The lack of female protagonists has caused some controversy for a handful of games lately. So, you can count on some publishers on trying to make up for lost PR points. Enter Ubisoft, who was recently in the spotlight for showing only a male protagonist for Assassin’s Creed Unity. One of its other franchises, Far Cry, has a more diverse set of characters, according to them at least.
Speaking with Outside Xbox, Creative Director Alex Hutchinson stated that exactly half of Far Cry 4‘s protagonists, as well as half of the game’s rebel leaders, are female. According to Hutchinson, Far Cry 4 is “packed to the gills with women. They’re everywhere, just like life.” Whether or not fully half of typical rebel leaders are in fact female could probably be debated for a while to come (It should be noted that while these may be female protagonists, they may not all be playable characters):
[we] tried very hard to make sure of the four main antagonists, half of them are women, which is cool. On your side, one of the main leaders of the rebel faction is a woman, half the rebels that fight with you are women. It’s packed to the gills with women. They’re everywhere, just like life.
Hutchinson also touched on the character shown in a recent trailer, Pagan Min. This character “is not your father,” because according to Hutchinson, that would be too easy. A major character being someone’s father in a surprise twist is kind of an over-used trope at this point, isn’t it? No, he is simply someone with whom you have a lot of history with, and it sounds like just what that history entails may be revealed throughout the single-player campaign.
Ubisoft may have taken flak for coming up with excuses for having no female protagonists in Assassin’s Creed Unity, but yet here we have another property of theirs that features roughly an equal amount of both genders. Do you feel this gives Ubisoft a bit more credibility when it comes to gender representation in games, or has the damage already been done? Or does this issue just not really matter to you? Let us know below.
