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Why Gamers Might Be Disgusted With Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

Why Gamers Might Be Disgusted With Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

Ubisoft used the Tokyo Game Show as its platform to announce a future DLC campaign for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate featuring Jack the Ripper. The additional storyline will take place 20 years after the main narrative and put players up against the infamous serial killer. One can’t help but wonder both why Ubisoft has announced a future DLC for a game that hasn’t even been completed yet, and more importantly, why the heck are they using the late 1800’s British serial killer as the main focal point for their DLC package?

Jack the Ripper, for non-history nerds, was a serial killer who was responsible for the murders of five female prostitutes from the Whitechapel slums of London in 1888. Ripper’s crimes were made infamous through the brutal nature in which he committed such heinous acts. He physically mutated his victims before cutting their throats and removing their internal organs.

Not only was Ripper made infamous though the disgusting manner in which he took his victims, but he also managed to evade London investigators in the process. The twelve-week ordeal was covered by all major British newspapers and became a public game of “cat and mouse” before Ripper disappeared into the history books. The events are still popular today for a number of reasons, but mostly because of Ripper’s public taunting of authorities via a series of letters and their inability to catch him after exhausting all efforts.

This backstory would be an excellent platform to offer a DLC installment for a game such as Assassin’s Creed , which is essentially about murdering others, but the fact that this dude actually existed and took the lives of five innocent people is something that greatly disturbs me. For all we know, the decedents or relatives of these five victims could very well be alive and well today. Imagine if this were apart of your family lineage? You might feel a little differently about Ripper making his presences among the video gaming world.

Outside of the sensitivity factor, it’s a human life that was taken and five to be exact. Our society has slowly drifted into desensitizing despicable things such as this, and we continue to wonder why killers continually repeat similar acts. With the advancement of video gaming as a whole, delivering realistic and simulated content is not something of the future. Games today look better than they ever have and using this awesome technology to feature a guy like Jack the Ripper is wrong on many levels.

Why Gamers Might Be Disgusted With Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

I’m having a difficult time writing about this disgusting human, let alone looking forward to “catching him” in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate . I can’t help but wonder what’s next if developers can implement a real-life murder into their title. Will we see a 9/11 simulator or Columbine DLC in a future game? Think about the last sentence for a minute. Mind-boggling, isn’t it? The fear that this could eventually make its way into gaming is real. Look at the way our global society as a whole continues to push the envelope.

Perhaps I’m the only one concerned about the message our games are sending to the world or maybe I’m hypersensitive about having a known killer featured within a franchise I’ve enjoyed in the past. Either way you look at it, it’s awfully strange to have such a character contained within a game like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate not because of something positive he did for the world, but because he killed five innocent women and managed to dodge British homicide investigators in the process.

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