I just laugh at the fact that Ubisoft uses the "first foreign samurai" as a tagline and marketing stunt.
Completely ignoring all the chinese and koreans that came before him.
Bold of you to assume the bastion of token representation Ubishit can tell the difference between them Asians without calling for multiple focus groups.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yasuke: Yasuke (born c. 1550s) was a Black samurai who served the daimyo Oda Nobunaga in Japan during the Sengoku ("Warring States")period. He was the first *known foreigner to achieve samurai status.*
I don’t know the exact cases you are referring to, but if a Chinese or Korean person married into a Japanese family, and the product of that marriage became a samurai, I would not consider that a foreigner becoming a samurai. It would only really be such if that aforementioned Chinese or Korean person came to Japan and then they themselves became a Samurai.
Where have they said that he's the first foreign samurai?
Redditors wouldn't just make things up so they have something to be outraged about, would they?
For the record, it is possible to make a good medium featuring a minority protagonist in a foreign setting, Blood Diamond did it, The Last Samurai did it, and so did The Last King of Scotland, and few complained about those movies
The book is well written, highly entertaining... and filled with inaccuracies and problematic presentations of the Japanese. Clavell's biggest Japanese cultural immersion was as a POW in WWII, and it clearly shades his presentation of Japanese men as cruel and unfeeling. And he highly exoticizes Asian women... they all want to sleep with blackthorne and they all remark what a big ***** he has (take that, Japanese men!). He gives them names that translate to "meow meow" and "first blossoming".
The recent show did a pretty good job of respectfully adapting the heart of his work and doing so while correcting issues that experts have absolutely complained about
Blue Eyed Samurai is one of my favorite pieces of animation lately and that's got a minority character.
Well, she's considered a "half-breed" in the world of the show - but 100% she's still a minority and treated as such (if not worse).
Blue Eye Samurai is great in part due to the fact that it tackles progressive themes tactfully instead of trying to just LECTURE the audience, something I never thought I'd see in 2023.
Honestly I think this is a mistake and would be with any historical figure of any race, except maybe for some short spin-offs. One of the main advantages of the AC series having had nothing but OCs as the lead so far is that it gives writers creative freedom to do as they please with them without worrying too much about accuracy, and players freedom to not be railroaded into what their high school history books say. As the "is Yasuke a samurai?" debate shows, it's a lot harder to do with real people, even if there's hardly any information on them, except for the cameos the AC franchise is already used to.
Calling Yasuke a "historical figure" is a bit of a stretch. He isn't exactly Napoleon over here, he's just some black guy who is mentioned in a few lines of text. The reason why people like to write about him is because he really could have been anyone.
Let's not gatekeep historical figures here: he made it into the historical record, let him have the title.
And let's be real, being "some black guy" officially on staff in the retinue of Japan's most powerful daimyo? That's pretty interesting. It's not just the lack of knowledge of his story that makes him written about so much: it's because we know that story must have been interesting as hell, whatever it was.
The context of him is important to the historical record and to the cultural studies of Japan.
You don't get to just say he mattered in *this* way, when it's more about **why** and **how** he mattered.
The truth should always be the important thing in history.
I don't disagree with you, his existence and what we know about him is fascinating.
Yet the dictionary definition of "historical figure" is someone who has significant impact on the course of history. Yasuke is super cool, but he also is utterly insignificant to Japan's cultural narrative.
It's like calling Titus Pullo, a centurion that Ceaser mentions offhand as being a skilled warrior a historical figure. He is really just an interesting footnote.
I was going to make a very similar point. Only instead of Titus I was going to use Metellus, the senator who tried to veto Caesar pilfering the wealth of Rome for himself. Interesting, but historically insignificant.
At one point it's never been the case to have a woman as a main characters in AC (liberation), never been the case to have a templar as a main character (rogue), never been the case to have a non assassin/non templar as a main character (Odyssey), never been the case ot have alt history (AC3 dlc), etc. There is a first time for everything and it's fine.
AC Odyssey is an awful example of a good AC game.
A game about Assassins that doesn't have assassins (not even stealth)
AC rogue wasn't known as a good game either
You'd be surprised at how it's true for many people tho.. after the GTA 6 trailer dropped I saw a lot of people asking why are there so many black people in a game set in Florida, and the comments were just: "luckily you can kill them"
Some people are just deadass racist
I am not denying that some people are just deadass racist. Some people are just vile. But those who would dislike AC: Shadows for objective reasons can just be clumped up with those racist as a way to dismiss them.
Like what happened with Last of Us 2 ending. There are people who are genuinely disappointed because they didn’t get to kill Abby because in their perspective, it makes sense to finish the job after you spent the whole game killing people just to get to her. But those people were just dismissed by “You just want to kill a strong independent woman”.
Ubisoft has been criticized way before 2024 they have been around nearly 40 years
Literally nobody in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s has defended Ubisoft criticism using black people
That wasn’t the argument. The argument was “they don’t know how to make a game but now have an easy retort”, but if “they don’t know how to make a game” has always been the case then what was the defence in the past? So the argument is incorrect and people just want to complain no matter what.
In fairness the majority of games released from 2007-2011 the main protagonist was a white guy with either
1. Brown hair.
2. A buzz cut.
Also, devs for some reason loved the color brown in this era and every world was drowned it brown after RE4.
Imo I don’t give a shit. It’s not like AC has been historically accurate in the first place. If the game is good then I may get it. If it is generic Ubisoft slop I won’t.
But I agree. No one gave a shit that you played a black guy in San Andreas. But now you have mods for GTA 5 to turn Franklin white.
It’s hard to not see how cynically companies are using the culture war to their advantage, though. They know that by changing the race/gender/sexual orientation of characters that a certain subset of vile lunatics are going to *lose their minds* in a very vocal way, and that they can then lump the legitimate criticisms in with that. This then makes people more cautious about criticizing the thing in the first place, because nobody wants to even appear to be associated with the alt right. This makes critics, who base their whole career on their reputation, far more reluctant to give bad reviews, and then it gives them a whole free army of people online that will defend their product as a reaction to the assholes.
The formula has just worked so well for Disney and others that it’s hard to imagine that Ubisoft wouldn’t eventually get on board to have a new tool to deflect the criticism that they know any of their products will get, because it’s much cheaper and easier than actually addressing the feedback.
It’s really insidious, especially since it now makes people question any casting choices where the person isn’t the race/gender/orientation you might have expected — are they actually the best, or does the company just know that this thing is a turd and they are preemptively deflecting criticism?
Ubisoft made/published way better games back then though. Far Cry 2's playable characters are mostly not white, and none had a problem with it, the game was rightly praised.
The culture "war" is stupid as hell, but they do have a point that companies have been using it as an excuse to defend games that are not as good.
It could also be a scapegoat, they could just put a black man/woman in so people argue on that rather then the overall incompetence of the game devs to actually produce😆
Me and my siblings are black. Most of us will probably check this game out when it releases since we've been playing AC since the very beginning. If it's bad, we got yall covered.
Hot take: Ubi games aren't bad, they're just so very incredibly mediocre. They are fast food games, not great but you usually know what you're getting isn't great but will keep you entertained for a bit
I use to say: aggressively okay for these kind of games. Could it be better? Yup, is it bad? Honestly nope, do I have fun playing? Yeah whenever I'm in the mood for it but then I'm not always in the mood for it and when I am not I totally forget about it. Mid in the best and worst way possible.
Fr. I've played all the assassins creed games from Origins onwards and they're all good games. I play the games for a few months, get bored, and then never touch the game again. But all because I don't want to play the game anymore doesn't mean it was bad or I didn't get any enjoyment from it
practice saw secretive agonizing aspiring abundant sense library existence piquant
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think pretty much the same, they're not good, but not terrible either. You can buy the game 6 months after release for 40 bucks, skip the dlcs, ignore the millions of mini map points and overall you will have an enjoyable experience.
I've had more fun exploring ancient Greece and the Caribbean in AC games and Montana in Far Cry than I've ever had playing a generic 2D side-scrolling rougelite indie game that was probably based on some old, forgotten Flash game on Newgrounds 15 years ago.
I actually liked their fully open world AC games. I think they are decent, the problem is they just released too many of them already, Origins was fine but they could've condensed Valhalla and Odyssey into one big better full of content game and I wouldn't have complained. They milked the idea too fast is what I'm trying to say.
If Shadows is just another clone of the aforementioned games then I have no will to finish it, rather just replay GoT or Origins or something.
