Amidst allegations of sexual abuse and other improprieties at Ubisoft, claims of former CCO Serge Hascoët’s and the marketing department’s disdain for female characters have been reported. Such accusations state that though there were teams who wanted their projects to exclusively feature women in leading roles, Hascoët and Co. forced male counterparts into the equation. Allegedly, the reasoning hinged on the evidently false belief that female-led games don’t sell. Fans have since pondered whether Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Eivor was a product of similar creative interference. This apparently isn’t the case. Eivor was indeed created with both male and female counterparts in mind.
Darby McDevitt, AC Valhalla’s Narrative Director, laid the speculation to rest in response to a recent Reddit thread. On a post theorizing that Eivor was initially designed as a female character, McDevitt divulged that both the female and male versions always sat at the forefront of this particular AC entry. McDevitt noted the following:
I will say this once: this is not wholly accurate.
And I will repeat what I have always said. ACVs story was conceived from the beginning with both female and male in mind. When you play the game you will understand that there is no way the male could have been added at the last minute, or whatever version of this story you have heard.
Obviously there is more nuance to all this, but to go deeper would spoil lots of the mysteries at the heart of the game. But understand this, that we started ACV knowing full well that Ubi wanted to give players the ability to select characters, and we worked hard to make sure that it honored our lore.
AC Valhalla’s approach to managing the male/female options will be a bit different from previous entries. This time Ubisoft is giving players the option to switch between the two genders at leisure. A video went live late last month, showcasing the process in action. However, as noted in McDevitt’s response, the narrative reasons behind the design of Eivor won’t be revealed until launch.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla hits stores this fall for the PS4, PC, and Xbox One on November 17th.
