Players of 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey had a choice between two possible playable characters, but it wasn't always this way. As part of ongoing investigations into the internal culture of abuse inside many of Ubisoft's studios, workers have described a frat house atmosphere that led to widespread abuse and sexual misconduct. This has also affected the games the companies produce, as several key team members have claimed that multiple Assassin's Creed games had their stories altered because of a mandate based on a long-held industry belief that games led by female protagonists don't sell as well as more traditional male-led titles.
This all started with Assassin's Creed Unity, which famously didn't have female playable characters because "it was really a lot of extra production work" to add the appropriate clothing and animations. The next game, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, did have a brother and sister team at the helm, but the script was changed from giving both siblings equal screentime to clearly favoring male character, Jacob. After that, Assassin's Creed Origins was originally scripted to sideline protagonist Bayek early on in the story, shifting to his wife Ay for the rest of the adventure. In all these cases, influence from now-ousted CCO Serge Hascoët or the marketing team changed the core of the game's stories, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey was no different.
According to Ubisoft sources speaking with Bloomberg, Assassin's Creed Odyssey was originally pitched with Kassandra as the sole main character. In the final game, players can choose between Kassandra and Alexios, her male sibling. The character the player doesn't pick still plays a major role in the narrative, and the character designs still seem tuned to this inevitability. Kassandra's vocal work has been universally praised as nuanced, while Alexios is seen as a character straight out of a Steve Reeves swords and sandals B-movie.
Also in the report, Ubisoft employees claim that Serge Hascoët was not a fan of linear storytelling or cutscenes, and teams would often have to distract him with big compromises and added features he did enjoy in order to avoid his influence changing games for the worse. It's implied that several promising projects met this fate and were canceled due to unneeded meddling. The report also details Serge Hascoët's lessening influence in the company due to a string of less than stellar releases and a perceived sameness to Ubisoft's output in the past few years.
Even though the inclusion of Alexios in Assassin's Creed Odyssey may have been mandated by wrong-headed marketing departments, the character does have his fans. Ancient Greece is an inherently goofy setting, and the game has you pump kicking gladiators off of rooftops with regularity. In that kind of game, a dim-witted lug head like Alexios fits right in. And, while it's clear that creators should be able to craft the stories they want in their games, but it's also clear that certain franchises have more than a story to offer, and players may be satisfied with an expansive playground to live in for a while. For some, Assassin's Creed as a whole is just a historical take on Animal Crossing, a new fully realized world to explore and mold as you see fit.
Source: Bloomberg