After some pretty significant blowback from Ubisoft's initial assertion that cutting a female protagonist option from Assassin's Creed Unity was "a reality of game development" based on limited resources, Kotaku has a new statement from Ubisoft that no longer implies this would take up too much of their development resources, but rather highlights the diversity of their developers, their other games, and some of the supporting cast in Unity:

We recognize the valid concern around diversity in video game narrative. Assassin's Creed is developed by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs and we hope this attention to diversity is reflected in the settings of our games and our characters.

Assassin's Creed Unity is focused on the story of the lead character, Arno. Whether playing by yourself or with the co-op Shared Experiences, you the gamer will always be playing as Arno, complete with his broad range of gear and skill sets that will make you feel unique.

With regard to diversity in our playable Assassins, we've featured Aveline, Connor, Adewale and Altair in Assassin's Creed games and we continue to look at showcasing diverse characters. We look forward to introducing you to some of the strong female characters in Assassin's Creed Unity.