Submitted by twovests in killallgames
The first Assassin's Creed follows a Syrian man exploring Jerusalem and Damascus, including locations like the Al Aqsa Mosque. It's notable for being pretty intentional about not having a message about Israel/Palestine one way or the other, but seems notable for not having a strictly Zionist message.
Assassin's Creed II follows Ezio, and is pretty prominently Woke. Journals have Ezio's family remark on their privilege. The scholars you hid with are replaced with allied prostitutes, and then in a later game, replaced with allied Roma. There's an entire cutscene of "That 'g' word is a slur, we call ourselves Roma."
Assassin's Creed III follows a half-Mowawhk, half-French Assassin who goes around doing lots of righteous killing, optimistic about being able to protect his people. It ends on a predictably sour note. Assassin's Creed IV has you play as Assassin Creed III's grandfather, and I forget what happened, because I mostly enjoyed the pirate-simulator and remembered the sea shanties.
These were all things I played over 10 years ago and my media literacy was not as good as it was today, and I'm glazing over a lot, but I feel like they couldn't get away with it nowadays. I remember them pumping out truly high-quality well-researched videogames with a lot of historical depth at an amazing beat, from one every two years to two full games in a year.
Was it actually Bad? Did I miss something? Was it more controversial than I remember? I'm a white American so I don't actually know if "pretty model of the Al Aqsa Mosque from the outside" is actually notable or even neat.