What if the most daring hero in the Assassin’s Creed saga never saw the light of day? According to the revelations of a specialist journalist, Ubisoft would have discreetly put an end to a game project set after the Civil War, where we would have played a black man, former slave, in post-abolition America.
The information, relayed by Stephen Totilo for Game Filereveals that a new episode of the Assassin’s Creed saga has been canceled in summer 2024while it was still in the design phase. The game was to immerse players in the late 19th century, in the middle of the Reconstruction period, just after the Civil War.
A black hero against the Ku Klux Klan
In this untitled project, the player would have played a formerly enslaved black man in the American Southleft to rebuild his life in the West. But the Assassins would have recruited him to return to his native lands and fight very real enemies, including the Ku Klux Klan.
The idea of the game was to reflect how racial tensions had been used to control societyechoing current issues in the United States. A delicate subject, which Ubisoft managers would have considered too risky to deal with in the current political context.
Ubisoft prefers to avoid any controversy
The project was abandoned a few months after the controversies linked to Yasukehistorical character of African origin playable in Assassin’s Creed Shadowslocated in feudal Japan. Some players had criticized this choice on social networks, despite the real historical basis of the character.
Scalded by these reactions and then in fragile financial situationUbisoft would have preferred not to engage in a potentially controversial new production. As the game is still very far from the production stage, the cancellation has not been the subject of any official communication.
A precedent yet assumed in the series
However, this is not not the first time that a black character and former slave occupies the head of an Assassin’s Creed game. In 2013, the extension Freedom Cryderived fromAssassin’s Creed IV: Black Flagstaged Adéwaléa freed slave turned Assassin, who liberated his fellow men across the Caribbean.
The saga also explored American history with Assassin’s Creed IIIcentered on the Revolution. But this period of Post-Secession Reconstruction would have been a first for the franchise.
According to Totilo sources, this canceled game should never be restartednor be the subject of recycling in another project. A decision which revives debates on the place of historical fiction in video games, and on the lines that publishers no longer dare to cross.