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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   25601 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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Man, the Assassin's Creed series. My take can be succinctly summarized. Disclaimer, I haven't played any in the series since Black Flag, which to my mind is as damn near perfect as a game can get.

  1. The series has prided itself on broad historical accuracy. The events it depicts as historical actually happened, the historical figures actually existed and are mostly true to their recorded personas.

  2. Even so, the whole premise is that a secret order of Illuminati-like villains has been both guiding history AND rewriting the historical record as part of a propaganda war.

  3. Even even so, the magical technology that enables the plot to happen is 'genetic memory' or whatever, which holds that the historical periods being experienced by the players actually happened and thus are telling a 'true story.'

  4. So they can just say that Yasuke's history was rewritten by the Villains to downplay his role, and the story in the game is the accurate retelling in the game universe even if 'real world' events are different.

  5. YET, this starts to undermine the general premise that you're a stealthy assassin who kills, then blends in with the crowd. The ONE black dude in Japan is not going to be able to just break line of sight and evade detection by pulling on a mask and sitting on a bench.

  6. But who cares, the gameplay is optimized for fun, not realism.

  7. But but... one point someone made is that the playable protagonist of EVERY game before this has been a fictional character made up specifically for the series, with no historical parallel, which is perhaps in order to give the player the 'blank slate' avatar and avoid any major historical inaccuracies by having some well-known historical figure being an extremely dangerous assassin in their spare time.

So, to the extent Ubisoft has broken a longstanding convention in the series in order to create a playable black character in Japan of all places it bodes ill because it is clear evidence of a point I've made before: If they are specifically advertising their game on grounds of how diverse it is, and they're taking pains to enforce that diversity, it betrays that their priority is not on quality of writing or game design, they're counting on something else to sell the product or, at least, to mask criticism.

But then again, Ubi's whole model is to spit out iterations of a specific formula with small innovations on a regular schedule. Hence there's a new Ghost Recon game, Far Cry, or AC game on the schedule for release just about every year. And while admittedly the AC games tend to be a cut above in terms of average quality, one can understand that Ubisoft isn't in it for the art, it is just another franchise they can milk indefinitely, as long as they don't alienate the fanbase too much with any one entry.

I'd argue Yasuke is very close to being a fictional character that whoever's writing whatever media can project their own 'ooh there's a black guy in Japan' views upon. His historical context is like 2 lines of 'woah there's a black guy in Japan'.

But but... one point someone made is that the playable protagonist of EVERY game before this has been a fictional character made up specifically for the series, with no historical parallel, which is perhaps in order to give the player the 'blank slate' avatar and avoid any major historical inaccuracies by having some well-known historical figure being an extremely dangerous assassin in their spare time.

I think you're right that they obviously want to make this all about Yasuke, and that wouldn't work unless he's the main character because you could always just ignore him otherwise. I also think part of it why previous historical figures weren't playable characters is that it's often more inspiring to imagine hanging out with and earning the respect of your heroes rather than literally being them. Taking the example of AC2, it was quite cool for a lot of people to have their character become friends with Leonardo Da Vinci, but I don't think a game where you play as Da Vinci would have generated quite as much excitement.

I don't think a game where you play as Da Vinci would have generated quite as much excitement.

I mean, a game where you play as mad scientist Leonardo would, in fact, be pretty awesome.

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