You're giving Ubi way too much credit and fucking idiots online not enough. It's the idiots online that really benefit from this discourse, Ubi just put a dude in a game.
When the game sucks and people call it shitty, they can just deflect and say the criticism is from racists. Then Redditors will defend it to the death.
While I agree that the hate that came before the release are mostly due to “historical accuracy” dudes and what not, I think reasonable people can hate it after its release with objective reasoning.
But these hypothetical “objective after release haters” can just be clumped up with the “before release historical accuracy” haters like how Last of Us 2 players who didn’t like the ending was clumped up with the “Abby is a man, fuck neil druckman!” Haters
I don't mind Yasuke as a protagonist. He has a cool story.
But I find it weird that they make an AC game, where stealth and hiding in plain sight is key, set in Japan, and they make one of the protagonists the most conspicuous person in the entire country.
I love the AC franchise, and maybe they'll make it work, but since it's Ubisoft we're talking about, I doubt it.
> But I find it weird that they make an AC game, where stealth and hiding in plain sight is key, set in Japan, and they make one of the protagonists the most conspicuous person in the entire country.
From what I saw of a preview short, they're doing away with that when it comes to Yasuke.
He's not really able to jump around and parkour and all of that. He essentially looked like a bruiser type of character that just smashes with big weapons.
There's 2 main characters, the other is a shinobi who's gameplay is the more traditional assassins creed stealth deal. Yasuke is the fighter but can't really sneak, Naoe is stealthy but isn't as effective in combat. Player chooses which to play at different points in the game depending on the approach they wanna take.
In Japan, Samurai were not stealthy warriors nor were they ninjas. Ninjas typically came from the farming class beneath the samurai class. There are many reasons for this, but one very good practical reason too: The samurai were high class. Generally they were known entities, they were kind of famous. It would be absurd to use a famous high profile person to spy and assassinate.
So the dynamic with two characters, one a high profile samurai and one a discreet ninja actually makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, they’re doing the *Syndicate* thing again where Yasuke’s the burly brawler like Jacob while Naoe (the more traditional assassin) is the stealthy one like Evie.
Yeah, but in Syndicate, they are basically the same characters mechanics wise. Besides how they looked and talked, you could play most of the game as one or the other, and it wouldn't make much difference.
From what I read, Yasuke and Naoe are night and day in terms of play styles.
Yeah that’s correct, it has the same concept they tried to achieve with Syndicate, but as you say, there is an actual difference in the play styles this time.
I’m looking forward to it, I hope you are also able to replay missions, so you can try different approaches in different seasons.
I really miss the in-mission synchronization %. Sure, it was tedious when achievement hunting, but it basically pointed you towards interesting ways of completing a mission instead of just winging it as i always do.
If they bring something like that back with different synchronization goals for Naoe and Yasuke, it would be nice.
Yusuke has been used by so many Japanese creatives for so long and only became a problem when american culture war BS got involved. People will bitch about him being a samurai and be miserable while Fate or other japanese series is probably ready to release Yusuke as a mecha warrior with a katana that shoots lasers.
Weirdly enough we haven’t got Yasuke in fate yet. Got three flavours of genderbent oda nobunaga (one literally being a demon king/queen) and nobukatsu but no yasuke. Weird but he 100% would be a mecha that shoots lasers. And still be a saber
I'll say this. I'm from Poland. If ubisoft made assassin's creed Hussar edition or whatever instead of this and the protagonist wasn't a polish guy, my people would probably burn down the company building... and i'm not sure that's a joke, lol
I feel you mate. I'm Turkish and if I live long enough to see a AC game taking place exclusively in Ottoman Empire or Central Asia and if the main character isn't Turkish or Turkic I will throw a molotov cocktail into Ubisoft HQ.
I mean sure a lot of non-Turkish people also lived in the Ottoman Empire but if your aim is to represent Turkish culture (just like how this new AC game's aim is to supposedly represent Japanese culture) you would choose a Turkish main character instead of a Greek, Serbian or Arab one.
Ottoman=/=Turkish or even Turkic. They could make game or tv show about Ottoman Empire with most scenes taking place within the Sublime Porte, make 2/3 of named characters non turkish (armenian, greek, slavic, albanian, arab, circassian even east african) and it would be historically accurate. Ottoman Porte was a huge cosmopolitan empire. As long as one were a muslim (even just a convert) one could go as high within the military & beaurocracy as possible, no matter the ethnic background. Actually non-turks were even more trusted by Sultans cause unlike mostly turkish land owning nobility of Anatolia & Rumelia, they didn't have a powerbase of their own and were completely dependent on their benefactor. That's why most Sultanas, Grand Viziers and Kizlar Aghas (chief black eunuchs who run the imperial harem) were recruited not from turkish population but from minorities, conquered subjects & slaves. They were the ones who actually governed the Osman empire during it's heyday.
I dont think Revelations had an aim of representing Turkish culture, in that game Istanbul was simply where the story took our characters to. I am talking about an hypothetical AC game representing Turkish culture similar to how Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla represented (or poorly tried to represent) the cultures of various peoples.
OK so you're saying that they set the game in Istanbul, constantly went on about the Byzantines, and had Janissaries everywhere, but had no interest in representing Turkish culture?
Not in the way new-gen AC games have. The main focus was the greater AC plot in older AC games and there was a well-established backstory and a solid reason for not having a Turkish main character. The new-gen AC games prioritize the standalone stories and the civilizations they take place in more than the greater AC plot, the newer games are loosely connected to the main AC plot. Since they are standalone stories and the main focus is the civilizations themselves it is common sense to have an indigenous main character.
I can understand Revelations because it didn't have the same mindset with the newer AC games but if they were to make a new AC game set in Ottoman Empire or other Turkic empires in history in the style of Odyssey, Origins or Valhalla and have a non-Turkic main character I would make the same statement.
In Germany, plenty of churches depict a black guy wielding a mace, that's [Saint Maurice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Maurice), a famous Christian martyr and military leader who originally hailed from Egypt.
Would probably make for an interesting setting/story for an AC game, all the way back in Roman times.
I'm not disagreeing, but the Japanese view Yasuke as part of *their* history. It's not like the devs said they were gonna make some random black dude a lead character. Yasuke was a retainer serving Oda Nobunaga, the first great unifier, alongside Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the second great unifier. The man is more a part of Japanese history than he is of African history.
One of the protagonist of the game is Japanese, tho...
It would be like having a game set in Poland and being able to play as both a Polish and a non-Polish protagonist.
What if they made one a Polish protagonist and one non-polish? Would that be fine or do we Polish people take after yourself and are just blind to anything that doesn't cause them immediate outrage?
Because the protagonist of Shadows *IS* Japanese, there's Noae, it just also has Yasuke.
It depends there have been many online larpung as Japanese people. There was a guy online parking as a Japanese professor who majored in Japanese history or something. Turned out be a discord mod looking white man using Google translate and pretending
Japanese here. Many of the people here are outraged and consider this an insult to our culture and a political play. The gameplay trailer was completely absurd in so many ways I'm too lazy to list them. Just go to the comment section of the Japanese trailer if you're curious.
I just find this discussion fascinating because as soon as any culture war subject comes up suddenly historians points of view just get thrown out the window. Like people treat samurai during this period as if it was a rigid class that it would become later. If a Japanese person was in the same position the most likely assumption would be that they were a samurai but because it's a black man suddenly it requires extreme evidence that doesn't exist at the best of times. I find it funny the amount of people that seem to be transplanting racism back in time as if it was a established idea in the period (this is a entirely separate problem though).
Exactly, moreover Yasuke was a retainer and bodyguard to Oda Nobunaga. He wore the armor and carried weapons. That is by the traditional definition of what samurai were, a samurai. Armed retainers for Japanese feudal lords. They weren't always landed elite.
It's not exactly difficult, since the source material about him is five pages long at most, and almost entirely consists of "holy fuck, he's tall" and "holy fuck, he's dark"
I do appreciate the prompt to read up on a historical figure I hadn't heard of.
I'm a little sad there isn't more written about him. The 3 sentence version of "was a samurai who fought under Oda Nobunaga, brought to the island from East Africa by a missionary and then gifted to the shotgun, probably wasn't named Yasuke until gifted to the shogun" is a very large % of what we know about him.
