User blog comment:Master Sima Yi/Assassinews 12-05-'15 — Assassin's Creed: Syndicate has been revealed!/@comment-13471981-20150710215042/@comment-13471981-20150711122822

When it comes to Unity, yes, I have a hard time believing that it was in development for four years. But then again, four years is not four years of just coding and programming. There'll be brainstorming, writers outlining a story, trying to get the project greenlit, then concept artists trying to come up with looks for the characters and the world, level designers and modelers, while programmers and coders try to implement new mechanics, etc. etc. For example, I think Mary Read's design was only finalized 9 months or so before Black Flag's release - this was mentioned in a podcast, I think.

So a lot of the game proper, what we gamers see, is probably achieved in the later parts of the development process. If they say Syndicate was "in development for two years", maybe the first year was spent mostly on outlining what the game would be about, and modelling characters, building worlds and implementing game mechanics was done in the second year? Anyways, that's just me guessing as to what the development process is actually like.

Do you think Ubisoft didn't deserve that criticism? Regardless of the impetus, Evie is here now, she's part of this story. Come release, will the game stand or fall with the fact that Evie may or may not have been included due to a controversy? I doubt it. Cause if she was included because people criticized Ubisoft, then hey, I'm not going to complain - I think we could count that as an achievement then, provided Evie is well-characterized and she has a presence within the storyline.

And yes, the quality of Ubisoft's historical accuracy definitely took a hit with Unity. I'm not sure what Evie has to do with that though. A woman with a blade up her sleeve isn't historically accurate? :P