Assassin`s Creed Odyssey is a big, beautiful, and bold game, and one of its standout features is the ability to choose to play as a woman, Kassandra, or a man, Alexios, right from the start.Ubisoft Quebec`s previous Assassin`s Creed game, Syndicate, also featured male and female protagonists but not on the level of Odyssey. That older game featured brother and sister assassins Evie and Jacob Frye with a character-swapping setup throughout. For Odyssey, Phillips said the team learned from that game but wanted to go `even farther` with player choice in Odyssey.Playing as either Alexios or Kassandra does not affect the story or gameplay. However, both characters have different voice actors and character models, similar to how the male and female Commander Shepards were treated in Mass Effect.We recently chatted with game director Scott Phillips about where the idea for the dual protagonist system came from, the extra development work it required, the feedback so far, and more. You can read our full interview below.Ubisoft declined to answer our questions about how Odyssey`s marketing focused more on Alexios than Kassandra and if Ubisoft is committed to bringing back the dual protagonist option for future instalments in the series, as Phillips himself had suggested.The publisher also declined to reveal statistics about how many Odyssey players are playing as Kassandra versus Alexios, nor did the company respond to the controversy at E3 2014 when a representative said making female playable characters in Assassin`s Creed: Unity would have doubled the workload.GameSpot: Where did the idea come from to allow players to choose between a male and female hero in Odyssey? Was this something Ubisoft had in mind for previous games?Scott Phillips: Coming off of the experience we at Ubisoft Quebec had on Assassin`s Creed Syndicate with Jacob and Evie Frye, we knew we wanted to go even farther with Odyssey to incorporate the notion of protagonist choice. With the setting of anc ...
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