would Samus Aran and her Zero suit counterpart would have their own separate slots, but Zero Suit Samus was getting a updated look. In the previous game in the Smash Bros. series Samus, when performing her final smash firing her Zero Laser. This attack would cause her power suit to break apart, becoming Zero Suit Samus. Zero Suit Samus was a weaker form with most of attacks not racking as much damage compared to her suited counterpart. To accommodate this better, director Mashiro Sakurai made some tweaks to Zero Suit Samus, designing her with a new pair rocket heels. Good news, right? Nope. News of this has set the internet on fire, in a bad way.
     Zero Suit Samus's new footwear has caused a bit of outrage to fans of the series. Samus' new redesign has people addressing the issue in gaming with oversexualizing its female characters for the sake of fanservice. This isn't new with female characters in video games, as in almost every game, there is a female character who is just T&A. The video game industry is a male dominated industry where it is made for men for men so, it's no wonder that we have female characters that are designed to be fanservice. Oddly enough, the issue mirrors this situation has been the design of women in games, being styled as oversexualized objects of male fantasy. There have been concerns of women in MMORPGs, being dressed up in armor that doesn't necessarily does what it design to do: Protect. I understand that video games are suppose to cater to fantasy and that seems to be the excuse for the fanservice but it still, in some form, have to portray things in a realistic manner and fully represent people as accurately as possible. Meaning that we might to give up a bit of the fanservice fantasy and have to design women, most notably in fighting games and MMORPGs, in outfits that make sense to their roles in games.

     Samus is suppose to be a kickass bounty hunter and is suppose to be the representation of female empowerment. You can't really carry that mantle in a pair of rocket heels, not even good looking rocket heels.  Overall, I'm not saying that Samus should be in a burqa in the next Smash Bros. or Metroid game, but designer her in a way that makes sense. Even though the heels are suppose to make her attacks more powerful, are still not believable that a person who regularly engages in fights, would wear. In the last Smash Bros. game, the developers were aware of that issue and gave her boots with a short heels. Samus hasn't been a stranger to being sexualized in the Metroid series, but the past directors did it in a way that matched who her character was, except for the people who did Other M. The only thing worse than rocket heels are wedges.