UBIsoft in potential financial trouble
- Thread starter Silent_Buddha
- Start date
Not at all. Choice of character isn't going to result in poor production and storytelling. Both can be created around any character. Even if the character sucks and no-one cares for them as a protagonist, the characters around and the overall story can be compelling. Likewise you can pick a fabulous main character with loads of historic potential and couple it with bad writing and a stupid story and poor production values and create a turd.
I thought the japanese character was one of the playable prior, that you switched between them? That was not the case?
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
If you give a Chef crappy ingredients he might be able to make something out of it. But all things equal, the same dish made with better ingredients will taste better.
Maybe Ubisoft can make something of it. But given they basically choose a poor main ingredient (main character in a story driven game) that gives me little hope the rest is any better. So I think its definitely fair to say a poorly chosen/created main character can negatively affect the storytelling and production values. If the ultimate goal was to make a good game they wouldn't have made this choice.
In this analogy, the story is provided a less than spectacular cut of chicken as a main character. There's nothing stopping Ubi and the writers adding any other ingredients of their own choosing to make a good meal. The main character is just one component. Trying to pin the fate of the entire story driven game, including production values ("poor production") on choice of protagonist is..I dunno. Scapegoating or something. There are multiple independent variables at play and the entire game, story, production, doesn't rest on one single parameter of character ethnicity/historical accuracy/whatever the complaint is. Considering it's a work of fiction, there's scope to do all sorts of great stories.
Now that doesn't mean Ubi will. They might be in a rut or lacking talent or motivation. But picking 'the wrong character' doesn't doom a game from the outset.
What is it that make's Yasuke, a person from history who's personal story is without question an exception to the norm, thus making his story exceptional, a poor main ingredient. Even if you don't believe he raised to the status that Ubisoft and folk legend have given him, his story is still exceptional. Why is he a poor main ingredient?
It might be because he didn't really do much in history. I dunno. However, there's nothing in an AC story, or the AC universe, that requires this character to be historically accurate even if that's the case. You just have a non-Japanese samurai, which offers clear story potential.
So does Lara Croft in all of the Tomb Rader games. That didn't stop her from being a "good ingredient" to the stories she was featured in.
Man it’s so obvious why people have a problem with Yasuke in particular and we’re forced to dance around it. It has nothing to do with historical accuracy.
No. Just discuss that in the appropriate RPSC thread here. Wokism is a social-political discussion.
Apologies to those whose posts i just moved - I think I forget to include a notification.
I also can't duplicate posts to reinstate the relevant response from Tkumpathenurple, although see colon quoted it.
That doesn't preclude a good story. Indeed, the stand-out character would ordinarily be a key story point. For your argument to make sense, you'd have to somehow show that it's not possible to craft a good story around the situation. And I'd say that it's actually possible to craft and execute a good story on pretty much any premise, and more readily the more the situation deviates from the norm.
On the wider issue of Ubi games, I don't think scenario is a negative. Execution might be due to poor writing and weak stories, but a scenario or character in and of itself doesn't doom a story from the outset.
Tkumpathenurple
Veteran
I agree that doesn't preclude a good story. It could make for an excellent story. I don't think it's a good fit for an open world AC game.
A linear, story driven game would be perfect for such a casting - there are all kinds of ways you could take a focused story with an outsider as the protagonist.
An open world game in which you're isolated and population centres are dangerous could make for great gameplay, but would hamstring story to the limitations of survival games: basically neutral and innocuous.
Yasuke can't blend in. Just like the vikings in Valhalla. Neither are good fits for AC games. Ubisoft have become fixated on which theme they can slap on the carnival ride and forgotten the soul of the franchise. They've forgotten the reveal of Altair hiding in plain sight, pushing his way through the crowd before explosively assassinating his target, then running away to ultimately hide in a crowd of priestly types.
I played Valhalla for a few hours before tapping out, thinking "wtf even is this?" It's a generic, open world, action adventure game. It's such a platonic ideal of modern, gaming blandness that it even has crafting.
Then there's the fact that combat is such a central part of the games, so it didn't feel great being an invading, colonising foreigner, scurrying around and slaughtering a bunch of natives. But the character I'm playing as isn't the villain?
So I think that's largely where the mismatch lay with Yasuke and an AC game: he's an outsider who will have to head into settlements and lay waste to scores of Japanese people while being portrayed as heroic, all wrapped up in tired gameplay.
What is there to like?
A linear, story driven game would be perfect for such a casting - there are all kinds of ways you could take a focused story with an outsider as the protagonist.
An open world game in which you're isolated and population centres are dangerous could make for great gameplay, but would hamstring story to the limitations of survival games: basically neutral and innocuous.
