According to the details revealed about Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Ubisoft is going the historically-accurate route with the pirate experience. There will be ship combat, hiring crews, whaling, everything that you will need to be a real pirate!
Despite the realism, PETA still attacked Ubisoft on their decision to include whaling in the game, something they said was glorifying whaling, according to Polygon.
The controversial organization stated that the problem comes from the depiction of real world suffering, that the average gamer would not understand the consequences of such a practice, and would feel the fun of the sport.
"This would be a different story if the game portrayed the cruelty and horror experienced when a whale is literally fleeing for her life and then shot with a harpoon — or even several harpoons — and forced to struggle for hours or be hacked apart while still alive aboard a ship," said Matt Bruce, of PETA's International Grassroots Campaigns.
As previously stated, Ubisoft defended their decision, saying that it contributed to the historical accuracy of the game.
"History is our playground in Assassin's Creed," said Ubisoft's senior PR manager, Stone Chin. "Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is a work of fiction that depicts the real events during the golden era of pirates. We do not condone illegal whaling, just as we don't condone a pirate lifestyle of poor hygiene, plundering, hijacking ships, and over-the legal-limit drunken debauchery."
I think it is safe to assume that most people would not go out and start harpooning whales after playing the new Assassin's Creed, so PETA's problem with the game probably won't have any effect. This goes into the same argument that video games cause violence, but that's a whole other can of worms.
