Assassin's Creed Shadows And The Futility Of The Outrage Wars 

Did Disney purchase Ubisoft when we weren't looking?

If they made an Irish man or a Mexican the Samurai in the long awaited AC Japanese game I would find it just as stupid.

Assassin's Creed has had black characters before without backlash, like Aveline de Grandpré, who was even a fan favorite. I don't believe the majority of people complaining about Yasuke are racist; rather, it feels forced because having an African main character in Feudal Japan seems unlikely. What about the representation of the Japanese in an AC game? While it's true that fiction allows creative freedom, even good fiction requires a sense of authenticity and consistency in its narrative, characters, and setting to help the audience suspend disbelief and become immersed in the world. In medieval Japan, a prominent black man would stand out, making it difficult for him to operate as an unnoticed assassin.

It's an oversight in this video to ignore the fact hollywood and entertainment industry in general have long track records of snubbing asian men in leading roles. And as mentioned all past AC games have featured player character native to the games respective setting the first opportunity ubisoft has to introduce asian male character, they do a switcheroo to a black character?

I have played many games where the main character was black (Mafia 3, Gta 5, Watch dogs 2 and Legion and so on...). It wasn't a problem because in these games it was believable. But a black gay samurai in 16th century Japan, it just doesn't work, It is impossible to get immersed in.

Bayek was met with racism by the way. Ubisoft actually had to step in because forums where raided with racism. People being disgusted that a dark skin person was the character for Egypt. Even the announcement was spammed with "we was kannnnggzzzz"

Thank god, someone with an actual middle ground opinion. The discourse has been robbed by both extremes.

I do respect your point of view. My only problem is if it were the opposite you know they will have an outrage. But that is correct diversity should be authentic, it’s sad that due to media today most diverse characters will be seen as pandering or just there for tokenism.

It's tough playing the moderate.

Yoh, Look i'm black & albino, I'll always been an outsider. So first up, not going to call you racist. 1. because i don't know you. 2. that's stupid and overly reductive. 3. you're right that attitude makes talking about gaming exhausting. Instead I'd like to briefly talk about corporate diversity & tokenism. For me its like this. Comics, Games, Movies, TV & Books predominantly stared white people. Specifically they all stared white men, literally for decades. Because that was the target demographic. Corporate diversity excluded everyone else due to the color of their skin or gender. Now the audience has changed. So when women or POC get staring roles. Too often ppl go "oh that's just DEI or Tokenism." My problem is its always been that way. It was just almost exclusive to one gender & race. Yes tokenism is a thing. But we only get past it by continuing to hire/cast women & POC. Eventually we'll just start getting good stories. Staring the rainbow of humanity that exists. Take care & have a good one

I like the Christmas music at the end

A voice of reason.

Thank you for the level headed discussion. To me Yasuke isn't really an issue, it's choosing a historical figure as the main lead what feels a bit of an odd choice. Having the norm of a fictional lead that would interact with roughly accurate historical events and characters was part of the charm for assassin's creed. It's like making Lorenzo de Médici the protagonist for AC2 instead of Ezio, and now you would need to be very careful to align his in-game actions to the historical counterpart. Having a historical lead feels like an unnecessary limiter to how wide you can expand the character story. Granted there's very little known about Yasuke in real history, but still I would personally prefer a fictional lead that could ease in and out historical events without worrying to much if it was "accurate".

I have always been under the impression that Yaske had been given the title of Samurai, he was documented as having been given a sword, a stipend, and property, but as to whether he was granted the rank of samurai I have found out is not clearly known. Also, the rank of samurai was not as formally defined during the years he existed in Japan, so the answer is murky. I have no dog in this fight, I thought it was a cool factoid that one of the few non-Japanese to become samurai was a former slave from Africa somewhere who happened to be black. I said his story was amazing for having gone from slave to samurai as a comment on your last video and I had a few folks tell me I was wrong. I admit I don't know and I may well be. I do agree with you that it is a little strange that the first Japanese-themed Asassin's Creed game does not include a male Japanese playable character, shinobi, or samurai. I can imagine being a Japanese male and a fan of the series and then when your country and culture are taken up by the game makers you find no playable character you can identify with. I know there are plenty of games with playable samurai characters, so you can buy and play one of those if that is an issue for you but it would be disappointing.

