Assassin's Creed Valhalla update will remove ableist language, and Ubisoft has apologised


Language and what we consider appropriate evolves and changes constantly.

Even the meaning of the words we speak can change as time goes on. As society improves and becomes more inclusive and understanding, some things get rightly left behind where they belong.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla had a description of an in-game character that was rather archaic, and it could lead to people feeling bad about themselves as a result.

Thankfully, they're going to change it, and it's impressive just how quickly they've reacted to the situation.

Ubisoft promises to remove ableist language in the next update

The issue was with the way a character was described in the game. "Horribly burned in a childhood accident, Eorforwine is terrified someone will see her disfigured face. She relieves her fury with bursts of violence."

It was brought up by @CyclopediaBrain on Twitter, who is the founder of a site called Can I Play That? that does excellent work around accessibility.

We'll go into why that's an issue in a second, but it's nice to see that Ubisoft plans on sorting this out as soon as possible.

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Why is this bad?

The issue with this character description is that it suggests that scarred faces are less good than unscarred faces, and that's simply not true.

People who may have burns on their face could see this character as the first character like them in a video game, and the character is trying to hide how they look and is raging as a result. It's simply not good enough, because we should all be more understanding.

Having more inclusive language is a good thing - it's not censorship, it's just important to constantly try and be better.

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