The new character in the CGI trailer for the Assassin’s Creed series is Elise. Although described as “an independent young noblewoman” she needs to be rescued by Arno, the lead character of Assassin’s Creed Unity. The lack of female characters (not just strong ones) was recognized by Ubisoft’s technical director James Therien. He explained including a female character means a lot of animation, a lot of customers. “It would have doubled the work on those things,” he told Videogamer: “…it’s something the team really wanted, but we had to make a decision. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality of game development.” As Tim Clark of PCGamer points out: Ubisoft paid nine separate studios tens of millions of dollars and they can’t spend the time to animate hair?
Luckily the technical team could afford to buy decent music. The song in the trailer is “The Golden Age” by Woodkid, the French music video director who worked on Pharrell Wiliams’ 24 Hours of Happy, Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream, and Taylor Swift’s Back to December, among others.
