Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense

This game has been such a hard litmus test for "what would it take to get you to purchase another Assassins Creed game?" for me.

Like, "Would you buy it if it was just a genuienly good Assassins Creed game?" - Paid Ubisoft Reviewer

"No, I've played them during their heyday and I'm a bit over the formula" - Tired Inner gamer

"But what if it had Samurai, including the certified BAMF Yasuke?" - Ubi Devs

"hmm... I do love Samurai and Yasuke... but no, I don't think that would do it. I don't like Ubisoft's business practices and would rather not support it even if it speaks to my inner Chanbara nerd." - Inner Anti-corpo voice

"Not even if Ubisoft was taking a strong stance against the Anti-Woke nonsense culture wars? You couldn't even let their business practices go for just one game?" - Ubi Marketing team

"No no no, I know that businesses only take these stances when it's profitable. They would just as easily take the opposite opinion if that was where the money was at." - Inner cynic voice

"But what if we dunked on Elon, on his own platform no less?" - AC twiiter account

"okay...I'm in... but only when it goes on a good Steam sale" - Defeated sense of self

For me, it isn't even any of this stuff. It's almost totally that the games are too big and take too long to get any enjoyment. Most of the time spent playing the games isn't fun. It's just traveling and maybe collecting garbage that doesn't add anything to the enjoyment.
The old games were fun for every moment with the traversal. I don't think that can carry a newer game, because it isn't as unique anymore, but it was always more fun than riding a horse from point to point.
If they condensed the story and game down to tens of hours, I would consider it. I'm not going to play a typical Ubisoft game that takes hundreds. Even Elden Ring took me just about 100 and it was getting to the point of being too much, and it was far more interesting and fun.
- Couldn't agree more. When open worlds were new and shiney, I enjoyed the sense of freedom and exploration. Now though, it usually just feels like padding. Like I'm being told I need to eat 20 crackers for every bite of burger.
  Even worse when they are just big maps dotted with equally spaced event icons and way points that you are just expected to complete. Really makes me miss open world games that felt like they existed for their own sake like Morrowind.
  As much as I enjoyed Elden Ring, I definitely felt like the open world added so little ta the formula, but took so much when you could just casually run by most enemies.
I'll buy another Ubisoft game when they get rid of microtransactions, pre orders of multiple different collector's editions and all the other anti-consumer monetization schemes. So, right after hell has frozen over.
- lol, fair enough.
I have been a huge AC fan since AC 2. In fact, I am currently replaying AC 2 to recapture the good times. But, Valhalla was the last straw. AC games have become too bloated for their own good. I gave up on AC for good.
Ubisoft doesn't get to earn "woke credits" for this game. Regardless of how they epic owned the racists and Elon on social media, they're still Ubisoft.
- You right.
Tired inner gamer. The original AC got boring for me. Just lots of repetitive uncreative climbing to complete collections. They they came out with Uplay with AC2 and i keep going back to “is this game worth creating an account and giving up my personal information to play, when there are multiple other games available with a better value proposition for my time, money, and privacy?”
The answer (for ubisoft) is invariably no. So i’ve effectively been on an unintentional Ubisoft boycott since 2008 since i refuse to create an account.
- Good on ya! Fight the good fight!
  Personally, I dug the "social stealth" mechanics in the early AC games, especially as it was a interesting deviation from the more line of sight based formula of the MGS games, and the light/shadow based stealth of the Theif and Splinter Cell series (everything old is new again in that regards), but I've always been a fan of stealth games anyway. And I found the climbing and parkour to be fun and novel at the time, even if it is extremely "automated".
  Was fortunate enough to just rent AC 1&2 for the 360 at the time, so uPlay never really entered into my decision making.
  But yeah, if you were a completionist, I could see how that would get extremely boring. And Ubisoft's business practices are super shitty.
- lol, that's a fair take. Though I do love learning about history in games. And I enjoy when games allow me the chance to live out some childhood fantasy. So in that sense, I do care about the color of pixels, and shape, and implied fiction behind it all.
  But different strokes for different folks.
I would like to add "stop with the marathon cutscenes!" - Maybe then I'd buy it on a deep sale
- Yeah, I've heard the story is... not a particularly strong aspect of the game to put it nicely. Maybe like, a 90% sale. I'd pay $7.99 for it! I bet I could get it down to a buck an hour at least at that price.

I got used to not owning their games.

Enemy of my enemy doesn't matter to me here. Fuck Ubisoft and Elon. They can all gargle my nuts.

Correcting course is a good thing. If elon were to change course and spend all his energy ending world hunger or something, I wouldnt shit on him for it. I dont think it will happen with him, and if it did it would take years before I'd believe it was earnest, but we should allow people room to grow and change based on prior mistakes.
All that said I'll most likely not play shadows. Assassins creed as a whole is somewhat stale. Ive ridden that ride so many times.
- Ubisoft has made many of my favorite games over the years. Their actions these last few years have cemented them as a company I will never give another penny to.
  I never gave Elon any money as I don't own any Tesla and I never use Twitter, but I don't think that he will ever see a penny from me either.

It won’t. I still hear Gamers™ complaining about this game being "woke." Which makes me want to throw money at it except fuck Ubisoft.

I read some really racist xit yesterday on here, under the pretense of "my historical accuracy is so offended!"
It was almost hilarious, like a really average greentext on 4chan.
So I guess that's nice to see such rabid reaction. And just for that I appreciate the game being there and not bending over.

God I hope all this backlash backlash about owning the people that are complaining about a black guy in japan doesn't end up translating to "buying this Ubislop is praxis!"

Who am I kidding, of course it will.

In this damn thread there is a lot of this.
Everybody in here buying Che shirts from Hot Topic.
- What a perfect analogy.

I think the real end to the culture war nonsense came after Thomas Lockely was caught red handed fabricating the words of people who allegedly met "black samurai" Yasuke to embellish his story, rewrite Japanese history to be more "diverse", and sell books, which was a while ago. Or in other words, it was proven beyond any doubt that the very premise of AS:S was, itself, "culture war nonsense".

It should be pretty clear which side was in the right.

The side that isn't getting up in arms over historical inaccuracies in the AC series, which has always been at best "history adjacent" and heavy on embellishment anyway?
Certainly you don't mean the side that waited until the embellishment involved a black person to start giving a fuck right?
Next you're going to tell me the alien artifacts in the AC games don't have any historical grounding?!
- Dude no way I just saw the templars using the apple of eden the other day
Interesting article. Disappointing to see that it's likely Yasuke's role in history was greatly embellished just to sell books to the Western world. And disappointing to see that Ubisoft didn't do their due diligence in researching him.
That being said, the game is a blast to play. Historical inaccuracies aside, I'd say it's the best entry in the Assassin's Creed series since Black Flag, which was also fraught with historical inaccuracies.
- I hate to break it to you but the cyclops in AC Odyssey isn't real either. They've never been historical accurate. They are loosely inspired by past events at best.