Assassin's Creed eyes French Revolution

LOS ANGELES -- French video game star Ubisoft is bringing its blockbuster Assassin's Creed game to home turf.

The sequel set for worldwide release on October 28 takes players to the streets of Paris during the French Revolution.

"I was surprised how realistic it could be," Ubisoft chief and co-found Yves Guillemot told AFP at a major E3 video game gathering that wraps up here on Thursday.

"From the street names to how it was before compared to how it is now, you are really more into the details when it is your own city," he said.

Billed as the most "dense and immersive" version of the hit franchise ever created, Assassin's Creed Unity casts players in the role of a young man who grows into a master assassin and helps shape the fate of France during a tumultuous time.

"We have been working with lots of people to try to get the spirit of the French Revolution; what happened and why it happened," Guillemot said.

The game strives to capture what people were feeling in France at the time.

Special editions include a Guillotine Collectors Case along with Notre Dame and Bastille themed packages.

Initially launched in 2007, Assassin's Creed games have sold more than 76 million units worldwide to rank among top-selling video game lines.

The Assassin's Creed franchise has grown to include novels, comic books, mobile games and films.

Assassin's Creed was the first game to immerse players in a believable and mature experience inspired by historical events. Games have been set in Italy, Constantinople, and even colonial America. But this is the first time it will play out in France.

Versions of Unity will be tailored for play on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and personal computers powered by Windows software.

The prior version of Assassin's Creed put players in the boots of a bold pirate and tapped into mobile devices to expand play.

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag was set in the Caribbean during the "gritty and exotic" Golden Age of Pirates with a main character who is a descendant in a line of assassins given starring roles in the popular franchise.

Assassin's protagonists have included a Renaissance Italian; a 12th-Century Syrian, and a Native American during the colonial period here.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Paris women finally allowed to wear trousers

PARIS, France - Women in Paris can finally wear trousers without fear of criminal prosecution after the government said a more than 200-year-old ban no longer had any legal effect.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights, said in a statement that the ban, imposed on November 17, 1800, was incompatible with modern French values and laws.

The municipal order required Parisian women to seek permission from local police if they wanted to "dress like a man" by wearing trousers.

It was modified in 1892 and 1909 to allow women to wear trousers if they were "holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse" but had officially remained on the books.

Answering a question in the Official Journal of the French Senate, Vallaud-Belkacem said that while it had not been formally struck down, the order was in effect abrogated.

"This order was aimed first of all at limiting the access of women to certain offices or occupations by preventing them from dressing in the manner of men," she said.

"This order is incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men.... From that incompatibility stems the implicit abrogation of the order," she said.

Parisian women had demanded the right to wear trousers during the French Revolution, when working-class revolutionaries were known as "sans-culottes" for wearing trousers instead of the silk-knee breeches (culottes) favoured by the bourgeoisie.

Women's dress continues to stir political passions in France, with Cecile Duflot, the 37-year-old Green housing minister, criticized last May for wearing jeans to the first cabinet meeting of Socialist President Francois Hollande's new government.

She was later subjected to jeers and wolf-whistles while wearing a floral summer dress in the National Assembly.

A number of women also broke parliamentary protocol by wearing jeans during an extended debate at the weekend over France's planned legalization of gay marriage.

source: abs-cbnnews.com