In my opinion, Yasuke should have been an alternative character. Not a bound main character. Yes, Ubisoft will probably create a great story around him and him being non-japanese. But in the 16th century of Japan, there are definitely other characters I would like to play. It is not about him being black, it is about missed chances. A pupil of Hatori Hanzo would have been interesting. A female Shinobi at the time had a totally different outset than a male Shinobi. Both didn't walk around in black pyjamas. They were most often specially trained retainers or mercenaries. They would take on believable disguises and slip into enemy camps or towns and sabotage and wreak havoc. A man would thus have very different opportunities from a woman. I know, it's a game. But still. At the end of the day, Ubisoft should have just made it a possible choice. And I will re-read my collection of Samurai and Executioner. ;)

Yasuke is Joe Frazier I’m 💯 it’s him

The issue is people are too emotional. People are insinuating racism when people are actually questioning why Ubisoft was consistent with the main protagonists only up ‘til this point.

to me its all very simple: Race and culture are two separate things that are typically associated with each other but are not a direct result of each other, obviously. With that in mind any endeavour that wants to highlight a certain culture would naturally want to lean towards the depicting the race that is native to it, if historic immersion is the main goal. However the medium of fiction exists precisely to subvert our expectations and deviate from what is the standard in unusual and interesting ways, otherwise we are just re telling history/reality. This much should be obvious which is why the unlikely hero or the underdog is one of the most popular tropes in fiction. Further more, gatekeeping culture along racial lines purely for the sake of immersion is just super weird to me when it comes to fiction, particularly because its not hard to suspend your disbelief at the concept of one or two knights with dark skin or a blonde blue eyed zulu warrior. AC sits in the middle of fiction and historic immersion and from what ive seen so far, i think they've perfectly balanced the two. Players are getting Japan in all its historic glory and an authentic native Japanese character to play as with the Naoe, in addition to the "unlikely hero" Yasuke who also happens to align very closely with Japanese history. Now if AC:S was the first game/media we had that represented feudal japan through the samurai architype, I would have much more sympathy for the notion that because this is supposed to highlight Japanese culture, the heroes should represent the quintessential members of that culture and society rather than front it with an outlier. This is obviously not the case though, there are soooo many franchises that feature this class/setting with traditional Japanese figures and having yet another one, to me, feels very repetitive.

My biggest issue issue is when you have a game company that claims to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion but receives essentially grade (ESG score) and receives monetary incentive to put those things in the game, just looks scummy to me whether they believe in DEI or not. DEI is something that should come naturally and not forced just for the sake of a social identity politics.

Its not futile, that's quite obvious with how ubisoft stock price drop after the announcement.

its okay we already have a better samurai assassin game.. its called ghost of tsuhima. i was on the edge if i should get that one and then i saw AC shadows trailer with all the glorious in game store and black protagonist for a freaking japanese samurai game. i was like fine i will get GoT and man it was a blast so far. i am in act 2.there are no ingame purchases , theres free multiplayer mode and all the skins are tied to story or locations in game. fck ubisoft and fck their never ending grind padding just make us purchase exp boosters for a freaking single player game.

Hey Eric, I understand your take and do wholeheartedly agree with you that saying it's "woke" is stupid. And there could have been other reasons to have him in the game. I also agree that I was surprised that chosed yaske in this game. & I don't think everyone should be called racist that's disgusting. But then I stepped back and looked at the situation that While real, Yaske is essentially a myth so like you said before they can do what they please and My take is that, I personally feel that they took this route because of the plethora of Male Asian protagonist in so many games that they wanted something totally different, because think about it....an assassin is basically a ninja🤷🏾‍♂️...how many ninja or Asian adjacent games do we have? Too many to even try to count.

Nice intro! Short and elegant.

Ultimately people are free to not buy a product for whatever reason they want and I think it’s very strange for others to get angry at them for that.

I cannot fathom the amount of discourse within the community about Yasuke as he was known around to be one of the main protagonist from leaks, theirs even a reddit post from 7 years ago from r/todayilearned about Yasuke. 7 years ago! But people are jumping on the hate train after we knew about him since very early leaks of the game.

