Part of the scandal surrounding Assassins Creed: Unity and the lack of a female character was rooted in how poorly Ubisoft handled the outcry. They couldve apologised, they couldve acknowledged that was a mistake. Instead they tried to palm people off with some boohockey about how difficult itd be to render a female character, how much more work itd take, something which was shot down by no less than a previous Assassins Creed developer. Somebody in Ubisofts PR department better have been fired this year, because they managed to pull off a similar cock up when it came to the companys second big tentpole release of 2014. Along with a handful of screenshots the first image released from open-world first person shooter Far Cry 4 earlier in 2014 was the cover, which depicted a white dude using an Asian natives head as an armrest. It was an image with some fairly obvious connotations of colonialism, oppression and racism, all of which people were more than a little uncomfortable with. As it happens that guy turned out to be the games villain, and those are all themes the story dealt with (and were rightfully critical of). Instead of saying all that and nipping it in the bud, Ubisoft claimed it was a fuss over nothing, and thus created a tidal wave of easily-avoided controversy.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
