Assassin's Creed Chronicles
Mar. 31st, 2015 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkI'm really torn.
On one hand, the art styles for these games are really fantastic (the painterly style of ACC: China! The black-and-white with red highlights in ACC: Russia! *swoon*).
On the other hand, these games feel lazy. Ubisoft had multiple chances to make Assassin's Creed games featuring protagonists who are not male and/or not white (or at the very least not Western European) and non-Western-European history and decides to only put them in 2.5D sidescrolling games instead of main console releases with fully recreated historical cities and such.
The other major issue that bothers me is the names. Just as a thought experiment: Can you imagine what it would feel like if Ubisoft named the main console Assassin's Creed games the same way?
AC: The Middle East
ACII: Italy
AC: Rome
AC: Turkey
ACIII: North America
ACIV: The Caribbean
AC: France
AC: United Kingdom [or just England—not sure what's up with AC: Victory yet]
My point is that these titles feel overly simplistic and even insulting. Take ACC: China, for example—China has thousands of years of history with dramatic shifts and changes. AC: Qin Dynasty would look very different from AC: Tang Dynasty. But just calling the game "China" collapses those thousands of years of history and, I'm afraid, would let Ubisoft check off a diversity box so they can say in the future, "What Assassin's Creed game should we make next? China? Oh, we already covered China, let's do a European country we haven't covered yet!" And the same applies for ACC: India and ACC: Russia.
Not to mention the massive diversity in those respective countries that gets homogenized. China is bigger than Europe, for crying out loud, and has tons of ethnic minorities and different languages and also just massive regional differences. Same thing for India: tons of languages, different ethnic groups, and different religions too. And everyone knows how huge Russia is.
Sigh.
On one hand, the art styles for these games are really fantastic (the painterly style of ACC: China! The black-and-white with red highlights in ACC: Russia! *swoon*).
On the other hand, these games feel lazy. Ubisoft had multiple chances to make Assassin's Creed games featuring protagonists who are not male and/or not white (or at the very least not Western European) and non-Western-European history and decides to only put them in 2.5D sidescrolling games instead of main console releases with fully recreated historical cities and such.
The other major issue that bothers me is the names. Just as a thought experiment: Can you imagine what it would feel like if Ubisoft named the main console Assassin's Creed games the same way?
AC: The Middle East
ACII: Italy
AC: Rome
AC: Turkey
ACIII: North America
ACIV: The Caribbean
AC: France
AC: United Kingdom [or just England—not sure what's up with AC: Victory yet]
My point is that these titles feel overly simplistic and even insulting. Take ACC: China, for example—China has thousands of years of history with dramatic shifts and changes. AC: Qin Dynasty would look very different from AC: Tang Dynasty. But just calling the game "China" collapses those thousands of years of history and, I'm afraid, would let Ubisoft check off a diversity box so they can say in the future, "What Assassin's Creed game should we make next? China? Oh, we already covered China, let's do a European country we haven't covered yet!" And the same applies for ACC: India and ACC: Russia.
Not to mention the massive diversity in those respective countries that gets homogenized. China is bigger than Europe, for crying out loud, and has tons of ethnic minorities and different languages and also just massive regional differences. Same thing for India: tons of languages, different ethnic groups, and different religions too. And everyone knows how huge Russia is.
Sigh.
