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

[Legion]

...It's 1790's France, I.E, mostly white dudes. Of course the protagonists are going to be white.

Which is exactly why AC 3 featured a white protagonist.

To be fair it was a black man in France, not a bad thing mind you, would stick out rather badly in a game about stealth.

So would a bunch of guys running around in white cloaks that stick out like a sore thumb.

Nonsense. They also have two in yellow and one carrying a large axe. They will blend in with just about any crowd.

I do have to wonder how many people using the "realism" argument complained about the female assassins in Assassins Creed 2, Brotherhood, Revelations and Liberation though.

Assassins Creed 2 had a couple of women revealed during Ezio's initiation. Brotherhood and Revelation had women assassins as recruits and eventually masters. Liberation featured a woman as the main protagonist. It's not as though this would be the first game that had women as assassins.

It is also worth mentioning that Assassins are a secret order. It doesn't matter that women wouldn't be soldiers, politicians and so on. They are not working out in the open so societies general rules simply would not apply. They'd select their trainees based upon ability to blend in and skill, as their cause is what is important to them.

There is also the likelihood that most people of the time would be less inclined to suspect a woman of being an assassin than a man. That perception would make women a lot less conspicuous which is ideal for an assassin.

There is no basis for not including them from a "realism" point of view.

 

[Lightknight]

Wow, we really made something of this, didn't we? We took what is clearly Jim Sterling taking the piss, and we made a debate of it.

Escapist Magazine, bastion of intellectualism everybody! And to think, this sites forum community believes puff-pieces for games are somehow beneath them.

Is it somehow important to you that people not talk about certain things? Does it somehow impact you if other people are discussing a subject that was started by a joke that has little merit as the basis? Is there something wrong with even meaningless or pointless discussions being meted out if you don't have to participate?

I couldn't care less what Jim originally said. What I am discussing is what people have said in response to that. That's what many of us are discussing rather than Jim's comment and most of the people discussing that are explaining that it's a joke and not to be made into a treatise on the face of gaming.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Do we know there ISNT a character creation mode?

Also stop looking for sexism/racism where it isnt. Other wise what your saying is that all the people that made that AC game said "We dont want any black people or woman in the game as they suck and no one wants them". Same bullshit as those that said shooting black zombies in RE was racist when in fact its not, there are a lot of black people in Africa so most of the zombies would be black (would be racist if most of them were white). Sometimes what you call "racist/sexist" is just laziness on the part of the developer so until we know that there is NO character creation, then people can moan. But i bet there will be one, its a multiplayer after all and i doubt the characters matter story wise outside the main character. Im guessing its why they all look like clones at the moment as they havnt finished it.

 

[Maeshone]

Do we know there ISNT a character creation mode?

Also stop looking for sexism/racism where it isnt. Other wise what your saying is that all the people that made that AC game said "We dont want any black people or woman in the game as they suck and know one wants them". Same bullshit as those that said shooting black zombies in RE was racist when in fact its not, there are a lot of black people in Africa so most of the zombies would be black. Sometimes what you call "racist/sexist" is just laziness on the part of the developer so until we know there is NO character creation, then people can moan. But i bet there will be one, its a multiplayer after all and i doubt the characters matter story wise outside the main character. Im guessing its why they all look like clones at the moment.

There sort of is character creation, or at least customization, but you always play as a guy named Arno Dorian. Even in coop, each player is their own specialized and customized version of Arno

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Do we know there ISNT a character creation mode?

Also stop looking for sexism/racism where it isnt. Other wise what your saying is that all the people that made that AC game said "We dont want any black people or woman in the game as they suck and know one wants them". Same bullshit as those that said shooting black zombies in RE was racist when in fact its not, there are a lot of black people in Africa so most of the zombies would be black. Sometimes what you call "racist/sexist" is just laziness on the part of the developer so until we know there is NO character creation, then people can moan. But i bet there will be one, its a multiplayer after all and i doubt the characters matter story wise outside the main character. Im guessing its why they all look like clones at the moment.

