Poll: Jim Sterling Calls Out New Assassin's Creed (for racism/sexism?)

[CloudAtlas]

Saying that there is no women is jumping the gun to the extreme; just because that short trailer didn't have a female playable character, that doesn't mean there won't be women in the game.

True, but it is still strange that at least the marketing for the coop part of Unity doesn't feature a female playable character so far, suggesting that there will be none. Strange because it would make many people happy without hurting anyone.

 

[Agente L]

What you wanted? Black assassins? There only a few thousands of black people in france at the time. Asian assassins? Even less. 18th France was pretty much ALL white.

Heck, 18th france was a lot more about class than about race anyway

Sure, the WHITE assassins might've looked a bit more different from each other, or even a woman assassin would be pretty good.

But really? Complaining about racism? Whats next, they are going to complain there are black protagonists in a a game set in Ancient Rome?

 

[Something Amyss]

Where are you hearing that slavery was abolished in the 1780's? Everything I find says that 1794 was the earliest date, and it was put back into place in 1802.

Wikipedia lists 1794 as the date at which it ended in the colonies. Your link actually says THE SAME THING.

Assassin's Creed is famous for NOT white-washing:

That's good, since I didn't say otherwise. I addressed the apologists who are saying that historically, it makes sense.

that Jim's tweet, if serious, was an overreaction to a perceived slight

Which is ironic, since you haven't demonstrated it was about racism or sexism TMK. It seems you're bending over backwards to justify something in defense of an accusation you're assuming.

There is absolutely no reason to suspect that a game in the Congo would star someone not from the Congo, or that one one in Japan would not have a Japanese lead.

There is plenty of reason to suggest such a game would meet with the same apologetics.

I'm also just going to copy this:

I also don't buy the "historicity" argument because the AC games have been heavily anachronistic. It's sort of like arguing that a black Spartan in the movie 300 would be unrealistic. While one might loosely make that argument for something like Rome, 300 was so historically accurate that a four-armed alien robot wielding lightsabers wouldn't make it any less historically accurate/realistic. and here's a game that debuts itself with a Tears for Fears song. These are historical games in much the same sense that Dynasty/Samurai Warriors are.

In fact, to the Verisimilitude point, I would argue they already broke that with Connor's (Specifically, not natives in general) involvement in III. Not to mention the fact that we're talking about a fictional version of an order that would adopt strategic positions to infiltrate, of which slaves, peasants, and other groups are often ideal.

It's not like you need to have a rich black freeman in the first place. Actually, none of those are strictly necessary to be a non-white person in France.

I'm also not sure why breaking the trappings of history by having functioning daVinci machines in 2 or alien artifacts is any better. If you can accept "like our world, but..." you can accept it here. Which you probably already did with Connor.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

I really hope this is a joke...because if he is really calling this game racist or sexist, then the words racism and sexism have become so utterly trivialized that they have lost all meaning.

 

[Sectan]

Calling out racism and sexism? I think Jim was commenting more on the uninteresting design and characters, but I can't exactly say it as fact.

 

[Something Amyss]

True, but it is still strange that at least the marketing for the coop part of Unity doesn't feature a female playable character so far, suggesting that there will be none. Strange because it would make many people happy without hurting anyone.

Actually, it's probably not strange. Remember, this is the gaming industry. They didn't want Ellie on TLOU's cover, they kept whatshername off the cover of BSI, and the biggest concession Mass Effect got was a reversible jacket.

 

[Jedamethis]

To people arguing that it should not be diverse, and yes all the characters should be white men, or at least yes all the main characters should be white men, because you really can't get enough of playing as a white man, I would ask why on earth that is.
It can't be for the sake of realism, because the point of games is that they're fantasies, where things can happen that would not ordinarily happen. Otherwise CoD would be five minutes long and involve you getting shot and dying, Mass Effect about coping with psychological trauma and probably being assassinated for trying to unite the galaxy, and Dragon Age would have no dragons in it.

