Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away the only black man in the universe was Lando Calrissian a “Card player, gambler and scoundrel”. The only Asian People in comics were Kung-Fu masters and the only person of color you could play in a video game was a cheap knock-off of Mike Tyson. The sci-fi/comic/fantasy genre has come a long way over the last few years, with minorities taking on more (while still occasionally problematic) roles across the mediums. Unfortunately the one area that hasn’t seen much progress is the gaming world. I had hoped that Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation the first video game to ever feature a minority woman as a main playable character was a sign of progress, instead it was one of the most offensive and blatant examples of just how little things have changed in the gaming world.
Even if you lived in “Swing state” just about the only thing that had more ads running the last week of October than the presidential election was ads for Assassin’s Creed 3. The third in the insanely popular series had some of the best commercials you’ve ever seen. Assassin’s Creed follows the tale of a centuries old battle between the “good” assassin’s and their undercover war against the Templars who are sortof a shadowly illuminati group always on the side of the bad guys (corrupt church officials, the Colonial British, etc.) The Assassin’s Creed series, produced by Ubisoft is one of the best – selling and best reviewed video game series in history. In particular AC3: Liberation has broken records for a Playstation hand-held game. Smooth graphics, attention to historical detail and elaborate and time specific plots have made these games a must have. AC has also always been rather progressive as video games on the racial front, with the main character in the first game being a Muslim running round killing corrupt church officials in renaissance Europe. The 3rd in the series was the launch of two games, the main AC3 featured on the PS3 system and the AC3: Liberation on the PS Vita. The games would feature an American Indian and an African American woman respectively as main characters. On the surface this was a big step in the gaming world.
Pop quiz time: How many black females have ever been main playable characters in a video game? (And by that I mean original video game characters, playing Storm in a video game doesn’t count she’s a comic book character first). Times up! Only…
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[...] political and racial review of the record breaking new video game Assassin’s Creed 3 Liberation. The first part of the review can be found here. This is the second [...]
Lisa from DOA is Hispanic, not black…you lose credibility when you don’t research your subject matter.
Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away the only black man in the universe was Lando Calrissian a “Card player, gambler and scoundrel”.