A would-be Assassin's Creed game set in the Reconstruction era and focused on a former slave was reportedly called off in 2024 after Ubisoft deemed it “too political in a country too unstable,” per a source quoted in a new piece from Kotaku and Axios alum Stephen Totilo.
Writing for his Game File newsletter, Totilo reported on Wednesday, Oct. 8, that news of the reported cancellation first started to circulate among Ubisoft, the publisher behind the Assassin’s Creed franchise, in July of last year. The allegedly scrapped game is described in the report as having focused on “a Black man who had been formerly enslaved in the South, with the story taking place in the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction, i.e. the decade-plus period of U.S. history beginning in the mid-1860s.
The character, according to the report pulling from comments made by “current and former” Ubisoft employees, would go on to be recruited by the Assassins, with the Ku Klux Klan at one point intersecting in the story.
As for the alleged reasoning behind the game’s cancellation, Totilo’s piece attributes that to both the response to Assassin’s Creed Shadows character Yasuke and the aforementioned “too political in a county too unstable” argument. Notably, the character of Yasuke, an African samurai featured in Shadows, takes inspiration from an actual historical figure.
Read more from Game File here.
Complex has reached out to Ubisoft for comment. This story may be updated.
Shadows, the newest entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise, was released back in March. Preceding the 14th main installment in the franchise was Mirage, released back in 2023.