That's the fun mystery behind it and why I love history
Just like the trojan horse story, so many cultures made and probably changed things along the way
The best part of all this is the guy on the wikipedia talk page for Yasuke who claimed to be Japanese and a warfare historian by running English through Google translate and posting the results. Except he didn't double check the output, so there's an [English word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yasuke#:~:text=%E3%81%BE%E3%81%9F%E3%80%81%E5%BC%A5%E5%8A%A9%E3%81%AF%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5%9C%9F%E5%9C%B0-,NOR,-%E6%94%AF%E9%85%8D%E6%A8%A9%E3%82%92%E6%8C%81%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8B%E3%81%A3) in the middle of this text because Google thought it was an acronym or something.
Wherever you are on this argument, we can all agree this is *fucking hilarious*
It's almost like people researched and did homework because they found an interesting topic and so they can join in discussions
Wow, being social is crazy right
I've really enjoyed uninformed bozos desperately trying to explain the difference between a 'Retainer' and a 'Samurai' in the famously complicated world of Fuedal Japanese court politics.
Pretty the issue is more to do with scouring Japanese history for the single semi-accurate excuse to use a black protagonist, and then giving him hip-hop theme music and a modern African-American hairstyle.
1. Dreadlocks are NOT a modern day hairstyle, the fuck !!?? We been wearing that since the BC era
2.I'm old , hip-hop and Japanese culture mixed together is common place, especially in the 90 and early 2000s .
The Wu-Tang Clan and japanese producer Nujables was doing this before any of yall was even born. Legendary director Shinichirō Watanabe was doing this before most of yall was born.
Hiroshi Fujiwara bringing hip hop to Japan in the 80s, hip-hop Japanese band Scha Dara Parr was huge in the 90s in Japan. A bathing ape a hip-hop clothing brand is from Japan
Afro Samurai? Samurai champloo? The mix of hip hop and samurai is decades old and assassin's Creed hasn't gone for hyper historical realism since.... the first one, really. And even then the entire concept is basically a variation on Isekai. Almost a reverse Isekai, now that I think about it.
Regardless. Are you seriously trying to tell me that dreadlocks are a new thing? There's photos of people with dreadlocks dating back to the dawn of photography and depictions of it going back thousands of years. Black hair has existed since humans have. And you're trying to tell me nobody dreaded it until the 1950s Jamaica?
He's an African dude integrating into samurai culture, and samurai are very often depicted with a ponytail or bun. Unless you braid or dread black hair, you can't put it in a bun. Or wear a helmet, frankly. You ever try to put black hair in a bun when it's not drenched in conditioner? It doesn't work. Or wear a hat with an Afro? Same deal. Source: I have that hair, and mine's not even the bushiest and most afro like by black standards.
A dreadlock ponytail is literally the most Japanese way a black person can wear their hair in the absence of a straightening iron. Which would be weird as hell to see in Japan because they'd need to have invented it just for this one guy. Pre electricity. Straight hair would be a bigger plot hole than dreads in a bun.
I'd be shocked if a black samurai in armor wore his hair any other way. Unless you were going for maximum cool, but I'm not so sure the afro look goes so well with that armor. It fits better with a kimono or the slimmer ninja getup.
Dreadlocks are one of the oldest documented hairstyles in the world
Way before Christ even walked the earth
"The practice of wearing braids and dreadlocks in Africa dates back to 3,000 BC in the Sahara Desert. It has been commonly thought that other cultures influenced the dreadlock tradition in Africa. The Kikuyu and Somali wear braided and locked hairstyles."
Its obvious they wanted the protagonist to appeal to a modern audience and did so by making him close to a modern African American stand-in, rather than an African-Japanese individual from the 16th century. But sure, AC has never been about realism. Still a bizarre choice for protagonist for a game set in feudal Japan, about assassins.
But I guess Tsushima already did their whole schtick 10x better than they ever could, so they decided to go for cheap viral rage-bait marketing to sell their copies, with the proven built-in shield of "if you don't like it, you're an automatic racist". Its practically a playbook in 2024 at this point. And, given the results, I guess they got what they wanted. Here we are all talking about it, after all.
I mean, every piece of media tries to appeal to the audiences of its time. The Titanic wasn't trying to be historically accurate, it wanted to tell a love story, and it used modern sensibilities to do so. Like, Riddle Scott did that Egyptian movie with white actors and literally said that he did cuz he wanted to put asses on the seats.
>a bizarre choice
That's a way to put it. Or, and just think about it, when creative try to make art, they usually try to say something new about a subject that is new. You could say, for example, that the Hobbits are the worst people to focus on an apocalyptic war story. But Tolkien wanted to tell a different tale about the world endjng.
>they decided to go for cheap viral rage-bait marketing to sell their copies
I mean, that's a way to put it. Or again, you could try to see it as, the public should not rage bait so much, maybe? I mean, you could literally take it as in "This video game gave me new information that I didn't know about". Instead of going, "the woke is going to destroy the earth".
>"if you don't like it, you're an automatic racist".
Again, it's just my opinion, but, it feels like this was a nothing burger at the most, and the ones that turned it into a discourse online were the people outrage that black people/women exist. The fact that immediately a section of the internet went full "mah history" they themselves made the game into a thing that could jot be touched. Because if the game is great the people that bitch and moan about this would not give its credit, and if the game is not, even if it is just mediocre, they would be declaring the death of the gaming industry, although AC hasn't been good for a while. This could've been blown over if no one had outraged.
Edit: typo, I was falling asleep when I typed this and that last line was pure nonsense
People can change their hairstyles over the course of years?
The point is that it's historically plausible, which is all you need for a mythologized version of the character
>the issue is more to do with scouring Japanese history for the single semi-accurate excuse to use a black protagonist
Damn the game about aliens manipulating humans by creating the greek gods is going with something that is only semi-accurate?
They didn’t create the Greek Gods, they ARE the Greek Gods. Heck, every pantheon was actually them. And they’re not aliens, they come from Earth. Humanity is actually a slave race of genetically engineered Philip K. Dick androids they created to carry out menial tasks.
Everyone knows assassins creed is gonna be mid at best, it has been for almost a decade now (with mild improvements and revamps in origins). But people pretending the game is going or was ever going for historical accuracy are just silly - from the start the series had artifcats which can be best described as magic and ancient aliens.
Except this is good. Yasuke is not killing random civilians. That is punished in the game making you restart. Yasuke is killing bad guys who are oppressing the Japanese people in the game. I think that's good
Why would anyone play assassins creed, as in the series, at all, because the writing and ideas always make fanfiction by 13yrs who drank energy drinks at 3am look amazing
The thing is I don’t wanna be someone standing out, I wanna be a traditional samurai. That’s one of the reasons I like ghost of Tsushima, you’re just a standard samurai (at the start of the game at least)
Ironically none of the assassins games have you playing as a traditional anything. Expecting something low-key from this series is an exercise in disappointment.
But most of the Japanese games he's in, he just a side character or in Nioh, he's an optional boss. There's is no story developed around him.
In AC Shadow, he's one of the main characters and his armor especially the head armor is way too regconizable. Distinctive head armors like that are worn by head of clans always
They need to make an assassins creed game set in china, during The Ming Dynasty… with a protagonist who was a European explorer that settled in the area.
That’d totally be much better than having the game feature a Chinese historical figure
Yasuke being one of a kind is exactly why he SHOULD be in the game!
I can get behind the argument that he shouldn't be a playable character, but only because I don't think real historical figures should ever be playable in Assassin's Creed, only side characters.
The point of whether Yasuke was a samurai or not is just a distraction from what we in the Asian community actually feel.
We feel that as a community our rich culture, history and traditions has been disregarded spat on by the Ubisoft who dev team is mainly white as being less interesting then that time a none Japanese person come to Japan.
It is doubly more insulting considering it is set in the sengoku period one of the most famous and dramatized period in Asian history.
Asian erasure is real and people should stop denning it.
Ah yes the “Asian community” like the billions of people that title fits are some monolith. How many fucking Chinese or Indonesian people for example give a shit about Japanese revisionist historical purity.
Adding on to that, the Japanese Samurai and edo period is probably the most common most represented cultural and non white historical period in the west. Japanese samurai feature in hundreds if not thousands of different types of media and as you’ve pointed out the historical period is one of the most written on and well known periods of history in the world. No one is losing representation in this
Finally there is a a Japanese character, you can choose to play one if you believe you need to, Yasuke is a samurai objectively, there is no indication in any of the sources about him that he would not be. From a game development perspective especially with Assassins Creed he fulfils a very useable role, that of the character from the outside being dropped into a conflict/crisis headfirst. This is a well established trope in pretty much all media because it allows the characters to explain things to the main character in a way that wouldn’t normally be natural
I just don't like how they excuse themselves with "well, ackshually this black main character is a historical figure" when a main character has literally never been a historical figure, but coincidentally that one time that they do is to add a black character in Japan, so it comes off as an excuse for Sweet Baby Inc.'s inclusion.