There's a difference between realism and verisimilitude. In CoD, we don't want the realism of having to deal with realistic injuries because that is not fun. Similarly, we don't want a gun that vaporizes everything on the map with a single pull of the trigger, because that is also not fun. In Dragon Age, we accept dragons exist because that's part of the story; we wouldn't accept it if dragons suddenly began dispensing wishes and breathing cotton candy, because that's not part of dragons as they exist in that world.

On topic, you can see how realism comes into play in Assassin's Creed. People can't survive jumps from the tops of towers by landing in carts of hay. Nor in the real world is there a secret order of Assassins fighting Templars for control of magic items. However, the outside trappings of the eras are always played as realistically as possible within that framework, and part of that realism is that French people in the revolution were racist, and that there were very few black people in Paris at the time (I haven't found a single one through cursory Googling, but I'm sure they are out there). If Assassin's Creed was going to throw aside the trappings of historical accuracy, that's one thing; saying "there should be other ethnicities because dragons aren't real" is not an argument.

Would not a game depicting a variety of peoples working together, free, as the assassins would desire it to be, be more fun and engaging than a game which is mostly white men? Even if it was rare, there was still definitely at least one or two people of colour who could be written into the story. Pick a random slave, have the assassins free them to join their cause. Job done. Job done incredibly lazily, admittedly, but done. As if anybody's going to complain that 'there's black people in my game get them out' and be taken seriously.
And that still does not explain away the lack of women being shown. Unless you're of the unusually common opinion that before the 20th century or so only white brown-haired men existed and they reproduced asexually.

 

[CloudAtlas]

True, but it is still strange that at least the marketing for the coop part of Unity doesn't feature a female playable character so far, suggesting that there will be none. Strange because it would make many people happy without hurting anyone.

Actually, it's probably not strange. Remember, this is the gaming industry. They didn't want Ellie on TLOU's cover, they kept whatshername off the cover of BSI, and the biggest concession Mass Effect got was a reversible jacket.

Yea... maybe not. But I still find it weird. I mean, I can somehow understand that you don't want to feature FemShep on the Mass Effect cover so as not to lead potential buyers to believe they would have to play as a woman (the horror!), or that featuring Ellie and Elizabeth on the respective covers will lead potential buyers to (correctly) believe that they have to deal a lot with a girl in these two games (somewhat of a horror or... as the scared customers might put it... gay), but here? Does knowing of the mere possibility to play as a female character already put people off? Does the mere inclusion of one badass assassin chicks along three badass assassin dudes already make the game not manly enough for even the manliest of dudebros? And does it put off more manly dudebros than it would attract women and anyone else just looking for something different?
I find that hard to believe even if I adopt the most pessimist view of game customers I can imagine.

 

[thefascistpig]

As much as I've seen of jim I feel like he can make an issue out of almost anything so no I don't agree with him

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

they are all similar.. bearded white guys.. why not girl assassins? or Asian assassins? or characters other then white dudes? are the programmers at ubisoft too lazy to make other characters?

 

[Maeshone]

Apparently they're all the same dude, the main character of the game. According to the live demo that was just shown the game will feature character customization, which would account for the slight differences of the guys in the artwork.

 

[white_wolf]

I get what he's saying but to me its just old and over cliche really 4 guys? So imaganitive, so inventive I can't understand why more games don't employ the all male hero troupe more often...maybe they'll give us the gender select for the co op but then if they did are the girls going to dress like order assassins or pin ups? Cuz I think ubi will do the latter. At least ubi didn't go ahead and make another article saying how girls are unrealistic in the french revolution area or state how in the FR that it was all about men so maybe we'll at least get choices in gender rather then choices on male body type we'd like our co-op assassin to have. I'm holding off on calling them sexist but there is no reason now that Desmond is dead for male only leads they can let us pick our gender at the intro or make more stories of female assassins doing cool things rather then assassins barbie addition.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

To answer your question, yes one of the characters being black would've made him more interesting, because it would imply that the designers actually gave a shit. Have one of them be a woman, have one of them be really short or really fat, SOMETHING to make it look like we're not dealing with a group of quintuplets with the same horrible taste in facial hair.

