In Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, your character can be straight, gay, bi or asexual. That is, of course, until you reach a totally unavoidable "twist" at the end of the latest DLC, Shadow Heritage. We're going to get into some major spoiler territory here, so consider yourself warned.
The second chapter in the three-part, story-driven DLC collectively known as Legacy of the First Blade ends with your character having a baby. That might not seem all that shocking if you have been playing a straight character and actually wanted to settle down and have a rugrat to train, but pretty much everyone else playing the game will likely find that turn of events to be off-putting, if not completely insulting.
The concept of player choice is foundational in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, as players can first decide if they want to portray the male Alexios or the female Kassandra. While the major plot points for the campaign are pretty set in stone, players have agency over many in-game conversations and, of course, who they choose to woo. As noted above, you can choose to have romantic relations with characters based on whatever parameters you like, or you can choose to ignore that portion of the game entirely.
Unfortunately, Ubisoft forgot how important those choices were to the identity of the characters and the people playing them, and they managed to throw it all out the window in rather spectacular fashion.
Without getting too caught up in Assassin's Creed's lore, folks who played the game's first DLC were introduced to a possible love interest based on their own gender. If you were a male character, they were female. If you were female, they were male. That was somewhat harmless, until the end of the second DLC chapter rolls around and, no matter what options you pick, that character has a romantic relationship with your character and they go on to have a baby. Obviously, folks were upset.
The chapter ends with scenes of your character raising the child, being intimate with your forced lover and the like. It was supposed to be sweet and portray a rare period of calm and peace in the life of Alexios/Kassandra. Instead, it forced people into a very specific romantic encounter, regardless of their roleplaying up to that point. If you were playing a gay character, you presumably "took one for the team" in order to preserve your bloodline. If you were playing an asexual character, it looks like you were willing to ignore your identity in order to add one to the population.
For their part, Ubisoft has issued a statement over on Reddit admitting that they totally dropped the ball on this one. They seem to stand by their idea of the importance of continuing the assassin bloodline, but concede that their handling of the issue was poorly executed. And, again, plenty of fans are more than willing to agree.
While the deed is done, so to speak, Ubisoft has stated that players will no longer be tied to the whole "happy family" thing once the next DLC drops. It sounds like the option will be there for folks who wanted to settle down with the forced mate but, for everyone else, you should be able to ignore it completely. That raises some issues of its own but, hey, at least they're going to try to make adjustments, I guess.