There sort of is character creation, or at least customization, but you always play as a guy named Arno Dorian. Even in coop, each player is their own specialized and customized version of Arno

GGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR OUT WITH THE TORCHES!!!!! Seriously though, that just sucks. I thought they would just be helpers, like those assassins you hired in the Ezio games and they just helped you with your game. Hopefully they will fix that. Granted your just a body guard, but atleast let people play as a black bodyguard or a female bodyguard. Cant see the point letting everyone play as the same character but with different colour hoodies. Or are we going to get cutscenes with all four characters talking at the same time? lol

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I did wonder why all 4 characters looked the same when Ac has so far always had some really diverse multiplayer character designs to play with. Having 4 characters basically looking the same feels like a downgrade.

 

[Maeshone]

Do we know there ISNT a character creation mode?

Also stop looking for sexism/racism where it isnt. Other wise what your saying is that all the people that made that AC game said "We dont want any black people or woman in the game as they suck and know one wants them". Same bullshit as those that said shooting black zombies in RE was racist when in fact its not, there are a lot of black people in Africa so most of the zombies would be black. Sometimes what you call "racist/sexist" is just laziness on the part of the developer so until we know there is NO character creation, then people can moan. But i bet there will be one, its a multiplayer after all and i doubt the characters matter story wise outside the main character. Im guessing its why they all look like clones at the moment.

There sort of is character creation, or at least customization, but you always play as a guy named Arno Dorian. Even in coop, each player is their own specialized and customized version of Arno

GGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR OUT WITH THE TORCHES!!!!! Seriously though, that just sucks. I thought they would just be helpers, like those assassins you hired in the Ezio games and they just helped you with your game. Hopefully they will fix that. Granted your just a body guard, but atleast let people play as a black bodyguard or a female bodyguard. Cant see the point letting everyone play as the same character but with different colour hoodies. Or are we going to get cutscenes with all four characters talking at the same time? lol

I'm going to assume the cutscenes will always treat you as Arno while your friends are other characters in your copy, and then vice versa for them in their copy. They kinda did this in Watch_Dogs already, where every player i multiplayer looks like Aiden Pearce on their own screen while everyone else is just a random model from the game. Only, y'know, with less of the "random model" part since you can design your own assassin

 

[mecegirl]

[HEADING=3]IMPORTANT EDIT[/HEADING]
EDIT 2: I found a black guy! It took some looking, but I eventually turned up Jean-Baptiste Belley, a black Haitian who spoke at the Convention, alongside the mulatto Jean-Baptiste Mills and Louis-Pierre Dufaÿ, a European. This is the first confirmed person of colour I've found who was in France at the time, although he went back to Haiti soon afterwards (Not counting Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who if anything would show up as an NPC). Are there more? Almost certainly; this journal article says that between 4000 and 5000 black people entered and left the country throughout the century (0.025% of the population) but it doesn't have really concrete numbers. If anyone does have a JSTOR account and wants to read the whole piece and let me know what it says, I would be grateful. Does this mean that one of the characters should be black? I leave that in your hands.

It's not really a matter of should. It's just that it's a possibility. Another famous biracial man who could show up as a NPC is Joseph Bologne or as he was known at the time Chevalier De Saint Georges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_Saint-Georges

He is known now for his music as the "Black Mozart"(which is how I first found out about him).

<youtube=kvSYajYByPY>

But he was also a very, very good fencer and a the leader of the first all black military regiment in Europe.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Do we know there ISNT a character creation mode?

SNIP

There sort of is character creation, or at least customization, but you always play as a guy named Arno Dorian. Even in coop, each player is their own specialized and customized version of Arno

GGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR OUT WITH THE TORCHES!!!!! Seriously though, that just sucks. I thought they would just be helpers, like those assassins you hired in the Ezio games and they just helped you with your game. Hopefully they will fix that. Granted your just a body guard, but atleast let people play as a black bodyguard or a female bodyguard. Cant see the point letting everyone play as the same character but with different colour hoodies. Or are we going to get cutscenes with all four characters talking at the same time? lol

I'm going to assume the cutscenes will always treat you as Arno while your friends are other characters in your copy, and then vice versa for them in their copy. They kinda did this in Watch_Dogs already, where every player i multiplayer looks like Aiden Pearce on their own screen while everyone else is just a random model from the game. Only, y'know, with less of the "random model" part since you can design your own assassin

Such a shame. Imagine all 4 assassins standing around the body of their victim, all saying the same lines but with different voices and just slightly out of step with each other. Like a barber shop quartet. A bit like this at 22 second mark.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

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.

