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Globe’s take on historically inaccurate Assassin’s Creed III sparks online free-for-all

Tori Floyd
·Editor

The recently released Assassin's Creed III by Ubisoft's Montreal studio seems to have gotten the Globe and Mail editors all in a tizzy. A recent editorial by the national newspaper asks "who's side" Ubisoft Montreal is really on, considering the game is intended to glorify the conquests of a Native American assassin as he participates in fictional events intended to take place during the American Revolutionary War.

The Globe editors take the game's creators to task for making the goal of the game to "hunt down the British redcoats" (their quotations, no citation included), suggesting that it "grotesquely twists the facts" to imply that a Native American assassin would rally to the aid of the colonials in their fight for American independence. The editors close with the suggestion that video games may be "the only place that Canadian young people are learning about the Revolutionary War," and that the heavily-skewed American perspective of the game could hurt their understanding of real history.

I sincerely hope The Globe and Mail never takes issue with how I learned about Italian plumbers.

Needless to say, this particular stance has become the target of mockery both in the comment section of the Globe's article, and on Twitter under the hashtag #GlobeEditorial. Many have decided to correct other misleading claims that video games have made in the past:

Those who don't take a jab at the Globe's perspective that youth are forming their world view solely on video games instead suggest that the editorial doesn't actually seem to grasp what the game is about at all. Commenters argue that both the British and Americans are portrayed as somewhat morally ambiguous in the game, and the entire story requires a certain suspension of disbelief to be enjoyed.

At least, for now, it seems the Globe's fear for our country's youth is strictly limited to the old scapegoat of video games. Hopefully no one ever sits them down with a box set of The Tudors.

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