When Ubisoft initially announced the creation of Aveline de Grandpré, the first female playable character in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, you could tell she’d hit a chord by the best of indicators: despite her costume involving multiple layers, distressed fabrics, studs, buckles, leather, and custom weapons… there was cosplay immediately. This was despite the fact that the game she starred in was available only for a poorly selling handheld device rather than a major console release. But Ubisoft has just confirmed that Aveline will be getting her console debut with the upcoming Assassin’s Creed IV: Pirates Black Flag.
Aveline, a biracial, middle class, free woman of 1700s New Orleans, was first introduced as the player character of Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, as the child of a French father and an African mother, through a (historically appropriate) plaçage marriage. Her gender alone places her among a minority in video game protagonists, and I daresay characters that share her racial makeup or even approximate skin color are even rarer. Her game reviewed well, but its exclusivity to the Playstation Vita undoubtedly hurt sales, and its marketing campaign was less than extensive.
So it’s good news for a lot of folks that she’ll be coming to the next console installment of the Assassin’s Creed series, even if only to folks who get the PS3/PS4 version of the game. Says Adam Boyes, VP at Sony Computer Entertainment America:
Ubisoft is no stranger to pushing the boundaries of play, and that is why we are expanding our partnership with PlayStation to bring PlayStation fans one-of-a-kind content for two of the year’s most anticipated games, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Watch Dogs. With an hour of exclusive gameplay for each title, yet again we are blazing new trails by providing more unique experiences that can only be found on PlayStation.
That hour of gameplay is reportedly comprised of three Aveline missions, regarding the struggles of a “digital age” faction, which may indicate that the missions will reveal the modern day descendant of Aveline able to relive her life using the animus, a mystery that has been answered for other Assassin’s Creed protagonists.
(via Kotaku.)