Your original statement was "Slavery was abolished in the 1780s." I found nothing that supported that claim. It appears that there were some laws that granted slaves freedom in medieval times if they were in continental France, but that restrictions in the 1700's tightened laws regarding the automatic passage of freedom. I'm not sure what you are arguing or where you are getting your information from.

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.

"This rationalisation of why historically speaking we need TEH WITE GUISE is getting absurd. I cannot wait for an AC game set in Edo period Japan with people insisting "of course it makes sense the protagonist is a white guy!" because we're already pretty much pretending the rest of history was white, so why not Japan? Or howabout pre-Columbian America. Maybe we can have a white Assassin in the Kingdom of Kongo?

Because it's really not that far off. We've white-washed everything else. Except American history, where we're suddenly quick to admit that history was nuanced."

This did sound to me like a criticism directly aimed at AC, as you called them out specifically, rather than using games in general. Your mention of American history in particular seemed aimed at ACIII, as that was the first time I recall that the series made a big deal out of the ethnicity of the main character. My apologies if I misunderstood the point you were making.

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.

Jim's tweet specifically mentioned the race and sex of the characters, and given his history of talking about racism and sexism in games, it seemed like a logical leap. I fully admit in the original post that Jim might have been making a joke, but I don't believe that guessing that Jim is being snarky about the race and sex of the characters as a form of criticism is at all "bending over backwards."

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.

What reason? I don't recall anyone protesting that the original Assassin's Creed had a Syrian lead, or any other protests for any of the other games. This thread is about the exact opposite: someone being upset that a game (or at least the brief snatch of pre-release footage) did NOT have characters of unexpected race.

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.

I think we have different views of the anachronism of AC. As far as video games go, they do their best to remain faithful to history, copying real-world landmarks, people, and events, and only deviating with things such as the hidden blade or da Vinci's machines for enjoyable gameplay, or with the alien artifacts for the admittedly terrible metastory. Connor's specific involvement in ACIII didn't seem terribly versimilitude-breaking; the only thing I can point to was that the ambient dialogue wasn't filled with racist insults, and the colonists rarely tried to run Connor out of town (personally, I think that was a disservice to the character, but I can see from a marketing standpoint why they did that). The game seems to have tried hard to be historically accurate.

As for the order recruiting minorities and women, I'm sure they will do that. I think that you've misunderstood my original point: I was saying that Jim's criticism was premature and uncalled for, given that AC has prominently featured women and minorities up to this point, and that judging the game based in the 4 guys from one trailer was doing a disservice to the game.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

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.

I really hope that history isn't made of white people reproducing asexually, or I've have to ask my family who all those brown people in our photo albums are.

On topic, honestly I don't know if it would make a better story. AC has done a good job of stories where people pull together across cultural boundaries, and I'm sure those people will again return as NPCs in the story, but I don't know if having the multiplayer characters being of different ethnicities or genders would help that (some people have said that everyone in multiplayer is playing the same Arno character, just with a bit of customization to differentiate). From what I can tell, varied characters will be making their regular appearance in regular multiplayer as well, and I don't know if the co-op story should have to stretch to fit in a wide variety of characters (I'm not sure how they'll explain multiple Arnos, though, so maybe it could) to meet some quota.

You know, the more I think of it, the funnier it gets: My great-great-grandfathers are just puttering around northern India, reveling in their alabaster skin and abundance of penises, when suddenly all their babies start coming out with dark skin and stupid amounts of body hair, and occasionally lady-parts. There would definitely be some confusion.

