I'm a bit wary of posting this because I don't want to poke a hornet's nest but I am interested and I think something constructive can be said so here goes.
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 cover shows our protagonist, replete with eagle symbols on clothing, about to strike down a redcoat while the Betsy Ross flag flaps in the background.
- Almost all of the concept art shows a similar thing, moody protagonist posing in front of flapping Betsy Ross flag.
- And one of the first screens from the game features an almost perfect reproduction of a scene from a film called The Patriot.
Now, based firstly on the fact that the series has never historically 'taken sides', and the quotes in the OP, I think there's some good reason to think that it's just a media/marketing angle.
But my question is: when US people see the cover, do they not see all the patriotic motifs? I'm somewhat confused by that because to an outsider (or at least myself) they're so blatant. A few people in the thread have said 'well they have to show that it's set during the period', but there are other ways they could have done that, e.g. by showing historical characters, like other games in the series. For that matter, they didn't cover the media for the other games in patriotic images of the various countries/time periods that the other characters were from. Do people think it's just a coincidence that they've decided to festoon the media for the game so far in a series of patriotic images?
From my perspective, if they'd set the game in the UK and the game cover had a flapping union flag, the royal coat of arms and...something else distinctively tied with British patriotism (which I can't think of off the top of my head because so few things scream 'rule britannia' to me), it would be really incongruous and borderline absurd. So I'm interested to get different perspectives on this.