Assassin's Creed Valhalla will select a default gender for Eivor based on the mission
Assassin's Creed Valhalla won't require you to choose a male or female Eivor, as the game will automatically select a gender based on the mission.
If you can’t decide whether you want to play a male or female version of Eivor when Assassin’s Creed Valhalla arrives in November, then you can rest easy knowing you won’t have to. Apparently, the game will automatically change Eivor’s gender based on the mission that you’re playing – that is, unless you select a gender that you want to play as.
The news might seem a bit weird and to be honest, we did a bit of a double take when the reports first started coming in. The option was originally spotted by Twitter user @AccessTheAnimus when IGN’s coverage included a look at the game UI. In the coverage the default gender option states, “The Animus will represent the stronger FEMALE or MALE memory stream, depending on its current strength.”
Darby McDevitt later clarified the meaning of the UI text in a response to AccessTheAnimus, explaining that both characters will appear throughout the campaign depending on the strength of the memory, or mission. This means that technically both versions of the character canon in a way. You can either choose to play as the male or female version, or let the Animus decide which one fits the mission best.
It is definitely a weird design decision and one that many users on Twitter and other places have been questioning since the option was originally spotted. Some are worried it is yet another characteristic of Ubisoft’s past history of not treating women equally in video games. It is important to note that much of the work for Valhalla was probably already completed before Ubisoft started “cleaning house”, which means we may still see some design decisions put in place by previous members of the company.
What do you think about the default way that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is set to handle Eivor’s gender? Let us know in the Chatty comments below. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the design decision.
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replyJosh Hawkins posted a new article, Assassin's Creed Valhalla will select a default gender for Eivor based on the mission
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I feel like there's some information missing here. The main character swapping between male and female from one mission to the next, for reasons that are unclear, seems weird from a storytelling perspective. Are we actually looking at two different main characters that the game swaps between, like in Syndicate? That would make a lot more sense.
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No. Eivor is Eivor. This isn't a case of Syndicate or Odyssey where the male ore female protags are different people.
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Or* not are. whoops
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