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.
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 assassinSonOfVoorhees said: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? lolMaeshone said: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 ArnoSonOfVoorhees said: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.
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.Thunderous Cacophony said:[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.
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.Maeshone said: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 assassinSonOfVoorhees said: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? lolMaeshone said: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 ArnoSonOfVoorhees said:Do we know there ISNT a character creation mode?
SNIP
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.Zachary Amaranth said:Wikipedia lists 1794 as the date at which it ended in the colonies. Your link actually says THE SAME THING.Thunderous Cacophony said: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.
"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?That's good, since I didn't say otherwise. I addressed the apologists who are saying that historically, it makes sense.Assassin's Creed is famous for NOT white-washing:
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."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.that Jim's tweet, if serious, was an overreaction to a perceived slight
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.There is plenty of reason to suggest such a game would meet with the same apologetics.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.
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.I'm also just going to copy this:
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.Zachary Amaranth said: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.
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 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.Jedamethis said: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.
has this ever actually happened? just out of interest?Bonecrusher said:I hate forced characters for the sake of diversity....
it dependsZakarath said: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.
hardly anyone who makes something that might be considered "problematic" does it intentionally....the closest I can think of would be Birth of a NationSonOfVoorhees said: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".
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 handheldEd130 The Vanguard said: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.
Oh yeah, the female thing. I guess you get up in arms about that if you really wanted to. That said, I honestly don't know how independent frenchwomen were at the time beyond some that would do the knitting at the guillotine.Vault101 said: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 handheldEd130 The Vanguard said: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.
Yes, the Willing Suspension of Disbelief goes through the wringer with the AC outfits, especially with Altair's. However as the OP pointed out, the percentage is non-whites in revolutionary France was absurdly low at 0.025%. It isn't 'come over from the next town to gawk at' level but it would certainly enter take a second glance territory which for your 'poorly disguised' assassins isn't a good thing.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 outfitsThere 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.
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
thats not my point....my point is you can't point to historical acuracy as an excuse to not have female assasins when you've had them leaping around dressed in full Ezio costumes....Ed130 The Vanguard said:Oh yeah, the female thing. I guess you get up in arms about that if you really wanted to. That said, I honestly don't know how independent frenchwomen were at the time beyond some that would do the knitting at the guillotine.