Everyone’s arguing about whether or not the main character should be black while forgetting the more important point: Ubisoft is trash, and we shouldn’t be buying their uninspired shovelware anyway.
The other commenters don’t seem to understand the difference between boycotting and gatekeeping…
I’m with you man, I haven’t bought any Ubisoft stuff for over 10 years now. And the more I learned the more I got surprised by how shovelware can be made even worse.
So they’re boycotting Ubisoft because they’re trash and make uninspired shovelware? Do you understand the difference between boycotting and gatekeeping?
Increasing amounts of dlcs(Cut off from original) & microtransactions(Gambling). They have not mended their ways so I did not support them since then. Teach me where I went wrong with my Boycott?
I fully understand why people would abstain from buying their products for those reasons. All OP said was Ubisoft is trash. Honestly I think all of this has been a miscommunication, I interpreted that comment as trash = something I don’t enjoy or something of lower quality. Others have interpreted it as you have, which I do think are completely valid reasons to boycott for.
I only played until revelations which was the ending of part 2 I think which honestly felt pretty mid to me, though the over arcing story was good. Black flag was quite popular no? The one with the naval combat. I don’t remember anything beyond that.
I don’t understand the gatekeeping here, do you get mad that people enjoy the fast and furious movies? It’s not like these are funneling resources away from the tons of great indie games that are literally constantly coming out these days.
I’m not for gatekeeping but I can understand the pushback in this case. People had the same argument for Bethesda horse armor in the past and it’s gradually been abused to stuff like day 1 dlc and Diablo IP becoming a predatory mtx handphone game. At some point if you don’t voice concerns over Ubisoft delisting games (the crew) or $100+ pricing bundles, you shouldn’t be surprised if Ubi opts to mess with previously beloved IPs for a quick buck.
It’s great that you love indies and all but shaming other people for being frustrated at Ubi’s business practices is no better than gatekeeping people for liking their new games.
I think you’re somewhat demonstrating their point, given that I’ve fairly consistently liked D3 and D4 and don’t have any experience with Immortal. I’ve seen lots of critique about 4 that doesn’t necessarily ring true (I can’t imagine playing well at all on mobile, especially given my choice of skill rotation) and that makes sense mostly when it’s grouped with Immortal in a way I find somewhat arbitrary. Immortal itself isn’t especially predatory within the context of mobile games, though being one is a factor in why I haven’t tried it.
I think it’s easy to dunk and point out things like “you can’t earn enough currency to get the next battle pass for free” without honestly examining what the battle pass in D4 is and realising that it offers extremely little. The free armour is cool and interesting enough that I get the dopamine reward when looking at my toon on the loading screen without paying for it. Indeed I think paying for a set to some extent cheapens that experience vs. getting that reward multiple times via picking up gear and not using transmog at all.
Might be some other parts of its monetisation I’m not considering in my assessment but I don’t think it’s predatory. So when I constantly hear all about how predatory it is, often it instead serves to drive me toward the brand loyalist lapdog tribe. I wouldn’t say it’s shameful at all, but it’s tiring to engage with as though there’s a more nuanced perspective behind it than just general naysaying, when often that just doesn’t seem to be the case.
This is gonna be super offtopic: Diablo 4 was fine, I didn’t bring it up and only specified Immortal for a reason. If only the latest iteration of an IP counts, then I should have said OW2, but I mentioned Immortal because it was so terrible. It IS especially predatory even for a handphone game, worse than the final fantasy ones, Maple, PoGo etc. An actual fun app with it’s progression covered in so much monetization that f2p players can literally never catchup to payers, with gambling systems that can cost up to several thousands. Don’t take us ‘naysayers’ at our word, go ahead and invest your time into it if you’d like. People complain about OW2 mtx but it doesn’t even come close to how bad Immortal gets.
Still, I get your point as to why it’s better to have some nuance on this kinda thing and not hop on corpo hate trains.
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the nuance where it’s offered. I think the difference in my summary perspective of these issues is in considering its intended targets. I’m aware f2p players in Immortal don’t have a hope of catching up - I do think that’s a predatory part of the summary monetisation of the game - but I think it’s mitigated by being targeted at whales. Because paying in that game doesn’t only gatekeep player power; power scales linearly with the amount you pay. So even people tricked into paying for some power aren’t really able to realise that advantage. IMO this changes the paradigm a bit, because the material effect of the monetisation to the informed consumer (regardless of their level of participation) is to part rich people from some of their riches - something I don’t really find compelling as a summary argument against it. The main other group predated on would be those that choose to be uninformed, which is something that I can’t really think of a good a reason to take some kind of moral stance on
You’re extrapolating a whole lot here, all I was responding to was OP saying “we” shouldn’t buy Ubisoft games because they’re trash and all they make is uninspired shovelware. Just a weird stance in my opinion to concern yourself with what shovelware other people are buying and enjoying in their free time. Guess that’s an unpopular opinion here haha
Movies don’t demand an unreasonable amount of money and time out of you the viewer, you buy your ticket and watch the film, maybe you buy the DVD, done end of story.
