A big topic of discussion today has been the news from Stephen Totilo's Game File that Ubisoft cancelled an Assassin's Creed project that was supposed to have been set during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War.
Reaction has been mixed! Many are mourning the loss of a game that would have been very of this moment, and given millions of people the chance to sneak around and then brutally murder some racists. And I can see this timeline, shimmering mirage-like in the distance, where the company behind a series centred on an Arab character in a post-9/11 world and a whole expansion based on a freed slave would have done that time and those events some small amount of justice.
I am not one of those people, because it is 2025, and this is a different time and a very different company. Totilo's report mentions two key reasons for the project's cancellation:
Three sources told Game File that word filtered through the company last July that management in Paris had stopped development of the game for two reasons: 1) online backlash that spring to the reveal of Yasuke, a historically-inspired Black samurai, as a protagonist in the company’s then-upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows; and 2) concern that the political climate in the United States was becoming increasingly tense.
The top brass at the Ubisoft of 2025 are bumbling cowards, who in their inability to grasp the moment, face the future or stand behind the creatives responsible for actually making their games have enabled the very worst people on the internet, and are now having to sell off the family jewels to keep the lights on.
While we'd all love to be playing more video games where you punch and murder monsters--Indiana Jones was a great reminder of the market's needs--would you trust these people to release that kind of blockbuster video game in this political climate? I sure as shit wouldn't! After everything that happened trying to sell a game where you play as a woman and a black guy in Japan, can you imagine how Ubisoft leadership would handle the management and messaging for a game where a black Assassin roamed the South shanking Klansmen?
As cool as the pitch is, I'm not surprised at news like this. I'm surprised it got far enough off the drawing board at today's Ubisoft to be able to be cancelled in the first place.
