Assassin's Creed: 10 Reasons Why Syndicate Is The Most Underrated Ever

One clear way in which Syndicate offered a huge step forward for the franchise was in finally offering a playable female character. Sure, we'd had colonial-era Louisiana assassin Aveline De Grandpré in Liberation, Assassin's Creed III's PlayStation Vita spinoff, but fans had waited a long time to play as a woman in one of the main games of the series.

After the PR disaster of Ubisoft rejecting the inclusion of any playable female characters even within Unity's multiplayer due to the difficulty of animating women, it was a definite turn in the right direction to give a central, playable role to Syndicate's Evie Frye.

Since Syndicate every Assassin's Creed game, including the upcoming Valhalla, has included a playable female role, but this was the one that finally opened those doors.

Evie, however, is her own thing different from those other later female roles. Origins' Aya is very much a supporting player, controllable in a handful of short missions but always in a subsidiary role to the game's hero Bayek, and Odyssey's Kassandra is interchangeable with alternative lead Alexios. Evie, on the other hand, is a female protagonist with her own identity and storyline equally important to but distinct from that of her brother.

You could remove the Aya player sequences from Origins and just play as Alexios in Odyssey and the games would be much the same, but Evie's personal story is integral to Syndicate. That's why she is still Assassin's Creed's most significant female role.