The Current State Of Assassin’s Creed From An Outside Perspective

Update added the following afternoon:

The original Assassin’s Creed concept was a man in the future who had to learn the skills of his ancestors via ancestral memory in his DNA or something to fight against the Knights Templar, and actual Catholic group that has suffered bad PR ever since Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code, if not sooner. However, fans found themselves preferring the stages set in the past, and thus the only remaining science fiction aspect were the various artifacts the Assassin’s Guild tried to keep out of the hands of the Templars to protect the world. Yes, the murderers were the good guys and the villains were Catholics. You imagine that I, as a non-denominational Christian raised in a Catholic family and raised on heroes who found non-killing solutions to stopping evil, am not the target audience. Take anything I say here with that in mind. I ain’t playing this thing regardless and I have no eagle in this fight. I’m just a fan of storytelling who has been confused with Ubisoft’s mindset starting with the most recent game, Shadows. I did a few articles on that whole nonsense, but here’s some NEW nonsense.

Game File is reporting that Ubisoft canceled their next idea for an Assassin’s Creed game in light of the response to Shadows. While there is no name attached, the game would have been set after the US Civil War, a period no doubt discussed often in France (the country Ubisoft is based in) and taught in French schools due to the importance to French history. It would have followed a just freed slave since the anti-slave North had won the war, for those you who weren’t there that day. That Park Place allegedly got past the paywall and read the whole thing, but there is a bit of commentary in there. Heck, there’s a bunch of commentary right here, so you should be ready for it anyway.

This does sound like it could be a good game…in a different time and place, and not in light of some of Ubisoft’s recent decisions, like adding a black character to a game that shouldn’t have had one, while making a concept long desired by the fans turn into a monkey’s paw as they went for political points. So would this game be any good? Clearly the best people to talk about the biggest race-related event in US history…

The creative team behind Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.

…is an army of the whitest French people they could put together.

From the Game File report:

In July of last year, word began to trickle through Ubisoft that an ambitious new installment of the company’s top franchise, Assassin’s Creed, had been cancelled.

The new game would have brought the history-spanning series to one of its most modern settings: The American Civil War and, moreso, the Reconstruction period that followed in the 1860s and 1870s.

In this Reconstruction-era Assassin’s Creed, gamers would play as a Black man who had been formerly enslaved in the South and moved west to start a new life. Recruited by the series’ Assassins, he would return to the South to fight for justice in a conflict that would, among other things, see him confront the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan.

That’s according to interviews with five current and former Ubisoft employees who spoke to Game File on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the project. (Ubisoft did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

The franchise, though usually set in Europe as far as I’m aware, did visit the Revolutionary War, so they have been to the Americas in the past. What makes this idea strange and adds to existing annoyance for the fanbase is that playing a black man in this story makes more sense than retconning Japanese history just to play as a black man there because Japan is no longer diverse enough in the current social politics game. You can see that in the recent treatment of Japanese media like the issues with credit card services, trying to tell the Japanese what their culture should be with how they depict gay and female characters, and a research free attack on “moe” culture. Texas has laws now that Texan anime fans are worried could be used against them just for having a risque statuette of a girl who looks young to the uninformed. If you think Uzaki-Chan Wants To Hang Out is about a preteen with large breasts you need to watch I Am Shauna Rae some time. Also, stop scaring off Shauna Rae’s boyfriends because you’re saying she’s not allowed to find love and family, and unlike Uzaki, she’s a real life human adult stick in an actual child’s body instead of just being short and developed. Yes, I heard about them chasing one off by calling him a pervert and you’re just a bunch of jerks if you were in on that! I only saw a few episodes, but she seems like a nice girl. Let her be happy.

Three sources told Game File that word filtered through the company last July that management in Paris had stopped development of the game for two reasons: 1) online backlash that spring to the reveal of Yasuke, a historically-inspired Black samurai, as a protagonist in the company’s then-upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows; and 2) concern that the political climate in the United States was becoming increasingly tense.

“Too political in a country too unstable, to make it short,” one source familiar with the game and its cancellation told Game File.

