WOTC not fumbling the next game would be a miracle.
WOTC not screwing it up all up moves beyond "Miracle" into the realm of "well, the world just ended" range.
There are generally three types of RPG characters:
- The self-insert default-ish male with maximum height, muscle, and chin
- The exotic elf or alien woman with which you want to engage in filthy miscegenation
- Some kind of hideous, grizzled goblin dwarf thing you use to be an asshole
Come to think of it this might have been a greentext originally, but it was funny to see the BG3 developers confirm the first. I wonder if it's ever occurred to them that any of the "inclusive" options they add are only ever going to be used for the third, if at all.
One of the worst parts of the modern era is giving the semi-competent enough access to statistical collection packages to know what they're looking at. The "average" player is going to spend less than 2 hours in the game and they'll start with a default look and tweak a few things. As a result, the most common attribute will be "unchanged from base".
If they understood the information they were looking at, they'd run the analysis over attributes that were changed and by those that played at least 2 hours. The entire industry survives because something like 15% of all bought copies of games are never played. And the majority of the player base will be done within 2 hours.
Same deal with AC Odyssey. You can play as the male Alexios or his twin sister Kassandra. The devs and newer fans have never shut the fuck up about "Kassandra is the canon choice" but 2/3rd of the players picked Alexios. Now those same devs are making AC Shadows and there is the very real possibility that they included Yasuke to force people to play the female character as a "ha! I'll make those evil chuds play the woman character because surely they won't want to play as a negro!". Unfortunately for them, people likely won't even play their dogshit game.
Nah, with what we got from the preview, your analysis that they put Yasuke in there intentionally to force players to use the shinobi is correct. I thought the problem was more how to get both a male & female character in while working through all of their DEI quotas and they landed on Yasuke, with help from a child rapist researcher. But, no, it really looks like they wanted to force everyone to play the female character and landed on the most Turbo Racist way to do it.
the "Yasuke was forced in to make people play as the woman" thing is very funny, but kinda sad
i feel like out of many tarded "le chudcore" games that originated out of the late 2000s, AC was one of the most fitting series for an actually good female protagonist, at its core stealth isnt too much of a suspension of disbelief, and even as early as 1 they had the chick disguised as a templar, the thief chick in 2 and how Ezio's relatives coped and learned new skills, and Brotherhood having female assasins available among other things (The AC2 DLC too), i forgot what 3 and Revelations had but 4 also had the female pirate legends. Even capital G gamers shat on Ubi for their lazy excuses of not having a female protag in Unity
But now the Female protags are more or less checklists or just alternate skins because their desire to max out profits is too strong for a genuine attempt at a decent female protag, although the current big helpings of current year probably would doom the efforts regardless
In gaming, a good female protagonist is a Heroic Male Archtype with boobs and less swearing. It's something I feel like destroys any women that get into gaming and want to make a "strong female" protagonist. They simply cannot fathom that they don't understand what a woman with strength is in either a narrative context or when its put into a gaming context. Mostly because they cease to be Women in the contexts they understand. That's what causes so much of the dissonance when they try to do something in the space.
What does work is what some creators do understand: Heroic Motherhood. Those are always the strong female characters that work. It's why primarily the stories/games that it works are some form of "Defend the Castle" types. Obviously, in gaming, the game mechanics & game feel matter first, but the stories can land if you either write the Women as Men or Woman as Mother Bear.
Anne Bonney and Mary Read, iirc, they were fun and actually advanced the plot very nicely, same with Blackbeard
Funny bit is there was quite a large number of Women around the Atlantic Piracy. And not just in the classic "bar wench" role. Always money to be made in support roles.