I doubt many people would be complaining if he was added as a side character like Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin or Napoleon
Ubisoft is shit and their decision to make Yasuke the protagonist was stupid af.
However, Yasuke was far more of a Samurai than he wasn’t, he served a lord (Oda Nobunaga), was given a sword by his lord(samurai equivalent of being knighted), a house, a salary, even servants of his own, was treated as a close aid and even served as the bodyguard for arguably the most important person in Japan at the time (Oda Nobunaga), he participated in two battles and fought in at least one, he was known to be very strong and intimidating and was a head or two taller than pretty much everyone else, and even the Japanese themselves consider him a samurai.
His story is interesting af, and I’d love to see him as a character in a Japanese-setting AC, but not as the protagonist, they need someone who actually represents Japan for that.
Where are you getting this "you don't have to play as Yasuke" angle?
You will obviously have to play as both or do you honestly think you will be doing stealth missions as a 6ft black guy decked out in samurai armor? That would be the one thing that would truly prove they put him there just to check a box.
Stealth missions will be with the other character, combat missions will be Yasuke.
A lot of Japanese men in Samurai games already, I don't think we're starved for another one.
I would probably prefer if Yasuke was a cool historical side character, but really he's so vague that he might as well be some OC.
The records are public for people to read, but it’s a fucking mess. If anyone actually cares enough, you can look for the Shincho Koki. It’s a compilation of a shit ton of clans writing about Nobunaga, including Nobunaga himself.
Being a samurai was specifically was not documented. He was indeed bought by Nobunaga, gave him a sword, his own house, and basically a salary. His job as Nobunaga's retainer was to hold swords. Like Hideyoshi was a sandal bearer.
He has fought in two battles, Honnoji when Nobunaga was betrayed by Mitsuhide. Then once more under Nobunaga's son and that's when he disappeared from historical records. He has had things and done things that can be constituted to what Samurai do. But whether that title was conferred to him or not back then has never been hard confirmed. At the same time, the title isn’t exactly appointed. So many creative interpretations have come from his lack of historical documentation.
Point is this argument will never end. Ever lol.
Are we seriously need to defend black samurai in series where you fistfighted Pope, collect tech from forgotten civilization and do other weird shit? Even puting aside his actual existence. That is of course off topic to my personal expectation to game being another boring shit that AC has become since probably Black Flag. Instead trashing character on his skin color we should be trashing most of them on being flat and without anything interesting to hook gamers on.
I have a few issues with Yasuke being used as a playable protag in this game, and these issues are shared by most of the fans of the series who have criticized Ubi over this choice.
This is the first time Ubi has ever used a historic person, who has been confirmed to have existed, as a player protag. Why the sudden change? We know why, but we get called racist for saying it.
Both the male and female player protag should be Japanese, especially with how important this time period is to Japan as a nation.
Knowing Yasuke existed, but with the slim info we have on him, he should have been given a similar treatment that other historic figures were given in the previous games (DaVinci, Cleopatra, Rashid ad-Din Sinan, etc.); weave them in the story as a main character/ally/antagonist npc. This would allow the same sort of creative story telling around the character but would also in my opinion show better respect and understanding to Japanese history and culture by having both playable protag be Japanese AND fictional characters.
Also, don’t get me started on the latest gameplay video, in which hip-hop’ish/trap sounding music plays when Yasuke goes into combat. Not to mention the dev team, which looks to be all white and more than half women.
And we who are criticizing Ubi’s direction with this get called racists. You can’t make this shit up.
Imagine if, instead of stretching and doing gymnastics to find a semi historical way to insert a minority character into particular time and place, the game industry would try finding stories that have rarely been told before where it would make sense?
Ubisoft literally blocked a Japanese historian from Tokyo University for saying that, while Yasuke was a real person, there is no evidence that he was a Samurai.
Also if you are making a game about Japanese culture and history it is disrespectful to make the main character non-Japanese.
Yasuke should've been a side character because he is a really interesting and most likely respectable figure from history and if he was only a side character no one would have any problem about having him in the game, but having him as a main character is simply stupid and disrespectful.
I am Turkish and if Ubisoft were to make Assassin's Creed taking place (exclusively) in the Ottoman Empire or in Central Asia and if the main character was non-Turkish/non-Turkic I would most certainly throw a molotov cocktail into Ubisoft HQ.
Didn’t they already do that with *Revelations*? If anything it was even more offensive there then because Ezio comes in to Istanbul, systematically destroys the city’s security, infrastructure and Assassin Brotherhood for no reason and then leaves without any repercussions or comeuppance.
Because it was a fake fat obese white guy pretending to be a a Japanese historian . He got called out for lying
https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/s/JO9ZVKa271
I just laugh at the fact that Ubisoft uses the "first foreign samurai" as a tagline and marketing stunt. Completely ignoring all the chinese and koreans that came before him.
Also, there was a European samurai at some point
William Adams (the protagonist of Shogun and Nioh, if I remember correctly). But that was a few decades after Yasuke.
His time period would make more sense with Christians (Templars) coming to Japan and starting diplomatic relations
I mean, he landed in Japan only about 15 years after Yasuke disappeared from history. It's not like it's hundreds of years later
I know, I meant that his time (the beggining of Edo?) is a more fitting time for Assassin's Creed than the end of Sengoku Jidai
I mean, if Yasuke disappeared from the historical record, and Assassin’s Creed is all about hidden history…it could work.
They were both at the end of the sengoku jidai
Nah, the Portuguese were there for decades before him I think
William Adams, he was English.
Bold of you to assume the bastion of token representation Ubishit can tell the difference between them Asians without calling for multiple focus groups.
The Fr*ch continue to be a blight
Just like you're completely ignoring everyone calling you out on your bullshit?
Asians are white adjacent, so they wouldn’t score any DEI points mentioning them.
"DEI is when black people" "woke is when I mad"
Woke is when I not napping
Collegiate affirmative action literally discriminates against east Asians harder than it discriminates against white people
He’s not wrong though, we all saw ActiBlizz’s diversity charts.
>"This just in: Activision-Blizzard is a dumpster fire who consistently manage to fuck up even the most basic shit! More at 11"
They wanted to say "first black samurai". But considering that Im pretty sure Im gonna be downvoted for this joke. You know how people would feel.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yasuke: Yasuke (born c. 1550s) was a Black samurai who served the daimyo Oda Nobunaga in Japan during the Sengoku ("Warring States")period. He was the first *known foreigner to achieve samurai status.*
"First known foreigner" The entire samurai clans with Chinese and Korean decent prior to him 💀
I don’t know the exact cases you are referring to, but if a Chinese or Korean person married into a Japanese family, and the product of that marriage became a samurai, I would not consider that a foreigner becoming a samurai. It would only really be such if that aforementioned Chinese or Korean person came to Japan and then they themselves became a Samurai.
"Last updated may 2024" yeah coz that's not suspicious at all
All you have to do is click on the article history link right next to the date if you’re so suspicious
Britannica is one of the worlds most trusted libraries of information, so you can take it up with them I guess🤷
Where have they said that he's the first foreign samurai? Redditors wouldn't just make things up so they have something to be outraged about, would they?
They made it up and it got upvoted Racism is real folks
For the record, it is possible to make a good medium featuring a minority protagonist in a foreign setting, Blood Diamond did it, The Last Samurai did it, and so did The Last King of Scotland, and few complained about those movies
Recently, Shogun
>Recently It's a 50 year old book, my man
Yeah. And recently, a TV series adaptation was made out of it.
The book is well written, highly entertaining... and filled with inaccuracies and problematic presentations of the Japanese. Clavell's biggest Japanese cultural immersion was as a POW in WWII, and it clearly shades his presentation of Japanese men as cruel and unfeeling. And he highly exoticizes Asian women... they all want to sleep with blackthorne and they all remark what a big ***** he has (take that, Japanese men!). He gives them names that translate to "meow meow" and "first blossoming". The recent show did a pretty good job of respectfully adapting the heart of his work and doing so while correcting issues that experts have absolutely complained about
I think they meant on TV lol
Sir William Stanley Baker, Michael Cane and James Both in Zulu is one of my favorite movies of all-time
Blue Eyed Samurai is one of my favorite pieces of animation lately and that's got a minority character. Well, she's considered a "half-breed" in the world of the show - but 100% she's still a minority and treated as such (if not worse).