Except he wasn’t a samurai, he was a retainer, something for the emperor to show off. And I meant something, not someone. He also got sent back to slavery once the emperor was killed off. Or Shogun or however it worked back then. Point is, they elevated him to main character status when he was a supporting character at best just to have a black man. Fans didn’t even want to play a samurai regardless of skin color. Even I know they were demanding a ninja story, since the Assassins game mechanics are practically that of a ninja despite being set in Italy or Spain or something. They wanted to see what Ubisoft would do with a proper ninja, and then you only play one part of the time. Nobody even minded they went with a kunoichi, a female ninja, rather than the usual male shinobi. It might have been better to play both ninja types, using the skills unique to each ninja, while still playing the media depiction of a ninja in the game. But Ubisoft couldn’t wait for the Civil War or a game set in Africa. They needed their black character right now, and he’s not even an assassin. They made him a powerhouse samurai type because the Japanese character wasn’t diverse enough in the mid 2020s.

That’s on top of everything else the game did wrong to audiences be it gameplay or political. Forced into a linear progression by invisible walls, stories that made the historical into some modern interpretation (there’s no indication that Yasuke was gay but that didn’t stop how the story went, plus of course the bishi was trans or at least gay–we make all the tomboys lesbians now), and controls that were a step down from previous games were reports I heard about the gameplay or saw in action watching the occasional streamer. Fans just wanted to play as the ninja and continue the story of the ongoing struggle between the Assassins and Templars, and this game didn’t deliver even before the politics.

“Too political in a country too unstable” refers to the backlash against Shadows and other false diversity games and shows out there right now. Nobody expects a good black character anymore, or a story that isn’t about evil white men because that’s all we seem to get. Again, this is the development team for Shadows.

Lot o’ whiteys in that sea of humans, very few Japanese or black people. None, in fact. I don’t even see a Spanish person. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t make a game about a black character or set in Japan. Sucker Punch’s Ghost Of Tsushima was highly praised despite also being a Western studio that it took a lot of screw ups by the dev team and main character voice actress to sour fans on the sequel, Ghost Of Yotei before it came out despite also having a female lead for the second game. Even fans not immediately calling woke because girl as an overreaction saw that history might repeat itself with a developer praising the public assassination of Charlie Kirk and the aforementioned voice actress praising controversial “activist’ group Antifa. The few gamers I followed won’t touch the game so I don’t even know if it suffers the same quality issues that Assassin’s Creed: Shadows has, but it does suffer a similar PR nightmare. Now if you also got to destroy shrines and cultural icons in the game it would be exactly like Shadows.

A Civil War period game might have been interesting for fans and explored the Reconstruction period of US history, but these are not the people I trust for accuracy in that area, or to even try anymore. Historical accuracy means as little to the current creators. In a franchise once praised for it among the magic space artifacts, dropped DNA time travel aspect, and murderers versus clergy concepts that’s part of the franchise, the period was praised for accurate recreation of the setting and the occasional historical cameo. These are also not the people to trust exploring the rise of those asshats in the Klu Klux Klan due to their own extremist points of view. Extremists love to paint anyone not far enough to their side as the same as the other side’s extremists. It helps the “us versus them and us are the real persecuted” narrative extreme left and right people use, though right now the left’s opinions dominate and mainstream liberals are still the enemy. They haven’t even proven their general storytelling skills as the last game they worked on wasn’t even a good story as false representation meant more to them than good storytelling.

So just maybe we dodged an arm blade on this one, folks. Money was also brought up in the That Park Place article, as Shadows didn’t do so well after ticking off Japan numerous times and not winning enough people in the rest of the world, either. I can’t even discuss this game without getting into the politics, and I’m noticing that I’ve had to do that too much the past few weeks. That’s the problem with politics and lazy attempts as social pandering to please people who don’t care or are insulted by your actions is more important than telling a good story and designing a good game. You get a formerly praised franchise going down in flames, and that’s been happening to a lot of franchises in media these days.

UPDATE: 10/10 I saw this video from HeelVsBabyface bringing the “scoop” into question. So let me play that, first.

If Az is right and the article is a scam I and other sites fell for (remember, part of it was behind a paywall, adding more merit to Az’s theory), the comments still stand. Such a game might have worked under better creators but the French Society Of Magical Crackers up there would not be the people to tell that story. If indeed it was a potential idea thrown out there as a possibility it would have been a better use of a black character than upgrading the one black “samurai” to full status just to do an Assassin’s Creed game with a black character and not being patient enough to do it right in the right setting. The case can still be made that these people couldn’t pull of an American Civil War game, just that the article writer may also be a rather successful scammer. Admittedly I fell for it as well.