 

[Bonecrusher]

I hate forced characters for the sake of diversity. I am happy that the four characters aren't Black male, White female, Yellow chinese male, Brown indian female. For me, historical accuracy is more important than politically correctness.
Of course, 4 same guy (with different facial hairs) seems a bit weird. But you know what? One tall skinny guy, one fat guy, one small guy, one strong guy would be very weird too.
So... I think we need to look through the package and explore the inside...

 

[Vault101]

I hate forced characters for the sake of diversity....

has this ever actually happened? just out of interest?

I mean I get the impression the inclusion of say....urhurah and sulu in the original star trek was a concious effort on part of the creators...did they make the show any less good? or did they even add to it?

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Nowhere did he imply it was racist or sexist, it's just jarring. If you saw four white males with identical beards walking down the street in unison, you'd think it was weird.

Besides, when I see identical white men walking down the street in a videogame, I try and run them over so I can hear the "Elvis has left the building" line.

 

[Brad Shepard]

I am really getting tired of how hyper sensitive everyone has gotten on the internet for the last few years, in both ways.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

My first thought was 'if the guy on the far right had more red then they would be just like the minions from Overlord!'

I don't get why the the big fuss over the whitebread characters, the AC series for the most part tries to be historically accurate and nonwhites weren't exactly what you would call a sizable minority in revolutionary France. There were some granted, but they would stick out like sore thumbs. Not exactly what you want when you are supposed to be a low profile assassin, the hood only does so much.

 

[Zakarath]

There was a quote from Ubisoft saying they wanted to include a female character, but it would've required too much more work (new clothing, animations, models, VA, etc.) which I suppose is fair enough.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

There was a quote from Ubisoft saying they wanted to include a female character, but it would've required too much more work (new clothing, animations, models, VA, etc.) which I suppose is fair enough.

it depends

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6073-Lets-End-the-FPS-Sausage-fest

there are cheap ways to add female characters to a game

 

[Vault101]

Do we know there ISNT a character creation mode?

Also stop looking for sexism/racism where it isnt. Other wise what your saying is that all the people that made that AC game said "We dont want any black people or woman in the game as they suck and no one wants them".

hardly anyone who makes something that might be considered "problematic" does it intentionally....the closest I can think of would be Birth of a Nation

[quote/]Same bullshit as those that said shooting black zombies in RE was racist when in fact its not, there are a lot of black people in Africa so most of the zombies would be black (would be racist if most of them were white).[/quote]
I don't think it was that...but the fact some of them were dressed up in tribal garb to the point where it was [i/]"I went to the witch doctor and he said ohh ahh walla walla bing bang "[/i] levels of....misguided

[quote/]Sometimes what you call "racist/sexist" is just laziness on the part of the developer[/quote]
again its not really about intentions.....(I mean that generally not in this case..I wouldn't call it racist just boring/dumb because its the same old thing]

[quote/]so until we know that there is NO character creation, then people can moan. But i bet there will be one, its a multiplayer after all and i doubt the characters matter story wise outside the main character. Im guessing its why they all look like clones at the moment as they havnt finished it.[/quote]
I don't think there will be..something to do with them all being the same charachter or...whatever....I don't think I care about Ass Creed enough

 

[Vault101]

I don't get why the the big fuss over the whitebread characters, the AC series for the most part tries to be historically accurate and nonwhites weren't exactly what you would call a sizable minority in revolutionary France.

I wouldn't have an issue with "historical acuracy" if they didn't cock it all up in AC2/brotherhood and give us female assasins...just not actual important female assasins except for that one game for that one handheld

[quote/]There were some granted, but they would stick out like sore thumbs. Not exactly what you want when you are supposed to be a low profile assassin, the hood only does so much.[/quote]
no offense but this strike me as slightly disengenous....AC has ALSO thrown out any pretense of being "hidable" by this point..I mean for fucks sake LOOK at those outfits

or in otherwords no...just no....

yes I can see how it would be harder to work into the story, but again...effing female assasins!....you can't just be inclusive when it suits you...ubisoft