Like a fly to excrement, certain corners of the internet have predictably jumped onto Ubisoft’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Shadows and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:immediately labelled it as woke for featuring a Black man and a Japanese woman as the two lead characters. Many circles believe that Shad♔ows is dishonoring the franchise by resorting to historically inaccurate stories, despite the fact Yasuke is a real historical figure, and it’s the same series where you can duke it out with the Pope, fight mythical creatures, and travel to the Lost Ci𒀰ty of Atlantis.
Grifters spouting thinly-veiled racism are about Assassin’s Creed or the historical settings it seeks to depict in order to justify their own prejudices, screaming loudly inside echo chambers which are designed to make people angry over nothing before they move onto the next thing. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:It happened with Stellar Blade, and like I expected seconds after key art of Shadows leaked and teased a ▨man of colour as the main character, the same has happened here.
Assassin’s Creed has always put you in the shoes of outsiders and rebels from all w♔alks of life, and has long since moved on from being so firmly grounded in realism. It’s no𓂃t that kind of experience, and can’t suddenly be perceived as one to justify bigotry.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima features a Japanese protagonist, but it’s not historically accurate. It has you wielding katanas for th♕e majority of the game, deꦬspite the fact they weren’t invented until after the time period in which it is set.
The dౠiscourse surrounding Shadows on social media ⛦has already reached awful levels, and it has only been revealed for a day. claiming Black people are only excited about Assassin’s Creed Shadows because they can play as one of their own, like people of colour haven’t played a role in mainstream games for decades now.
Much of the outrage appears to stem from the fact that Yasuke the samurai is not ju⭕st an apparent source of historical inaccuracy (he was a retainer - a different class of samurai that still pla🌱yed a similar role), but represents Ubisoft once again trying to push its political agenda into a series that should have no business discussing such things.
Assassin’s Creed is no stranger to depicting major, and oftentimes controversial, historical figures in a strange light, often treating them as MCU-esque cameos where they appear to help out our heroes on a mission, or sometimes fold into the main narrative in significant ways. Margaret Thatcher is canonically a Templar, for instance. Shadows is not claiming to change the history it depicts or make it more progressive to placate modern audiences, it is simplyℱ doing what Assassin’s Creed has always done.
Team Ninja’s Nioh isn’t historically accurate either, but there wasn’t any fuss about a whit💮e dude from Ireland becoming a samurai when that game came out. Yasuke also pops throughout both games as an enemy known as the ‘Obsidian Samurai’ so it raises a point that we aren’t mad when such a character is in our games, oꦰnly when we are made to play as them.
Yasuke has been featured in countless books, films, shows, anime, and myriad other media over the years𝓡, but only in a mainstream video game does his presence spark such outrage. It says a lot about how toxic and guarded the medium has grown that something as trivial as this is being heralded as yet another means for outrage. Yasuke is a famous retainer who has slowly but surely morphed into legend, his past just mysterious enough for creatives to bend his story in bold, fascinating ways. Ubisoft will no doubt follow this trajectory in Shadows, mixing fact with fiction while taking all the usual liberties.
It’s not dissimilar to how 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Like A Dragon: Ishin took the famous story of Sakamoto Ryoma and brought him back to life in the form of beloved protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. It bends the truth in🎐 favour of spectacle, while always paying homage and respect to parts of his history considered sacred. Yasuke is in the same ballpark, he just happens to be Black instead of Japanese and thus he ‘doesn’t belong’, ingrained prejudice seeping into Shadows’ identity before we’ve even seen a sliver of gameplay.
We have hardly any idea how Shadows plans to depict Japanese history, the feudal time period it takes place in, or if it will play fast and loose with mythology much like its predecessors. I wouldn’t be shocked if downloadable content leans into folklore or several locations across the o🦋pen world morp🃏h history to fit its power fantasy, and I bet we wouldn’t be kicking up a fuss if any other race or country happened to be taking centre stage.
I’m not Japanese, so I can’t speak about the importance of properly depicting its history and well renowned figures about it, but I can point to the praise that Ja🅰panese developers or players had for Ghost of Tsushima, or , and they had no problem ♌with his race or how he folded into real life events. , not to mention goodness knows how many others are already out there.
Assassin’s Creed only tends to entertain historical accuracy and education with the ‘Discovery Mode’ that has become commonplace in the series. It removes the majority of combat and questing and turns the open world into a guided tour separated from the main game. If you want a history lesson, ju♓st wait for that update.
Certain groups are beating this drum as it fits perfectly within our modern definition of outrage politics, giving them another punching b🦋ag to hold over anyone they disagree with while claiming to fight for the freedom of expression that video games provide. So long as that expression aligns with their own 🌸ideology.
It’s the same cy𓆉clical turn of events that happens constantly in the current climate as we enter a new period of discourse where it grows harder and harder for people of colour, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and any minority to be a big part of the video game landscape without being subject to hatred. It’s exhausting,🍌 and only getting worse, but you’d expect the controversy around Assassin’s Creed Shadows to have at least some substance. It doesn’t. It will be yet another Ubisoft open world game that plays fast and loose in an historical period where you’ll fight everything from lowly soldiers to massive monsters.