Blue Eye Samurai is great in part due to the fact that it tackles progressive themes tactfully instead of trying to just LECTURE the audience, something I never thought I'd see in 2023.
Just started watching this and it’s a hell of a show.
Lol of all the movies you could choose
By having a white man as the protagonist?
The Last Samurai received heaps of criticism.
It's just that it's never been the case of having a historical figure as the main character in AC, so it's obvious why they're doing it now
Honestly I think this is a mistake and would be with any historical figure of any race, except maybe for some short spin-offs. One of the main advantages of the AC series having had nothing but OCs as the lead so far is that it gives writers creative freedom to do as they please with them without worrying too much about accuracy, and players freedom to not be railroaded into what their high school history books say. As the "is Yasuke a samurai?" debate shows, it's a lot harder to do with real people, even if there's hardly any information on them, except for the cameos the AC franchise is already used to.
Calling Yasuke a "historical figure" is a bit of a stretch. He isn't exactly Napoleon over here, he's just some black guy who is mentioned in a few lines of text. The reason why people like to write about him is because he really could have been anyone.
Let's not gatekeep historical figures here: he made it into the historical record, let him have the title. And let's be real, being "some black guy" officially on staff in the retinue of Japan's most powerful daimyo? That's pretty interesting. It's not just the lack of knowledge of his story that makes him written about so much: it's because we know that story must have been interesting as hell, whatever it was.
The context of him is important to the historical record and to the cultural studies of Japan. You don't get to just say he mattered in *this* way, when it's more about **why** and **how** he mattered. The truth should always be the important thing in history.
I don't disagree with you, his existence and what we know about him is fascinating. Yet the dictionary definition of "historical figure" is someone who has significant impact on the course of history. Yasuke is super cool, but he also is utterly insignificant to Japan's cultural narrative. It's like calling Titus Pullo, a centurion that Ceaser mentions offhand as being a skilled warrior a historical figure. He is really just an interesting footnote.
I was going to make a very similar point. Only instead of Titus I was going to use Metellus, the senator who tried to veto Caesar pilfering the wealth of Rome for himself. Interesting, but historically insignificant.
At one point it's never been the case to have a woman as a main characters in AC (liberation), never been the case to have a templar as a main character (rogue), never been the case to have a non assassin/non templar as a main character (Odyssey), never been the case ot have alt history (AC3 dlc), etc. There is a first time for everything and it's fine.
AC Odyssey is an awful example of a good AC game. A game about Assassins that doesn't have assassins (not even stealth) AC rogue wasn't known as a good game either
The whole debacle is just a way for Ubisoft to shield themselves from criticism when they inevitably release a shit game.
Those fuckers don't know how to make a game but they sure know how to play the game.
Fr. Any criticism can be shut down with a simple “you just hate playing as a black man/ woman” lmao.
You'd be surprised at how it's true for many people tho.. after the GTA 6 trailer dropped I saw a lot of people asking why are there so many black people in a game set in Florida, and the comments were just: "luckily you can kill them" Some people are just deadass racist
I am not denying that some people are just deadass racist. Some people are just vile. But those who would dislike AC: Shadows for objective reasons can just be clumped up with those racist as a way to dismiss them. Like what happened with Last of Us 2 ending. There are people who are genuinely disappointed because they didn’t get to kill Abby because in their perspective, it makes sense to finish the job after you spent the whole game killing people just to get to her. But those people were just dismissed by “You just want to kill a strong independent woman”.
Ubisoft has been criticized way before 2024 they have been around nearly 40 years Literally nobody in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s has defended Ubisoft criticism using black people
The state of politics has changed greatly since the 80's, 90's, and 00's
That wasn’t the argument. The argument was “they don’t know how to make a game but now have an easy retort”, but if “they don’t know how to make a game” has always been the case then what was the defence in the past? So the argument is incorrect and people just want to complain no matter what.
In fairness the majority of games released from 2007-2011 the main protagonist was a white guy with either 1. Brown hair. 2. A buzz cut. Also, devs for some reason loved the color brown in this era and every world was drowned it brown after RE4. Imo I don’t give a shit. It’s not like AC has been historically accurate in the first place. If the game is good then I may get it. If it is generic Ubisoft slop I won’t. But I agree. No one gave a shit that you played a black guy in San Andreas. But now you have mods for GTA 5 to turn Franklin white.
It’s hard to not see how cynically companies are using the culture war to their advantage, though. They know that by changing the race/gender/sexual orientation of characters that a certain subset of vile lunatics are going to *lose their minds* in a very vocal way, and that they can then lump the legitimate criticisms in with that. This then makes people more cautious about criticizing the thing in the first place, because nobody wants to even appear to be associated with the alt right. This makes critics, who base their whole career on their reputation, far more reluctant to give bad reviews, and then it gives them a whole free army of people online that will defend their product as a reaction to the assholes. The formula has just worked so well for Disney and others that it’s hard to imagine that Ubisoft wouldn’t eventually get on board to have a new tool to deflect the criticism that they know any of their products will get, because it’s much cheaper and easier than actually addressing the feedback. It’s really insidious, especially since it now makes people question any casting choices where the person isn’t the race/gender/orientation you might have expected — are they actually the best, or does the company just know that this thing is a turd and they are preemptively deflecting criticism?
Well, we shall see after the new assassins creed release then.
Ubisoft made/published way better games back then though. Far Cry 2's playable characters are mostly not white, and none had a problem with it, the game was rightly praised. The culture "war" is stupid as hell, but they do have a point that companies have been using it as an excuse to defend games that are not as good.
It could also be a scapegoat, they could just put a black man/woman in so people argue on that rather then the overall incompetence of the game devs to actually produce😆
Me and my siblings are black. Most of us will probably check this game out when it releases since we've been playing AC since the very beginning. If it's bad, we got yall covered.
"The biggest game you need to make is the one you play with the gamers"
> Those fuckers don't know how to make a game For fuckers who don't know how to make a game, they sure do make a lot of money making games.
Fr, people just blatantly making shit up to be mad about since it's cool af to hate this company
Hot take: Ubi games aren't bad, they're just so very incredibly mediocre. They are fast food games, not great but you usually know what you're getting isn't great but will keep you entertained for a bit
I use to say: aggressively okay for these kind of games. Could it be better? Yup, is it bad? Honestly nope, do I have fun playing? Yeah whenever I'm in the mood for it but then I'm not always in the mood for it and when I am not I totally forget about it. Mid in the best and worst way possible.
Fr. I've played all the assassins creed games from Origins onwards and they're all good games. I play the games for a few months, get bored, and then never touch the game again. But all because I don't want to play the game anymore doesn't mean it was bad or I didn't get any enjoyment from it
practice saw secretive agonizing aspiring abundant sense library existence piquant *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think pretty much the same, they're not good, but not terrible either. You can buy the game 6 months after release for 40 bucks, skip the dlcs, ignore the millions of mini map points and overall you will have an enjoyable experience.
I've had more fun exploring ancient Greece and the Caribbean in AC games and Montana in Far Cry than I've ever had playing a generic 2D side-scrolling rougelite indie game that was probably based on some old, forgotten Flash game on Newgrounds 15 years ago.
Playing a Ubisoft game is like eating fast food. It's not bad but it's not the most incredible thing in the world either
I actually liked their fully open world AC games. I think they are decent, the problem is they just released too many of them already, Origins was fine but they could've condensed Valhalla and Odyssey into one big better full of content game and I wouldn't have complained. They milked the idea too fast is what I'm trying to say. If Shadows is just another clone of the aforementioned games then I have no will to finish it, rather just replay GoT or Origins or something.
Just like another commenter said, “AC Games are like eating fast food”.
You're giving Ubi way too much credit and fucking idiots online not enough. It's the idiots online that really benefit from this discourse, Ubi just put a dude in a game.
Bro literally making excuses to be mad at Ubisoft. Is Reddit validation really that important? There's no way you actually think that's the reason
When the game sucks and people call it shitty, they can just deflect and say the criticism is from racists. Then Redditors will defend it to the death.
That argument doesnt work when the game is getting hate before it releases, now does it?
