The reason that I, at least (I can't speak for anyone else/trolls), am worried about this being descending into some kind of patriotism-fest is not simply because it's set during the War of Independence and we regard all Americans as drooling idiots, but rather because almost all of the media thus far released for the game is festooned in American patriotic imagery
The imagery that's available to reference in the public consciousness about this period
is patriotic imagery, for a very specific reason: this was a conflict of very uneven investment between the colonies and England, and part of the American response was an aggressive propaganda/team-building effort, to create a new "American" identity that could bring people together on their side and help motivate them against the larger British forces. Once the war was over, the mythology of the conflict got puffed up more to help support the process of actually hashing out the nature of the new, independent state.
What I mean is: setting a game in any historical place and time involves heavy use of familiar signifiers to help clue people in to what they're looking at. In the Crusades you need the figures of King Richard and Saladin and the signs of the cross and the crescent; in Renaissance Italy you need scheming patrician families and the Sistine Chapel; if they did a game in the French Revolution they'd need to include the Bastille and the guillotine and what have you. The signifiers that exist for the American Revolution are all things that America has invested with patriotic meaning continuously since the war was actually fought; there's no way to actually visually present something as happening in this period, intertwining with this event, that won't use lots of "patriotic" images and themes. The thing to do is to actually present content that takes those themes and examines them with nuance and perspective, which (modulo the pretty low standards I hold for videogames and historical accuracy in the first place) I think there's a decent chance AC3 will do.
If you want a straight-up indication that the game won't be suffused with constant FUKKYEAs, Connor's background is that his village was destroyed by
colonists (not British soldiers), so right at the start of the game the first thing they're establishing is people on the American side doing something monstrous and awful.
- And one of the first screens from the game features an almost perfect reproduction of a scene from a film called The Patriot.
Errr... what are you talking about.