And guys, can one person not make a comment about how boringly designed a box art is without everyone getting hysterical over the isms?

 

[Maeshone]

So this is why they don't properly set Assassin's Creed in modern day. Got to find some way to get away with consistently white protagonists.

"Consistently white"

AC: Middle-eastern
ACII, Brotherhood, Revelations: Italian
ACIII: Native American
AC Liberation: Black Female
ACIV: Welsh

so, 1 out of 7 is white. Good job there.

 

[Falseprophet]

Like the OP says, Ubisoft has a pretty good track record on cultural representation with the AC series, so I'm not too bothered by that. Although why do they all have the exact same build? Same height, same trim physique, same proportions. I know it's easier for the art team to come up with two or three character models and just swap out heads, and not have to adjust clothing to fit different sized models. But it makes them look like a bunch of interchangeable action figures instead of individual human beings. Couldn't a couple of them have been a bit taller, or shorter, or fatter, or more heavily-muscled?

But, there's no excuse for not having a woman as a playable character. The was by a woman [http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/charlotte-corday-assassinates-marat]!

 

[michael87cn]

They don't look the same to me. They are covered with hoods. How can anyone say they look the same? You can only see a chin and a beard. What the hell?

I think its safe to say this is a case of a community defending someone they like. But sometimes people say inappropriate things and should be held accountable for that. Entertainers should be no exception.

Racist remark or Racist joke? Inappropriate either way. Defense falls flat.

 

[Maeshone]

So this is why they don't properly set Assassin's Creed in modern day. Got to find some way to get away with consistently white protagonists.

"Consistently white"

AC: Middle-eastern
ACII, Brotherhood, Revelations: Italian
ACIII: Native American
AC Liberation: Black Female
ACIV: Welsh

so, 1 out of 7 is white. Good job there.

AC1 he had the whitey face of Desmond who is white because of the animus. So that doesn't count.
ACII: Since when is Italian not white?
ACIII: He's half white. Had to get SOME white in there.
AC Liberation: never played it so I can't say
ACIV: Again, since when is Welsh not white?

Really, you think Altaïr looks white? I think he looks middle-eastern.
As for Ezio, I suppose that's a fair enough point.
Connor doesn't look white either.
Edward was the one I was referring to when I said 1 out of 7 was white. I'll have to amend that to 2 out of 5, since Ezio counts as white as well.

Although why do they all have the exact same build? Same height, same trim physique, same proportions. I know it's easier for the art team to come up with two or three character models and just swap out heads, and not have to adjust clothing to fit different sized models. But it makes them look like a bunch of interchangeable action figures instead of individual human beings. Couldn't a couple of them have been a bit taller, or shorter, or fatter, or more heavily-muscled?

The reason they all look the same is because they're all the same guy. In co-op, everyone plays as their version of Arno, who will look different depending on how you customize him

 

[teamcharlie]

It's a joke, and Jim's not wrong. The only difference among the four appears to be cloak color and facial hair.

I get that it's cheaper for them to do 4-player co-op with palette-swapped character models than actually different ones, but y'know what would be even cheaper? Not doing co-op. Or they could have actually spent a bit more money and recognized that not everybody wants to be a white European man in their video games, and that 4-player co-op in a video game series that has in the past actually had a pretty racially diverse cast of playable characters would have been a great instance to let people step outside of the expected and culturally limiting perspective of white European guy while still playing (and maybe even being more inclined to buy!) their game.

Or they could have at least---at least given the characters the same basic build but changed some facial features and skin color. How much assassining do they even do with their noses and eyelids, anyway?