Nicely explained view. Very sensible indeed. Online spaces are not reflective of all society and are polarising by nature. They represent parts and/or trends but can be easily skewed using bots. That been said, the whole story is ludicrous simple because the outrage is not consistent, it wouldn't make it right but at least consistent which is not. Nioh has a white male protagonist, not a single controversy about representation in that case. Why? Because he is white so that is fine. Pay attention, you will never see a "anti-woke" gamer complain about playing a white hetero protagonist in videogames Which means that the "outrage" is selective, against minorities and/or women in general. AC:shadows has a female Japanese protagonist, she is barely mentioned in the discourse. This plays into a classic naziesque conspiracy popularised by 4chan about subverting and replacing "white (male) populations" which will lead to the downfall of society as we know it. "Anti woke" creators have figured it that there is a market for content and they are grifting on it. They removed the more extreme elements to make it more appealing to the masses without getting banned and collect their profits. For anyone that wants to know more, I highly suggest this video discussing the origins of GamerGate and GamerGate 2, explains in detail how it happened, what caused it and touches on the buzzwords like ESG ecc ecc. Is it long but 100% worth it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CGmESJM6BFQ.html&ab_channel=NeverKnowsBest

If anything shouldn’t there have been a main black character in odyssey and Valhalla?? There where many accounts of Africans in Egypt and in the Viking Era

I think the issue is also that he's the first actual historical playable character in this entire series, which narratively doesn't make any sense, because it's also historically bullshit entirely... There's a good reason that this never happened until now. All other protagonists may have existed, but from what I know they're all fictional, because if you played as an actual historical figure before, it would be messing up the actual historical facts about what these people actually did or not. I know these games are inaccurate, obviously... It's just weird to do this after this many years. Everybody knows why they're doing it now and for what? Everybody is pissed and Japanese gamers are actually insulted by this. Just looking at the ratio on Ubisoft Japan YT channel says it all. Overall I pretty much agree otherwise.

If you listen to the video it just sounds like Troy baker talking about the backlash 🤣

The problem with empathy is that these woke DEI weirdos not care. If you do not adhere to their messaging and virtue signaling, they will send out their minions to try and cancel the crap out of you. Yes, Yasuke was a real historical figure, but he was never a samurai to begin with. The book on Yasuke as an African samurai is based upon speculation, and yet it is being pushed as fact. I would have been ok having Yasuke as a supporting character, instead of Ubisoft pushing for Yasuke as a real historical samural who is LBGT+ friendly (i.e. gay) on top of it. This move sends out the wrong message and I will not support it!

Japanese shrines retain many influences from ancient Israelites and the regions around Mesopotamia. In particular, the sacrificial ritual of the Onbashira Festival at Suwa Taisha is very similar to the story of Isaac's sacrifice in the Bible. Many clans fled the volcanic eruption in Japan around 7,000 years ago, migrated to the region around Egypt, and returned to Japan after several generations.

If these are just works of fiction why do Ubisoft use factual historical language like "FREE JAPAN FROM IT'S OPPRESSORS" if there isn't any real historical accuracy to be taken seriously from AC games, then why use real life historical information, characters and language?

I don't care if Yasuke was a historical accurate samurai I do care he is not Japanese. I would prefer the power fantasy of playing a Japanese male protagnist if the setting in Japan for the 'woke' here you go... 'That Park Place' has reported Assassin’s Creed Shadows developer Ubisoft appeared to confirm that the game’s two main protagonists Yasuke (black samurai) and Naeo are LGBTQ+ characters. the woke can have their LGBTQ black samurai

All the main protagonists from previous games had always been fictional in names and as a person. But somehow this specific game set in Japan they would pick a real historical figure to be their main protagonist, i find that ironic and ridiculous

My problem is three fold in order of most importance. 1) Ubisoft games are ridiculously overpriced and they are scummy with their DLC and 3 days early access which is clearly a scam. 2) Ubisoft games are literally the same cut and paste game over multiple IP's. It's almost shovel ware at this point masquerading as AAA. 3) there are points made that Assassin's Creed was never historically accurate and while that is true, they have upset an entire country with what many would call "forced representation". Whatever our interpretations are of this person and we don't really know he could have been a side character or missions where you rely on him for assistance and it would take nothing away from the experience or the points for inclusivity in gaming (if that is what they wanted). To make him the main character was I believe insensitive to the Japanese who take these things to heart. The overreaction was probably too much but I still feel it would have been better on Ubisoft's part to get an advisor on board just to cover themselves for any blowback.