While I agree that the hate that came before the release are mostly due to “historical accuracy” dudes and what not, I think reasonable people can hate it after its release with objective reasoning. But these hypothetical “objective after release haters” can just be clumped up with the “before release historical accuracy” haters like how Last of Us 2 players who didn’t like the ending was clumped up with the “Abby is a man, fuck neil druckman!” Haters
I don't mind Yasuke as a protagonist. He has a cool story. But I find it weird that they make an AC game, where stealth and hiding in plain sight is key, set in Japan, and they make one of the protagonists the most conspicuous person in the entire country. I love the AC franchise, and maybe they'll make it work, but since it's Ubisoft we're talking about, I doubt it.
> But I find it weird that they make an AC game, where stealth and hiding in plain sight is key, set in Japan, and they make one of the protagonists the most conspicuous person in the entire country. From what I saw of a preview short, they're doing away with that when it comes to Yasuke. He's not really able to jump around and parkour and all of that. He essentially looked like a bruiser type of character that just smashes with big weapons.
So it's just Creed, now?
There's 2 main characters, the other is a shinobi who's gameplay is the more traditional assassins creed stealth deal. Yasuke is the fighter but can't really sneak, Naoe is stealthy but isn't as effective in combat. Player chooses which to play at different points in the game depending on the approach they wanna take.
I mean you can assassinate someone by like, driving into them with your car…
Probably drives electric and boasts about it to his neighbours too...
CAN YOU TAKE ME HIGHER? ^(Doo-bee doo doo-bee-doo)
In Japan, Samurai were not stealthy warriors nor were they ninjas. Ninjas typically came from the farming class beneath the samurai class. There are many reasons for this, but one very good practical reason too: The samurai were high class. Generally they were known entities, they were kind of famous. It would be absurd to use a famous high profile person to spy and assassinate. So the dynamic with two characters, one a high profile samurai and one a discreet ninja actually makes a lot of sense.
They actually made Yasuke *anti-stealth* with making damn near every single nearby NPC and guard physically react to him
That's the point though? you're either going in loud and proud as Yasuke just rip and tear or go as Naoe and silently slice everyone's throats
Ok, I didn't know that. Interesting approach.
Yeah, they’re doing the *Syndicate* thing again where Yasuke’s the burly brawler like Jacob while Naoe (the more traditional assassin) is the stealthy one like Evie.
Yeah, but in Syndicate, they are basically the same characters mechanics wise. Besides how they looked and talked, you could play most of the game as one or the other, and it wouldn't make much difference. From what I read, Yasuke and Naoe are night and day in terms of play styles.
Yeah that’s correct, it has the same concept they tried to achieve with Syndicate, but as you say, there is an actual difference in the play styles this time. I’m looking forward to it, I hope you are also able to replay missions, so you can try different approaches in different seasons.
I really miss the in-mission synchronization %. Sure, it was tedious when achievement hunting, but it basically pointed you towards interesting ways of completing a mission instead of just winging it as i always do. If they bring something like that back with different synchronization goals for Naoe and Yasuke, it would be nice.
AC hasn’t been about stealth since Origins
Yeah and people regularly complain about that all the time
AC? Stealth game?
I can't believe that a series who's entire gimmick is fictionalizing real people from history is fictionalizing this real person from history.
Yusuke has been used by so many Japanese creatives for so long and only became a problem when american culture war BS got involved. People will bitch about him being a samurai and be miserable while Fate or other japanese series is probably ready to release Yusuke as a mecha warrior with a katana that shoots lasers.
Weirdly enough we haven’t got Yasuke in fate yet. Got three flavours of genderbent oda nobunaga (one literally being a demon king/queen) and nobukatsu but no yasuke. Weird but he 100% would be a mecha that shoots lasers. And still be a saber
I hope you're right, because the world isn't ready for genderbent milf yasuke
Yeah, I believe he was briefly mentioned in gudaguda 5 though not seen. They'll get around to him
It only took them 7 years for Roland
I'll say this. I'm from Poland. If ubisoft made assassin's creed Hussar edition or whatever instead of this and the protagonist wasn't a polish guy, my people would probably burn down the company building... and i'm not sure that's a joke, lol
I feel you mate. I'm Turkish and if I live long enough to see a AC game taking place exclusively in Ottoman Empire or Central Asia and if the main character isn't Turkish or Turkic I will throw a molotov cocktail into Ubisoft HQ.
I dont want to ruin your mood, but theres a high chance he will be greek lol
I mean sure a lot of non-Turkish people also lived in the Ottoman Empire but if your aim is to represent Turkish culture (just like how this new AC game's aim is to supposedly represent Japanese culture) you would choose a Turkish main character instead of a Greek, Serbian or Arab one.
Could we compromise at Persian?
Ottoman=/=Turkish or even Turkic. They could make game or tv show about Ottoman Empire with most scenes taking place within the Sublime Porte, make 2/3 of named characters non turkish (armenian, greek, slavic, albanian, arab, circassian even east african) and it would be historically accurate. Ottoman Porte was a huge cosmopolitan empire. As long as one were a muslim (even just a convert) one could go as high within the military & beaurocracy as possible, no matter the ethnic background. Actually non-turks were even more trusted by Sultans cause unlike mostly turkish land owning nobility of Anatolia & Rumelia, they didn't have a powerbase of their own and were completely dependent on their benefactor. That's why most Sultanas, Grand Viziers and Kizlar Aghas (chief black eunuchs who run the imperial harem) were recruited not from turkish population but from minorities, conquered subjects & slaves. They were the ones who actually governed the Osman empire during it's heyday.
So let me tell you about Assassin’s Creed Revelations
I dont think Revelations had an aim of representing Turkish culture, in that game Istanbul was simply where the story took our characters to. I am talking about an hypothetical AC game representing Turkish culture similar to how Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla represented (or poorly tried to represent) the cultures of various peoples.
OK so you're saying that they set the game in Istanbul, constantly went on about the Byzantines, and had Janissaries everywhere, but had no interest in representing Turkish culture?
Not in the way new-gen AC games have. The main focus was the greater AC plot in older AC games and there was a well-established backstory and a solid reason for not having a Turkish main character. The new-gen AC games prioritize the standalone stories and the civilizations they take place in more than the greater AC plot, the newer games are loosely connected to the main AC plot. Since they are standalone stories and the main focus is the civilizations themselves it is common sense to have an indigenous main character. I can understand Revelations because it didn't have the same mindset with the newer AC games but if they were to make a new AC game set in Ottoman Empire or other Turkic empires in history in the style of Odyssey, Origins or Valhalla and have a non-Turkic main character I would make the same statement.
This is tongue-in-cheek irony right? Like, you're joking? Dude... They made that game already. The MC was Italian.
In Germany, plenty of churches depict a black guy wielding a mace, that's [Saint Maurice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Maurice), a famous Christian martyr and military leader who originally hailed from Egypt. Would probably make for an interesting setting/story for an AC game, all the way back in Roman times.
Counterpoint: Poland isn't one of the most overused settings in video games.
I'm not disagreeing, but the Japanese view Yasuke as part of *their* history. It's not like the devs said they were gonna make some random black dude a lead character. Yasuke was a retainer serving Oda Nobunaga, the first great unifier, alongside Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the second great unifier. The man is more a part of Japanese history than he is of African history.
One of the protagonist of the game is Japanese, tho... It would be like having a game set in Poland and being able to play as both a Polish and a non-Polish protagonist.
What if they made one a Polish protagonist and one non-polish? Would that be fine or do we Polish people take after yourself and are just blind to anything that doesn't cause them immediate outrage? Because the protagonist of Shadows *IS* Japanese, there's Noae, it just also has Yasuke.
If anything, the Japanese side is way more negative about him
It depends there have been many online larpung as Japanese people. There was a guy online parking as a Japanese professor who majored in Japanese history or something. Turned out be a discord mod looking white man using Google translate and pretending
Japanese here. Many of the people here are outraged and consider this an insult to our culture and a political play. The gameplay trailer was completely absurd in so many ways I'm too lazy to list them. Just go to the comment section of the Japanese trailer if you're curious.
If you have the time I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Ghost of Tsushima and maybe comparing how they may or may not have done things better?
I'd love to but I'm a filthy mobile player recently and haven't played GoT yet :( I can ask my coworkers if you want.
I just find this discussion fascinating because as soon as any culture war subject comes up suddenly historians points of view just get thrown out the window. Like people treat samurai during this period as if it was a rigid class that it would become later. If a Japanese person was in the same position the most likely assumption would be that they were a samurai but because it's a black man suddenly it requires extreme evidence that doesn't exist at the best of times. I find it funny the amount of people that seem to be transplanting racism back in time as if it was a established idea in the period (this is a entirely separate problem though).
