Over the years, the Assassin"s Creed franchise has gone all over history into different regions, letting players take the role of Assassins from various cultures as they fight against the Templar order. So far, fourteen mainline installments have come out of Ubisoft. According to a new report, Ubisoft has outright canceled a project that would have explored a story focused on an ex-slave during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War.
The report comes from Game File, a publication that has landed accurate scoops before. According to five sources close to this unannounced project, the protagonist would have been a Black man who, after being freed from enslavement, had moved to the west to begin a new life.
Per the report, after entering the Order of Assassins, he would have returned to the South and entered a conflict that had him fighting for justice in the region. The extremist hate group Ku Klux Klan had been one of the antagonist groups in the title, according to sources, which would have been emerging at this time.
The company has released a game previously featuring an ex-slave protagonist. This was the 2014-released experience Assassin"s Creed Freedom Cry, featuring Adewale from Assassin"s Creed IV Black Flag.
Ubisoft management in France had reportedly axed the new project in July last year. As for the reasoning, the sources had said that the backlash for Assassin"s Creed Shadows" Black protagonist, Yasuke, announcement had been one cause. At the same time, the company is said to have deemed the current political climate in the United States to be too tense to tackle this era and related topics.
“Too political in a country too unstable, to make it short,” one source familiar with the game and its cancellation had told Game File. The publication goes on to say that Ubisoft development teams had also been frustrated about the game"s cancelation, especially because of the two reasons listed.