According to a new report, Ubisoft canceled an in-development Assassin’s Creed game that was set to take place in the Reconstruction-era USA last year, citing political concerns.
That’s per Stephen Totilo of Game File, who cites “interviews with five current and former Ubisoft employees“. Said employees told Totilo that they were “enthusiastic” about this potential Assassin’s Creed game, but were “frustrated by its cancellation”, which they saw as “Ubisoft bowing to controversy”.
If Totilo is to be believed, players would have taken the role of a Black former slave who had moved from the South in order to begin a new life. The Assassins would have recruited said protagonist, and he would have fought the Ku Klux Klan, among other hostile forces.
Totilo claims that three of his sources told him the post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed project had been canceled for two reasons, the first of which was the backlash against Assassin’s Creed Shadows protagonist Yasuke.
If you need reminding, said backlash revolved around whether or not the historical Yasuke (who was a real person) would actually have held the rank of samurai. Its proponents claimed historical inaccuracy, but those opposed to the backlash accused its adherents of covert racism.
The second reason the Assassin’s Creed project in question was canceled was, according to Totilo’s report, the political climate in the US, which a source said was “too unstable” to justify the continuation of the game’s development.
The sources to whom Totilo spoke said that cancelling a project in the gaming industry was not unusual (to which recent events will certainly attest), but that doing so for the above reasons was.
It comes after a troubling financial period for Ubisoft, during which major releases like the aforementioned Assassin’s Creed Shadows failed to save the company from disappointing sales in the year’s first quarter.
The French studio also announced back in September that future games in the Far Cry series, another franchise that serves as one of Ubisoft’s flagships, would focus much more on their multiplayer elements.