Also i hate that people are using this one character to say its "disrespectful" to their culture essentially. Like how can that be from this one fictional game ya kno? So yea i just want to have a respectful discourse.

here's my take on this as I've never seen anyone having the same perspective as me on this. But the story make sense lore-wise, having a black protagonist an outsider to be an assasin make sense as well as the female assasin. In this era, every adult male who wants to earn a living is either a farmer or a samurai (which can hold land/title/money etc all the good shit) Everyone wants to be a Samurai in this era. Now, assasins or shinobis are considered dishonorable for the way they fight, its not honorable according to the bushido code. Bushido code is what the samurais follow and honors it. This is a compelte opposite of what shinobis are known for, they fight and assasinate people in the shadows, while the enemy sleeps or vulnerable. With that sense, there would be no possible way for an actual Samurai to be following the creed of the assasins. A woman who will never become a samurai, can follow the code and will not have the guilt of dishonor and an outsider who did not grow up following the bushido would also join the assasins for their cause. He may be a samurai appointed by obunaga, or he may jsut be a retainer, no one knows for sure. Every source say he's either or both. but one thing is for sure, if you are an outsider and you see that you are losing a war against an enemy with a giant army 10x greater than yours would you risk fighting a losing war? or follow the path of ninjutsu/assasins creed and save countless lives to assasinate the head of the snake? This is the same predicament that Jin Sakai from Ghost of Tsushima had, in order to win a losing war, he has to result to a dishonorable method of winning i.e becoming a ninja.

You've got thousands of years of history on Japan, and they pick a dude that was there for fifteen months as the lead role, and you don't think its DEI? Riiiiight 😉 Yasuke did nothing of importance in Japanese history, but here we are, because of? Not WOKEism lol.

What ever Legitimate Arguments there may have been Have been swamped by a deluge of Anti black Vitirol on the Legitimacy of Yasuke status. It Got people showing their holes for real.

I agree with most of what you say, and especially that both sides are/can be too much... However, I do also believe that you are giving the Political Correct Crowed, way too much "benefit of the doubt", Just look at how they reacted to Kingdom Come. A game that went great length to try and be accurate and depict an specifical historical era... And it was jsut too white. So they "demanded" that they changed the historical accuracy, in order to depict their utopian ideals. While the other side sometimes, compain about stupid things as well, they never really complain about historical accuracy. At least this is the first time I can recall... and it's not a complain about "too few white people" or "too few women". It's a complaint that Ubisoft changes thier MO, and it very much seems to be done solely to fill checkboxes, since there are no reason for them to make the change from a developement or design point of view. Had they made an awesome game, with just the main character, and focused on telling his story, I don't think many people would have complained about the game... except the actual racists.

Well the same people crying racism about RE5 and killing a bunch of black zombies in Africa are now crying racism that we don't like a black dude going around killing a bunch of Japanese people in Japan. It's the hypocrisy, among other things, that gets people riled up more than anything.

As a south east asian man, I just think this controversy is ridiculous. This backlash about diversity is huge compared to the backlash against their absurd pricing and scummy practices, which tells you a lot about people. Thank god I never cared about representation, right? They never represent my people anyway. Name me 5 great south east asian protagonist in foreign medias and I'll wait. I don't care, I just wanna play a good damn game.

I have a much more controversial view, in that I feel that the Assassin's Creed games are "Meh" at best, and not worth the price of admission. The first one was fairly decent, but I didn't finish the second one as it bored me to tears. Haven't played any of the others and I have no regrets. It boggles my mind that people are arguing over the race of a character and not the flagrantly anti-consumer pricing tiers of this game.

People who use the retainer argument... go look up who Nobunaga's other retainers were..