Ubisoft games demand a minimum of 70 dollars out of you and upwards of 60 hours all while blocking your progress with arbitrary experience checkpoints and pestering you about spending even more money for weapons, gear, mounts, etc. as if it were a free to play MMO like Fortnite, except you already dumped 70 dollars to play the damn thing.
Not sure where indie games have anything to do with Ubisoft.
I’m a huge fan but I still buy all games at the deepest discounts. There are also free trial periods, friend pass opportunities and giveaways of the games further down the line. Sure, most people fall for the tricks and buy the games right away and even pay for some microtransactions, but they don’t have to, so there’s no ostracizing the poor here.
They actually don’t demand anything from you, just don’t buy it if it’s not for you. That was my entire point and I’m not sure how you missed it, don’t tell people not to buy Ubisoft games if that’s what they enjoy? You all can play whatever niche and indie games you enjoy and others can play the new AC, live and let live.
Again, I’m not saying people can’t criticize Ubisoft or AC as a franchise. I take umbrage with people saying they shouldn’t spend money on things they enjoy. I see you all over Lemmy and feel like you’re pretty levelheaded, am I taking crazy pills here? That was all I said in response to a comment about how “we” shouldn’t buy Ubisoft trash. Look at all the weird straw men that people have replied with. I thought this place was supposed to be better than reddit.
I haven’t played any AC games in a long time but why would a game series that’s all about playing as stealth assassins have you play as samurai instead of ninjas? Seems like a really big missed opportunity for something like Tenchu
They have strayed far from the original series. It’s large open world combat not hidden in the shadows at all now. Even the ninja you play as in this game is operating in the middle of the day in the streets.
I thought it was common knowledge that “retainer” was literally the job description of all samurai… but I guess I should have known that the Weaboo Gamergate Brigade would conveniently ignore actual history.
There’s a lot of nuance and hair-splitting involved; it’s unlikely Yasuke would have been granted the title of samurai, but he was referred to as kosho. He was given a short sword, but not a long sword to pair with it. Samurai were required by law to wear the paired swords, known as daisho, and anyone else was forbidden.
Almost all samurai were indeed retainers, with the exception of ronin. But bushi who were not samurai could still be retainers. It’s all kind of a huge classist mess. Thanks feudalism!
If you throw out the hierarchical nonsense, Yasuke fit the role of what most people today would think of as a samurai. It’s kind of weird for anyone to argue against that in the fast and loose setting of an Assassin’s Creed game. Ubisoft aren’t known for churning out painstakingly accurate historical reference works. It’s a game with a character roughly based on a distinct historical figure.
Technically, they’re only “Samurai” if they’re produced in Nippon within the duration of the Kamakura Period through the Meiji Restoration. Otherwise they’re just sparkling warrior-nobles.
This is some of the worst discourse I’ve seen. I went to the latest Asmongold video about this topic and asked as many people as I could to explain how a black protagonist is pushing an agenda. Not replies. Guess it is hard to explain without claiming “not historically accurate” or just sounding like a white supremacist.
I genuinely do not get why people get so angry about the color of a character’s skin in a work of historical FICTION. I dgaf about things being historical accurate in my video games. Does the guy look cool? Yup he sure do. Is the game gonna be good? It’s Ubisoft so probably not. But let’s assume that it will be for arguments sake.
Why is it so important to you that the character not be black? Assassin’s creed as a franchise has been around for like what? Almost two decades now? And in all that time we’ve basically played as only white characters (with some exceptions). I don’t see anything wrong with increased representation in works of art or entertainment. The more representation we see in media for any minority group the less likely it will be for the kids that grow up playing these games to grow up as racist assholes. And if you belong to a minority group, seeing someone with your skin tone represented in media will make you less likely to grow up with internalized self loathing. Like you might if all you see in media is the white dude saving the day.
At the end of the day these are works of entertainment. Their purpose isn’t historically accuracy. It’s entertainment and escapism. If we can’t escape racism in a fucking video game how tf are we supposed to prevent it in real life?
Dude, these same folks flipped their shit when the default main character in Crackdown was black, way back in 2007. These idiots don’t quit. I mean, we’re talking about a game where you’re a genetically engineered super-cop and had multiple choices of character race but their fragile egos were shattered because the default choice wasn’t the white guy.
It’s pathetic.
Mind you, I’m sure they were all fine and nodding their heads when Tom Cruise did the whole white savior thing in The Last Samurai.
Tom Cruise did the whole white savior thing in The Last Samurai.
Did you actually watch the movie?
Spoilers: The Samurai all die in the end. White guy does NOT save the Samurai. In fact the he is the one saved by the Samurai, in a mental health kind of way.
It’s not at all a white savior movie. Tom Cruise is more of an audience surrogate character. When they explain Japanese culture to Tom Cruise, the audience also learns about Japanese culture. It wouldn’t make any sense for Japanese people to be explaining Japanese culture to each other so there needs to be an outsider in the story for it to work.
