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I asked Black Flag's director, Ashraf Ismail, why we've only seen men in the leading roles of mainline Assassin's Creed games. "It's a bit of a tough question," he told IGN.
"Really early on, we decided to tell the story of the Kenways. So we already had in place the idea to tell Edward, Haytham, and Connor. This was actually years ago, we had this," Ismail explained. So in the grand scheme of the Assassin's Creed III and Black Flag era, "we actually never thought, 'could this be a woman?'"
Ismail also explained that, "from the pirate perspective, there were a few famous women pirates. But it wasn't common. So we didn't want that element to be a detail people got stuck on."
Going forward, then, what's the future of Assassin's Creed protagonists? Men have worked since 2007, but they've stabbed or slept with the majority of the franchise's female cast. Will Ubisoft ever shake it up and introduce a woman as a mainstream icon?
"I would say it wouldn't be surprising to see a female assassin coming up in a mainline Assassin's Creed," Ismail told IGN. "But for us, for AC4, it was always Edward."
Chris Perna of Epic Games argued in an interview with OXM that female protagonists are a marketing issue for his games. On the subject of a female lead, Perna said, "if you look at what sells, it's tough to justify something like that."
The social dynamics of a woman in a historical setting presents so many more interesting opportunities than a man, don't they? But maybe Perna's right. In fact, he probably is. It's entirely possible that isn't appealing from a sales side. I asked Ismail if putting men in starring roles was a branding decision.
"I actually don't know what the brand team is working on for the next few games," he explained. "But the concept of a female assassin, I can tell you it's not a no-no, it's not something we're trying to avoid at all."
