[DoctorEldritch]

Originally Posted by GoLLuM13

@DoctorEldritch there were stuff in a Call of Duty, a Tekken and Resident Evil 4 where they used stuff from Quran and disrespected it, and each company changed the problematic object with apologies after the offended community did some noise.

Oh yeah! I did not know about Tekken or Resident Evil 4, but when you mentioned Call of Duty I remembered that there was a story around it in Russia when they released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It has a mission called "No Russian" where you are a CIA agent and need to pretend to be an undercover agent in an airport, and there is an option to harm civilians.

But the story about it was more comical than controversial. A certain politician complained publically about the game feeling angry that it gives you an option to harm civilians in the Russian airport, claiming it was his underage son who showed the game to him, and asking for all the game profits to be confiscated from the Russian distributor.

But the funny thing is, Activision did not release that version of the game on consoles (because you can't cut out content on consoles) in Russia, and the PC version of the game had that mission removed. So the only way to see that content was to download it illegally. And the game was marketed for mature audiences, so the underage son should not have had it for that reason as well.

It did not receive much attention given how ridiculous the whole situation was, and the only thing the politician managed to achieve was to incriminate his son in 2 crimes. Goes to show how some politicians are sometimes quick to wage war on games without looking into the matter at least a little bit.

As for the Sonic, well, it has since become a meme. They even joke about it now, I remember Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers taking a go at him two years ago:

[DoctorEldritch]

Originally Posted by ramax

@DoctorEldritch I agree with what you say, Ubisoft won't be cancelling the game. But it would be nice if they could correct their scenario to avoid losing the Japanese public.

I am not sure even that is possible at this point. They'd have to redo quests and make new recordings and all. The situation with CoD I mentioned was ridiculous, but I am more sympathetic to the Japanese gamer's plight. And Japan is known to preserve their culture, so it is understandable how they would be upset if some misrepresenting game would undermine those efforts.

Then again, I never considered Assassin's Creed as a series that was historically accurate in the first place. What did you think about how they did Unity, for example? That's closer to home for you, can you relate to what Japanese gamers are feeling?

[DoctorEldritch]

Originally Posted by DracoTarot

@DoctorEldritch Sometimes I think developers don't think things through and the deadlines to release the games are leading up to some mistakes.

cough-Cyberpunk 2077-cough 😉

Originally Posted by DracoTarot

If the game has some sort of historical theme or is based on a specific culture or even religion they need to validate the script before putting it out there. I know of so many games, movies and series which failed due to this.

I think that here it may come down to the developer team. There are good indie games that are made by teams belonging to and passionate about their cultures like Tchia. But Ubisoft is a game-stamping behemoth made of, as they let us know in every AC game, "a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities". Not sure if that ensures a deeper understanding of individual cultures.