Politc365: Assassin’s Creed 3 Liberation: A Race Conscious Game Review

[weber_dubois22]

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 Templar's who are sort of a shadowy 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.. FIVE*. (Sheva Alomar Resident Evil, Lisa Hamilton from Dead or Alive, Christie Monteiro from Tekken, Elena from Street Fighter, and Samantha Alexander from Hunter the Wayward Reckoning). That’s right 5, out of the literally thousands of video game characters that have come out since the advent of home video game systems in 1978. Just to put this into perspective, there have been more Donkey Kongs than black women in video games.

*I decided to review AC3 because the game developers spent so much time doing interviews about how historically accurate the games were not to mentioned patting themselves on the back for making the main characters minorities. I focused mainly on AC3: Liberation which had the following descriptions online.

*Born of a French father and African mother through a commonlaw marital system referred to as placage, Aveline (de Granpre) enjoyed all the privileges of her father’s position as a wealthy merchant. Her mixed race heritage did not impede her ability to blend into high society, as her situation was not uncommon in Louisiana.

*Aveline is raised with privilege and love, even after her mother disappears and her father marries her step-mother. As Aveline grows she develops into a strong-willed young woman and starts to take notice of the contrasts around her – wealth and poverty, freedom and slavery – and while torn between the different values she inherited from her parents, she forms her own set of values, including a vehement anti-slavery stance,” (Game producer Martin Capel).

*Wow, before even picking up the controller it’s hard not to be bowled over with the A-historical and underlying ignorance in the main character Aveline de Grandpre’s backstory. First, placage has long been romanticized by some historians (as well as the French and some Creoles) as the way in which wealthy white men and black women managed to find love despite the oppressive laws against interracial coupling in the 18th and 19th century. The romantic meme is that wealthy white men fell in love with black women, and, unable to marry them set these women (and their eventual offspring) up in fancy houses, gave them educations and gave them all they could except marriage since that was legally forbidden in New Orleans. This couldn't be farther from the truth.

Given the limited opportunities for women of African descent at the time (some of whom were still slaves) they were often pressed into these relationships with little or no choice (Read Ann Rice’s Feast of All Saints for a more sobering description of Plecage). The white men who “chose” them had no obligation to provide these concubines with any financial support, and these women and their children had any legal standing to inherit money or property when these men died. Worse, in many cases if the man simply lost interest these noble suitors simply abandoned their placage wives and returned to their public white wives without a hint of guilt or legal consequence. In the case of Aveline her mother was a slave, her father a rich Frenchman. He consistently laments to Aveline the laws that kept him from properly marrying her mother. This is a common self-serving twist of logic in discussions of White men and their sexual behavior during slavery. Wealthy white men claiming to have been constrained (by the very laws that they created) as a way to rationalize maintaining unequal and coercive relationships with women of color.

I had hoped that Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation would break some new ground in the world of video games and representation of minority characters. The insanely popular series had already featured a main character that was middle eastern/muslim and the new games touted a Native American lead and an African American woman. Unlike comic books, movies and books, which have slowly improved the diversity and representation of lead characters video games thus far have remained dominated by white males, in all positions of power and authority. As I started to go through Assassin’s Creed 3, I saw nothing had really changed beneath the surface.

All of the characters of ‘color’ in both Assassin’s Creed and ASC Liberation are mixed race. This isn’t inherently a problem, it’s not as if bi-racial people are a new phenomenon in America, but the manner and type of bi-raciality in the characters is especially problematic. All too often bi-racial characters are used in science fiction not so much to show diversity but as a way to infuse and express sympathy to white dominance within the fictional world itself (consider Spock’s perpetual ‘battle’ with his Vulcan v.s. Human half was really his de-facto Asian/ Eastern versus his White Western worldview and Worf’s ‘mixed heritage always made him side with the federation). It’s Science Fiction’s tragic mulatto syndrome. Conner (initially Ratonhnhaké:ton ) Conner’s mentor Achilles in the main AC3 game, as well as Aveline and her mentor Agate are all bi-racial and each of them have white fathers. Not only does this establish white men as dominant sexually in each of these characters lives, it maintains the white male patrimony and hegemony that permeates most video games as well. When you add in the importance of male lineages in fantasy in general (mantles are handed from father to son/ daugther) this becomes even more insidious. However the game is not finished with it’s bizarre and disappointing racial politics. The ‘triple role’ that Aveline plays in the game are almost laughable if they were not so laden in perverse racial politics.

The background identity alone would be problematic but tolerable if the gameplay itself was not a cruel mockery of the complexities of race, gender, class and social mobility. When you play Aveline you are initially required to play her in three different roles. Sometimes she is the Assassin, where she has a full complement of weapons and can leap from building to building, and scale walls to seek out her targets. Of course as the Assassin she is noticeable and draws enemies. Aveline is sometimes the ‘Slave’ where she is limited in the weapons she can carry (since slaves were whipped for carrying arms) but can slide in and out of white society unnoticed (tip of the hat to Ralph Ellison). And finally sometimes she is the “Lady” where she wears the high end dress of a woman empowered by her white father’s status. As a lady she can mix and mingle with Southern whites but her physical powers are mostly reserved to “charming” men with her looks which will make them bend to her will.

It was almost as if the game developers couldn’t help but reinforce their own hegemonic views of black women when creating the character. First, despite the “powers” associated with all of these roles Aveline (and thus the game player) usually does not have a CHOICE in which role she takes on. The game forces you to be slave, or lady or assassin, it is never in the control of the person of color themselves. Our role is pre-determined by outside forces (just like in real life).

DR. JASON JOHNSON, Politic365 Chief Political Correspondent, is a professor of Political Science at Hiram College in Ohio and author of the book Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell. You can read more at www.drjasonjohnson.com or follow him on Twitter @Drjasonjohnson

SOURCE: 1, 2

This popped up in my alert and I'm genuinely surprised by the reaction of this particular reviewer had toward the game. Surprised, but I can understand where his problem with this particular part of the game is coming from (Phillip and Jeanne's relationship can be seen as romanticism of a degrading practice in the name of demoralizing and dehumanizing Black Women). *However, I take a bigger issue with the fact that every time some one mentions Black/Other Female Protagonists of Color, they leave out Rochelle (Left 4 Dead), Rosa Angel (Condemned 2), Alyx Vance (Half Life) and Purna (Dead Island) to prove their point.

Other Food for Thought:

Comments

[everbright]

"...with the main character in the first game being a Muslim running round killing corrupt church officials in renaissance Europe." DYING LAUGHING. Orly, you have played AC 1 and 2 Mr. Reviewer?

I'm glad he spelled out the ugly side of Placage. I thought it smelled a little funny, but I sort of wanted to give the characters the benefit of the doubt. It is sort of hilarious, though, that this White Dude is explaining racialized gender politics to us. I mean, he has some legitimate points, but the dude sounds more like he wants some noise in the press than to advance gender and race representation in video games.