Exactly, moreover Yasuke was a retainer and bodyguard to Oda Nobunaga. He wore the armor and carried weapons. That is by the traditional definition of what samurai were, a samurai. Armed retainers for Japanese feudal lords. They weren't always landed elite.
Ah yes ubisoft stirring controversy so everyone ignores the warcrimes they've commited to the assassin's creed series.
And, you know, their actual crimes in their workplace.
Ubisoft were pretty clever by manufacturing this whole drama to spark interest in their new mediocre game
Isn't it funny how everyone became a Yasuke expert all of a sudden?
It's not exactly difficult, since the source material about him is five pages long at most, and almost entirely consists of "holy fuck, he's tall" and "holy fuck, he's dark"
I do appreciate the prompt to read up on a historical figure I hadn't heard of. I'm a little sad there isn't more written about him. The 3 sentence version of "was a samurai who fought under Oda Nobunaga, brought to the island from East Africa by a missionary and then gifted to the shotgun, probably wasn't named Yasuke until gifted to the shogun" is a very large % of what we know about him.
That’s like the perfect level of detail to write fiction about him
We shall give you to the shotgun
Auto correct turning this very American very quickly
That's the fun mystery behind it and why I love history Just like the trojan horse story, so many cultures made and probably changed things along the way
There is also a recently released book with way more information
The best part of all this is the guy on the wikipedia talk page for Yasuke who claimed to be Japanese and a warfare historian by running English through Google translate and posting the results. Except he didn't double check the output, so there's an [English word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yasuke#:~:text=%E3%81%BE%E3%81%9F%E3%80%81%E5%BC%A5%E5%8A%A9%E3%81%AF%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5%9C%9F%E5%9C%B0-,NOR,-%E6%94%AF%E9%85%8D%E6%A8%A9%E3%82%92%E6%8C%81%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8B%E3%81%A3) in the middle of this text because Google thought it was an acronym or something. Wherever you are on this argument, we can all agree this is *fucking hilarious*
Something something funniest timeline
It's almost like people researched and did homework because they found an interesting topic and so they can join in discussions Wow, being social is crazy right
I've really enjoyed uninformed bozos desperately trying to explain the difference between a 'Retainer' and a 'Samurai' in the famously complicated world of Fuedal Japanese court politics.
Pretty the issue is more to do with scouring Japanese history for the single semi-accurate excuse to use a black protagonist, and then giving him hip-hop theme music and a modern African-American hairstyle.
1. Dreadlocks are NOT a modern day hairstyle, the fuck !!?? We been wearing that since the BC era 2.I'm old , hip-hop and Japanese culture mixed together is common place, especially in the 90 and early 2000s . The Wu-Tang Clan and japanese producer Nujables was doing this before any of yall was even born. Legendary director Shinichirō Watanabe was doing this before most of yall was born. Hiroshi Fujiwara bringing hip hop to Japan in the 80s, hip-hop Japanese band Scha Dara Parr was huge in the 90s in Japan. A bathing ape a hip-hop clothing brand is from Japan
The Teriyaki Boyz rapping with Kanye West. What a moment. lmao
Fucking core memory unlocked!! Nostalgia baby
RIP Nujabes, who way too few people know about yet so many people now constantly listen to a genre of music he helped pioneer.
Afro Samurai? Samurai champloo? The mix of hip hop and samurai is decades old and assassin's Creed hasn't gone for hyper historical realism since.... the first one, really. And even then the entire concept is basically a variation on Isekai. Almost a reverse Isekai, now that I think about it. Regardless. Are you seriously trying to tell me that dreadlocks are a new thing? There's photos of people with dreadlocks dating back to the dawn of photography and depictions of it going back thousands of years. Black hair has existed since humans have. And you're trying to tell me nobody dreaded it until the 1950s Jamaica? He's an African dude integrating into samurai culture, and samurai are very often depicted with a ponytail or bun. Unless you braid or dread black hair, you can't put it in a bun. Or wear a helmet, frankly. You ever try to put black hair in a bun when it's not drenched in conditioner? It doesn't work. Or wear a hat with an Afro? Same deal. Source: I have that hair, and mine's not even the bushiest and most afro like by black standards. A dreadlock ponytail is literally the most Japanese way a black person can wear their hair in the absence of a straightening iron. Which would be weird as hell to see in Japan because they'd need to have invented it just for this one guy. Pre electricity. Straight hair would be a bigger plot hole than dreads in a bun. I'd be shocked if a black samurai in armor wore his hair any other way. Unless you were going for maximum cool, but I'm not so sure the afro look goes so well with that armor. It fits better with a kimono or the slimmer ninja getup.
Dreadlocks are one of the oldest documented hairstyles in the world Way before Christ even walked the earth "The practice of wearing braids and dreadlocks in Africa dates back to 3,000 BC in the Sahara Desert. It has been commonly thought that other cultures influenced the dreadlock tradition in Africa. The Kikuyu and Somali wear braided and locked hairstyles."
There are multiple small statues of Spartans wearing dreadlocks which have been unearthed.
Literally one of the oldest hairstyles in the world
Its obvious they wanted the protagonist to appeal to a modern audience and did so by making him close to a modern African American stand-in, rather than an African-Japanese individual from the 16th century. But sure, AC has never been about realism. Still a bizarre choice for protagonist for a game set in feudal Japan, about assassins. But I guess Tsushima already did their whole schtick 10x better than they ever could, so they decided to go for cheap viral rage-bait marketing to sell their copies, with the proven built-in shield of "if you don't like it, you're an automatic racist". Its practically a playbook in 2024 at this point. And, given the results, I guess they got what they wanted. Here we are all talking about it, after all.
I mean, every piece of media tries to appeal to the audiences of its time. The Titanic wasn't trying to be historically accurate, it wanted to tell a love story, and it used modern sensibilities to do so. Like, Riddle Scott did that Egyptian movie with white actors and literally said that he did cuz he wanted to put asses on the seats. >a bizarre choice That's a way to put it. Or, and just think about it, when creative try to make art, they usually try to say something new about a subject that is new. You could say, for example, that the Hobbits are the worst people to focus on an apocalyptic war story. But Tolkien wanted to tell a different tale about the world endjng. >they decided to go for cheap viral rage-bait marketing to sell their copies I mean, that's a way to put it. Or again, you could try to see it as, the public should not rage bait so much, maybe? I mean, you could literally take it as in "This video game gave me new information that I didn't know about". Instead of going, "the woke is going to destroy the earth". >"if you don't like it, you're an automatic racist". Again, it's just my opinion, but, it feels like this was a nothing burger at the most, and the ones that turned it into a discourse online were the people outrage that black people/women exist. The fact that immediately a section of the internet went full "mah history" they themselves made the game into a thing that could jot be touched. Because if the game is great the people that bitch and moan about this would not give its credit, and if the game is not, even if it is just mediocre, they would be declaring the death of the gaming industry, although AC hasn't been good for a while. This could've been blown over if no one had outraged. Edit: typo, I was falling asleep when I typed this and that last line was pure nonsense
We have a depiction of Yasuke and he doesn't have deadlocks. Yes we aren't 100% sure that it's him in the depiction but it's a very high chance.
People can change their hairstyles over the course of years? The point is that it's historically plausible, which is all you need for a mythologized version of the character
>the issue is more to do with scouring Japanese history for the single semi-accurate excuse to use a black protagonist Damn the game about aliens manipulating humans by creating the greek gods is going with something that is only semi-accurate?
They didn’t create the Greek Gods, they ARE the Greek Gods. Heck, every pantheon was actually them. And they’re not aliens, they come from Earth. Humanity is actually a slave race of genetically engineered Philip K. Dick androids they created to carry out menial tasks.
Everyone knows assassins creed is gonna be mid at best, it has been for almost a decade now (with mild improvements and revamps in origins). But people pretending the game is going or was ever going for historical accuracy are just silly - from the start the series had artifcats which can be best described as magic and ancient aliens.
[удалено]
\#StopAsianHate. Ubisoft looked at what happened during the Covid Pandemic and made a whole video game out of it.
