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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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The author addresses that criticism here: https://acoup.blog/2020/11/27/fireside-friday-november-27-2020/

The tl;dr; is that the majority of players only discover the historical fiction, and never meet the scifi aliens/templars/etc part of the game.

But from how he describes AC: Valhalla, it doesn't sound like it's just the protagonist who doesn't kill innocents. It's all the vikings. They come, build infrastructure, overthrow corrupt Saxons, and teach the locals how stupid Christianity is. (In real history the Vikings all learned how awesome Jesus is.)

Moreover, the complete whitewashing of historical scenarios is not something the Assassin's Creed franchise does in other circumstances. Black Flag (pirates!) does not gloss over the fact that most of the Carribean economy was based on slavery and the expansion pack has a former slave as the main playable character.

Here's an article about how much work Ubisoft put into correctly portraying the Mohawk and colonialism in AC3: https://techland.time.com/2012/09/05/assassins-creed-iiis-connor-how-ubisoft-avoided-stereotypes-and-made-a-real-character/

I haven't played AC3 either, but I'm willing to gamble that attempts by the colonialists to forcefully convert the Mohawk from their own religion to Christianity are not portrayed favorably (if portrayed at all).