Featured Image Credit: Ubisoft
Topics: Assassins Creed, Ubisoft
With 14 major instalments under its belt, it is safe to say that the fans yearn for more Assassin’s Creed but a recent report reveals that one potential title was axed just last year.
Beginning its lifespan way back in 2007, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise has gone from strength to strength (with a few hiccups in between) to bring us world-mapping stories across various periods throughout history.
From ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy, 9th century Baghdad to the Golden Age of Piracy, many of us grew up with the Assassin’s Creed franchise being our second history teacher.
However, one period of history which Ubisoft has yet to explore is post-Civil War America but it seems as though that was very nearly the case.
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This news comes courtesy of a report by Game File which shared the news that Ubisoft originally had plans to take Assassin’s Creed to this time period but felt as though the project was too controversial for the current political climate.
Rumoured to have been cancelled back in July 2024, the story would have followed a Black man who had once been enslaved in the South but had since made his way west to start a new life.
Whilst there, he is recruited by the Assassins and journeys back South to deliver justice on his previous captors and would even run into the conflicts caused by the Ku Klux Klan.
If this project had gone ahead, it would have been one of Assassin’s Creed's most modern settings: The American Civil War and the period that followed in the 1860s and 1870s.
However, according to previous Ubisoft employees that spoke to Game File, there were two main reasons why the instalment did not go ahead.
“Three sources told Game File that word filtered through the company last July that management in Paris had stopped development of the game for two reasons,” the report reads.
“1) online backlash that spring to the reveal of Yasuke, a historically-inspired Black samurai, as a protagonist in the company’s then-upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows; and 2) concern that the political climate in the United States was becoming increasingly tense.”
One source close to the project said, “Too political in a country too unstable, to make it short.”
With political unrest taking place in the United States at the time of writing, it makes sense why Ubisoft would not want to add fuel to the flames.
However, the American Civil War and following Reconstruction period was an important part of history that should not be censored.
Hopefully Ubisoft will return to this project in the future but for now, the studio has not responded to the report.