Yasuke can't blend in. Just like the vikings in Valhalla. Neither are good fits for AC games. Ubisoft have become fixated on which theme they can slap on the carnival ride and forgotten the soul of the franchise. They've forgotten the reveal of Altair hiding in plain sight, pushing his way through the crowd before explosively assassinating his target, then running away to ultimately hide in a crowd of priestly types.
I played Valhalla for a few hours before tapping out, thinking "wtf even is this?" It's a generic, open world, action adventure game. It's such a platonic ideal of modern, gaming blandness that it even has crafting.
Then there's the fact that combat is such a central part of the games, so it didn't feel great being an invading, colonising foreigner, scurrying around and slaughtering a bunch of natives. But the character I'm playing as isn't the villain?
So I think that's largely where the mismatch lay with Yasuke and an AC game: he's an outsider who will have to head into settlements and lay waste to scores of Japanese people while being portrayed as heroic, all wrapped up in tired gameplay.
What is there to like?
Maybe it's as simple as players not wanting to roleplay as a giant black guy in feudal japan. There's no question that it's a creative choice that's going to impact everything from story, aesthetic and gameplay, and different people are going to have different reactions to it. I could maybe see part of the hook for players in AC games is the idea of melting into the scenery, whether it be from a stealth gameplay or aesthetic roleplay angle, and clearly you don't get that from a character whose entire premise is to be someone that's absurdly out-of-place. Being a brutish looking superhero wielding a spiked club in feudal japan doesn't really scratch any itch that I had, and even if I did have an itch, I don't think I'd want to commit to scratching it in a 100+ hour Ubisoft AC title.
People say the same thing about black flag. That it’s a great pirate game but not true to the assassin lore. Maybe the same thing will happen here.
The thing isnt that it casts a black guy. I am sure everybody would have been happy under the right context. The issue is that it just doesnt fit with the context.
A black samurai who acts like a hidden assasin is too obvious to not be noticed in a land where everyone is Japanese/asian. A different role would have probably been more fitting.
Then it is how AC games portray themselves combining actual history with fiction. Again a black samurai could have been more fitting in the game if he was differently portrayed.
But his prominent role appears to be overshadowing the actual roles and importance of actual Japanese figures in their own culture and history.
In a game where everything is a lot more loose and more lost in fantasy, I dont think people would have been bothered.
I remember there was another case that was even more controversial. I dont remember the details, but it was again about a game and how it depicted some historical inaccuracies either Chinese with Japanese or Koreans with Japanese, and it caused a lot of anger because of the historical brutalities they experienced from one another, and they considered it an insult and very inconsiderate.
A black samurai who acts like a hidden assasin is too obvious to not be noticed in a land where everyone is Japanese/asian. A different role would have probably been more fitting.
Then it is how AC games portray themselves combining actual history with fiction. Again a black samurai could have been more fitting in the game if he was differently portrayed.
But his prominent role appears to be overshadowing the actual roles and importance of actual Japanese figures in their own culture and history.
In a game where everything is a lot more loose and more lost in fantasy, I dont think people would have been bothered.
I remember there was another case that was even more controversial. I dont remember the details, but it was again about a game and how it depicted some historical inaccuracies either Chinese with Japanese or Koreans with Japanese, and it caused a lot of anger because of the historical brutalities they experienced from one another, and they considered it an insult and very inconsiderate.
Well, not sure about how it was before but it looked like it from their own statement :
Why didn't they simply use the excellent material from Miyamoto Musashi history? that was a real samurai who never lost one duel, lived a rather long life for the period, and died of natural causes.
I don't think story or history is the genesis of any of these decisions. The idea of a black samurai ticks all the obvious marketing boxes and the fact that there's some trace of historical substance to it is just a bonus. It's a striking image that sets your game apart from every other feudal japan themed game, it scores you racial diversity points with the handful of American journalist outlets, and in the off chance that there's backlash to it you get to accuse everyone of being a racist. I'd wager all of this would have gone over just fine if Ubisoft and the AC franchise were in a healthier place, but I don't think they have an army of people willing to give their product the benefit of the doubt in quite the same way as they might have a decade ago.
Ummm..... Because canonically it's impossible.
I have to keep explaining that Assassin's Creed uses Trancers rules for time travel. How that works is you travel back in time through your genetic timeline. In AC, it's a simulation based on your genetic memory. But it requires that your bloodline directly connects to the person you are traveling into. Musashi famously only had children he adopted. Therefore, for historical accuracy, Musashi cannot ever be a playable character in an Assassin's Creed game.
I think you’re right. It’s been cool to hate on Ubisoft for a few years now. I think a lot of the vitriol is just people piling on.
Cappuccino
Newcomer
Nobody has ever cared about the modern day timeline in AC, they could abandon all of that and nobody would notice (in fact, I thought they did with Valhalla).