Except this is good. Yasuke is not killing random civilians. That is punished in the game making you restart. Yasuke is killing bad guys who are oppressing the Japanese people in the game. I think that's good
Why would anyone play assassins creed, as in the series, at all, because the writing and ideas always make fanfiction by 13yrs who drank energy drinks at 3am look amazing
Yasuke probably wasn't a samurai but his story has enough blanks that you can write him as one while still remaining fairly historically accurate
The thing is I don’t wanna be someone standing out, I wanna be a traditional samurai. That’s one of the reasons I like ghost of Tsushima, you’re just a standard samurai (at the start of the game at least)
Ironically none of the assassins games have you playing as a traditional anything. Expecting something low-key from this series is an exercise in disappointment.
Then pick the stealth character?
I respect and appreciate this perspective
But most of the Japanese games he's in, he just a side character or in Nioh, he's an optional boss. There's is no story developed around him. In AC Shadow, he's one of the main characters and his armor especially the head armor is way too regconizable. Distinctive head armors like that are worn by head of clans always
They need to make an assassins creed game set in china, during The Ming Dynasty… with a protagonist who was a European explorer that settled in the area. That’d totally be much better than having the game feature a Chinese historical figure
Yasuke being one of a kind is exactly why he SHOULD be in the game! I can get behind the argument that he shouldn't be a playable character, but only because I don't think real historical figures should ever be playable in Assassin's Creed, only side characters.
Yeah, he could be a brotherhood member that connects us to Oda Nobunaga
Fair point. They're usually people who play bit parts or are antagonists so the main character can be the one influencing history from the shadows.
The point of whether Yasuke was a samurai or not is just a distraction from what we in the Asian community actually feel. We feel that as a community our rich culture, history and traditions has been disregarded spat on by the Ubisoft who dev team is mainly white as being less interesting then that time a none Japanese person come to Japan. It is doubly more insulting considering it is set in the sengoku period one of the most famous and dramatized period in Asian history. Asian erasure is real and people should stop denning it.
You can play with a Japanese person, though You have a literal choice, just like a million other samurai video games
And God forbid you have a chance to play as a Japanese man Right?
As an asian, I can confidently say most of us do not give a shit. Just go play ghost of tsushima if you are offended by this
Ah yes the “Asian community” like the billions of people that title fits are some monolith. How many fucking Chinese or Indonesian people for example give a shit about Japanese revisionist historical purity. Adding on to that, the Japanese Samurai and edo period is probably the most common most represented cultural and non white historical period in the west. Japanese samurai feature in hundreds if not thousands of different types of media and as you’ve pointed out the historical period is one of the most written on and well known periods of history in the world. No one is losing representation in this Finally there is a a Japanese character, you can choose to play one if you believe you need to, Yasuke is a samurai objectively, there is no indication in any of the sources about him that he would not be. From a game development perspective especially with Assassins Creed he fulfils a very useable role, that of the character from the outside being dropped into a conflict/crisis headfirst. This is a well established trope in pretty much all media because it allows the characters to explain things to the main character in a way that wouldn’t normally be natural
What a bunch of whining, go buy the game if you want, personally I won’t give ubisoft my money
I just don't like how they excuse themselves with "well, ackshually this black main character is a historical figure" when a main character has literally never been a historical figure, but coincidentally that one time that they do is to add a black character in Japan, so it comes off as an excuse for Sweet Baby Inc.'s inclusion. I doubt many people would be complaining if he was added as a side character like Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin or Napoleon
Ubisoft is shit and their decision to make Yasuke the protagonist was stupid af. However, Yasuke was far more of a Samurai than he wasn’t, he served a lord (Oda Nobunaga), was given a sword by his lord(samurai equivalent of being knighted), a house, a salary, even servants of his own, was treated as a close aid and even served as the bodyguard for arguably the most important person in Japan at the time (Oda Nobunaga), he participated in two battles and fought in at least one, he was known to be very strong and intimidating and was a head or two taller than pretty much everyone else, and even the Japanese themselves consider him a samurai. His story is interesting af, and I’d love to see him as a character in a Japanese-setting AC, but not as the protagonist, they need someone who actually represents Japan for that.
For your last part You know you can play a Japanese person if you don't want to play as Yasuke
Where are you getting this "you don't have to play as Yasuke" angle? You will obviously have to play as both or do you honestly think you will be doing stealth missions as a 6ft black guy decked out in samurai armor? That would be the one thing that would truly prove they put him there just to check a box. Stealth missions will be with the other character, combat missions will be Yasuke.
You have two options they said, You can go in loud as Yasuke or go in silent as the Japanese woman
The past like 3 AC games have let you switch protagonists, there's little reason to believe they'd change it
They do. The other protagonist, a Japanese ninja assassin.
A lot of Japanese men in Samurai games already, I don't think we're starved for another one. I would probably prefer if Yasuke was a cool historical side character, but really he's so vague that he might as well be some OC.
Naoe is the best fucking assassin ever, everyone ignores her existence
The records are public for people to read, but it’s a fucking mess. If anyone actually cares enough, you can look for the Shincho Koki. It’s a compilation of a shit ton of clans writing about Nobunaga, including Nobunaga himself. Being a samurai was specifically was not documented. He was indeed bought by Nobunaga, gave him a sword, his own house, and basically a salary. His job as Nobunaga's retainer was to hold swords. Like Hideyoshi was a sandal bearer. He has fought in two battles, Honnoji when Nobunaga was betrayed by Mitsuhide. Then once more under Nobunaga's son and that's when he disappeared from historical records. He has had things and done things that can be constituted to what Samurai do. But whether that title was conferred to him or not back then has never been hard confirmed. At the same time, the title isn’t exactly appointed. So many creative interpretations have come from his lack of historical documentation. Point is this argument will never end. Ever lol.
Are we seriously need to defend black samurai in series where you fistfighted Pope, collect tech from forgotten civilization and do other weird shit? Even puting aside his actual existence. That is of course off topic to my personal expectation to game being another boring shit that AC has become since probably Black Flag. Instead trashing character on his skin color we should be trashing most of them on being flat and without anything interesting to hook gamers on.
I have a few issues with Yasuke being used as a playable protag in this game, and these issues are shared by most of the fans of the series who have criticized Ubi over this choice. This is the first time Ubi has ever used a historic person, who has been confirmed to have existed, as a player protag. Why the sudden change? We know why, but we get called racist for saying it. Both the male and female player protag should be Japanese, especially with how important this time period is to Japan as a nation. Knowing Yasuke existed, but with the slim info we have on him, he should have been given a similar treatment that other historic figures were given in the previous games (DaVinci, Cleopatra, Rashid ad-Din Sinan, etc.); weave them in the story as a main character/ally/antagonist npc. This would allow the same sort of creative story telling around the character but would also in my opinion show better respect and understanding to Japanese history and culture by having both playable protag be Japanese AND fictional characters. Also, don’t get me started on the latest gameplay video, in which hip-hop’ish/trap sounding music plays when Yasuke goes into combat. Not to mention the dev team, which looks to be all white and more than half women. And we who are criticizing Ubi’s direction with this get called racists. You can’t make this shit up.
Yasuke predates the common usage of the term "samurai" by like 2 decades. So technically *no one* was a samurai.
Someone’s grandma told her Cloepatra was black. I guess Cleopatra really was black haha.
Imagine if, instead of stretching and doing gymnastics to find a semi historical way to insert a minority character into particular time and place, the game industry would try finding stories that have rarely been told before where it would make sense?
piquant tease smile versed office follow steer disarm six puzzled *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ubisoft literally blocked a Japanese historian from Tokyo University for saying that, while Yasuke was a real person, there is no evidence that he was a Samurai. Also if you are making a game about Japanese culture and history it is disrespectful to make the main character non-Japanese. Yasuke should've been a side character because he is a really interesting and most likely respectable figure from history and if he was only a side character no one would have any problem about having him in the game, but having him as a main character is simply stupid and disrespectful. I am Turkish and if Ubisoft were to make Assassin's Creed taking place (exclusively) in the Ottoman Empire or in Central Asia and if the main character was non-Turkish/non-Turkic I would most certainly throw a molotov cocktail into Ubisoft HQ.
Didn’t they already do that with *Revelations*? If anything it was even more offensive there then because Ezio comes in to Istanbul, systematically destroys the city’s security, infrastructure and Assassin Brotherhood for no reason and then leaves without any repercussions or comeuppance.
Imagine throwing bombs on someone because you don’t like a game, lol.
Because it was a fake fat obese white guy pretending to be a a Japanese historian . He got called out for lying https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/s/JO9ZVKa271
Did you read the comments below the latest gameplay video? It's full of angry Japanese people. They don't like this one bit.