Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey – Just a childish phase!

I’m postponing the regularly scheduled post for this week. See, I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, and today they released the first DLC for the game. It’s the first Assassin’s Creed game where you can choose to play as either a male or female protagonist, and I found myself actually having some time, lately, to devote to having some fun.

And fun was had. Though I realize it was largely accidental (and due to the assumption that most players would play as Alexios), it became fairly clear to me that this might just be the single most lesbian game I have ever played. I had potential flirt interactions with half a dozen women before I came across a man with that option (and yes, my Kassandra did take advantage of those options, she’s a busy misthios and must find her fun where she can…). Though the romance interactions, as ever in Assassin’s Creed games, are fairly minor and don’t really contribute much to story or character development, I appreciated that the options were there.

And I laughed about this being the gayest game ever made, and how that made it all that more fun to play.

Well, Ubisoft decided to fix that with today’s DLC.

Spoilers below:

So, the DLC released today forces your character into a heterosexual romance arc that results in a baby. Now, I’m pan, I’m not entirely against heterosexual romance options, it’s that lack of choice that is the problem. Until this DLC, I was allowed to make Kassandra as cheerfully lesbian as I wanted her to be, and she was. I don’t want that ability to choose to play the character I was already playing to be snatched away.

The truly offensive part of the whole thing is that the achievement earned by completing the storyline is called “Growing Up.”

“It’s just a phase, you’ll outgrow it” is something so many LGBT+ folks have heard upon coming out, and well, I’m 38 years old, I still like boobs. I first accepted that I like boobs two and a half decades ago. I think we can properly say that I am a Grown Up Person (at least insofar as anyone is ever properly an adult) and if that hasn’t changed by now, it probably isn’t going to. So…don’t tell me that one day I’ll “grow up” and just magically decide to get married to a straight dude and spawn whelplings. Quite frankly, at 38, the possibility of the latter is very nearly behind me.

And if I were a godlike being capable of living thousands of years but embroiled in a constant battle to save humanity from becoming a servant race….well, I don’t think I’d chose to have kids then either. Quite frankly, it would be irresponsible as they’d be targets from the moment of their birth. And even in Ancient Greece, if a demigod didn’t want to have a kid, she didn’t have to. No, that’s saved for the more backwards states in the grand old US of A.

There is a disclaimer at the loading of every Assassin’s Creed game that the team includes diverse folks. Ya’ll can’t tell me that none of them spoke up to say this was a bad idea?

So while I probably will keep playing the base game to finish it — I am enjoying it and have always loved Classical history and mythology and I love seeing it emblazoned across my TV screen — I won’t be buying this DLC and very probably won’t be buying any DLC or any further Assassin’s Creed games.