You should watch the movie instead of judging it from the movie poster. It really pays a lot of respect to Japanese culture and portrays a sense of loss that happened in the rush to modernize during the Meiji era.
It was also a huge boost to Ken Watanabe’s career. He was actually the star of the movie, just that he was an unknown in the west at the time. So they put Tom Cruise on the poster to bring in an audience, but it’s really Ken Watanabe’s movie. You’re missing out if you can’t get over the movie poster.
I’ve seen the movie multiple times. Despite my comment, it’s a decent enough movie. But the entire situation that led to Cruise’s character not dying initially (where he’s taken prisoner instead of executed) was kind of absurd, and then for him to actually be allowed to meet with the emperor at the end, after essentially engaging in a rebellion and convincing Katsumoto of the same instead of committing sepukku (and then him doing it anyway???)… The whole thing would have been considered shameful, and just stretches belief generally. And Algren (Cruise) was basically the pivot point for the whole thing.
When I refer to the “white savior” thing, he didn’t save an individual, he saved “Japan’s honor.” It’s kind of bad in that regard.
Oh, and he wins the heart of the widow who’s husband he killed in that first battle. Woo.
From the trailer he just seems so terribly out of place. Also, it’s bullshit to have a samurai in Japan in a game about assassins when they had fucking ninjas, the Japanese equivalent of assassins.
If we are talking about ethnicity, there were huge liberties taken. I think a few of the romans were actually Italian but no one else was close to plausible.
The AC games haven’t been about covert assassination since Syndicate. They’re much more focused on open combat now, and playing a samurai fits that better. Yeah, it’s pretty stupid that a game series about assassins isn’t really about assassination anymore, but that’s where they’re at.
I don't think "well the game has magic so it's ok to discard any inconsistencies in plot, world building or historical accuracy" is a good argument. Instead, simply say that it's a relatively minor change that doesn't have that much impact. After all I'm sure there's other historical changes made throughout the franchise other than things required by the plot .
Heck, it would prove that people complaining are doing so because of racism even more since they're not complaining about those changes.
Historians don’t make a lot of strong claims about Yasuke - there’s very little written on him (in English, that I can access through journal databases) other than a pop history book that seems to play a little fast and loose with the facts.
I think the lack of information makes him a better protagonist though.
Okay, here is what is going on and why people are getting mad. A lot of people are getting sick of the pandering to other cultures that seems way out of place. They just want their games to be games without some political message or propaganda being pushed to them.
This is not the case with this AC game. The person actually exists and Ubisoft loves putting notable historical people in the ACU.
When I see this outrage though I just think of the stink that was caused by Stellar Blade. It was super uncalled for and game media outlets have wild takes on the issue.
All I can say is stay informed and research the issue before seeing a post and getting upset about it. Don’t automatically assume malice or racism (though some people really are) and try to deduce where the anger is coming from.
Okay, here is what is going on and why people are getting mad. A lot of people are getting sick of the pandering to other cultures that seems way out of place. They just want their games to be games without some political message or propaganda being pushed to them.
When gamers complain about this shit, it’s usually just dog whistling. These same gamers never complain about the political bias inherent in the call of duty franchise. They’re doing the enlightened centrist thing where they pretend to hold a moderate position but are actually deeply reactionary.
This is not the case with this AC game. The person actually exists and Ubisoft loves putting notable historical people in the ACU.
Yeah exactly my point.
Don’t automatically assume malice or racism
Void of logic and reason, I can only assume their position does boil down to malice and racism. Or are you being charitable and assuming ignorance?
I’ve seen it, I’m just making a point that Keanu is actually half Japanese so he should be able to play a character of somewhat Asian descent without complaint, especially when the character he played in 47 Ronin was only half Japanese and all the characters shit on his character because of that. It wasn’t a ground breaking movie and there are plenty of reasons to shit on it, but the race card isn’t one of them.
Yes, Keanu is half Japanese, so him playing a half Japanese character in a movie makes sense. Tom Cruise being associated with the last Samurai of the shogun era makes no sense, this is Chewbacca, Chewbacca is a wookie, why would he hang out on the planet Endor with a bunch of ewoks? It makes no sense.
So you’re saying is Americans shouldn’t have been in Japan at that time? I’m really struggling with you last samurai argument here. He’s a former American soldier hired to train japanese soldiers on modern warfare. He got captured and got close to his captor who happens to be the “last samurai”. I really don’t get how he doesn’t fit in the story the way Keanu playing a half Japanese half Caucasian because he is one.
I gave up on Far Cry and Watchdogs not because the games were deteriorating with each iteration (they were / are) but because the sexual harrassment ring on which the upper management fed and HR silenced the victims made supporting the company untennable. At least for me.
Since then I’ve found alternative indie projects that have scratched some of those itches pretty well. I don’t play Ubisoft, even those games I already own have licenses for.
Add comment