I think they did is as a gimmick because Ubisoft sucks at making video games and when you're developers are lazy and have no creativity you need something else to get hype

Thats false there was MUCH controversy over Assassian Creed Origins you can go to the cinematic trailer and read the comments thats where the meme "We Wuz Kangz And Sheeit" was made same with Freedom Cry people calling Adwale a "m0nkey" I remember because i was excited playing a new assassian creed and finally being black even though i couldnt be black in Black Flag thats in the Caribbeans btw but atleast you can in the DLC and people mocked it like they are mocking this......what does that tell me? It tells me this game will be successful asl just like the past ones with controversy

But Nioh is ok 😂

Bro, now yasuke is Lgbtq

A lot of the people attacking you are anti-Asian because Asian cultures are strongly represented in video games.

This video is willful ignorance and solipsism at full display. The pricing of AC: Yasuke is just as much of an issue as it pandering yet again to the one minority group that always gets pandered to. Just because YOU think the culture stuff isn't important doesn't make it so. You're pretty much doing what you're railing against.

I am REALLY hard pressed to find any reason to be against this other than racism. The idea that Japanese men are under represented in videogames is patently untrue. Japan has a booming videogame industry. And the idea that Japanese men are underrepresented in Japanese games in feudal Japan is even more ridiculous. It would be refreshing to see a Japanese man as the protagonist in a non-feudal Japan tiltle. But I will bet you anything the same people who are now fighting for Japanese male representation would hate seeing a Japanese man as the lead in a triple AAA sci-fi, military, or fantasy title not based in Japan. Furthermore, Nioh is a Japanese game with a white protagonist based on a historical figure and it received nothing even remotely close to the backlash this game has gotten. In fact, Yasuke is an antagonist in that game and he is depicted as one of Nobunaga's retainers. He is called "The Obsidian Samurai". No backlash. No legion of online historians seeking accuracy on whether he is a samurai or not. Lastly, the thing that is most annoying about this is the notion that this is some DEI imposition on Japanese culture. Japan brought Yasuke to the West. We didn't bring him to them. They told us who he was. Yes, it might be a quasi-fictional, romanticised version, as many depictions of historical characters in entertainment media are, but it came from them, not us. Yasuke exists in books, anime, manga, and videogames as one of Team Nobunaga. In most of those depictions he is a samurai. So why is this a big deal now? Because they made a black man the protagonist in a main AC title. It's racism.

Ubisoft publicly admitted that their priority is diversity, equity and inclusion, that is their words. They are a video game company, why are they pushing propaganda? I appreciate your take and it is valuable.

arguing weather he was a samurai or not doesn't change the fact that there is no reason we cant play as a Japanese samurai. and when I buy a game im paying for good content, amazing game play. im not paying for activist, or Ubisoft road map they posted in 2023 "Ubisoft's Three-Year LGBTQIA+ Roadmap" and they flat out said they wanted "our samurai" witch means not the best fit for the game but what fits their agenda. if that makes me racist or phobic then so be it. im not caving to them. im sick of it

At least we’re getting 2 separate characters now instead of one who can be either male or female.

Here's my general opinion on the matter, summed up in three words: ISN'T IT CURIOUS? Honestly, ISN'T IT CURIOUS? ISN'T IT CURIOUS that in a game about feudal Japan, to represent the SAMURAI, a role that existed for hundreds of years with hundreds of famous examples, they JUST HAPPENED to pick really the only black "option" whatsoever? ISN'T THAT CURIOUS? And I think the factual story does matter. ISN'T IT CURIOUS that, to represent the SAMURAI, a role that warriors dedicated their life to, that trained their life for, that completely consumed their life, they choose a man who honestly was an honorary "samurai" for a little over one year, virtually completely due to the novelty of being the only black man his leader had ever seen. To be honest, Paul McCartney was about as much a knight as he was a samurai. So, I'm sorry, the motivation is clear to any rational person and the gaslighting that you must be racist if you point out what is clear and obvious is gross, but that's how it's been the last few years so nothing unexpected.

I just dont like playing as historical figures in assassin's creed, period. You lose some of the appeal lf you're no longer the common man fighting for what he believes is right. Yasuke would have made for a great compelling supporting character. But obviously its their franchise to do what they please, no matter how foolish it seems.

the reason why we say people who have a problem with Yasuke is simple : every time black people are put in a videogame, it become an issue for some yt gamers because of ''DEI'' ''ESG'' ''Diversity'' ''woke'', like if it's a bad thing in itself lol. Every SINGLE time, those mfs make videos to trash-talk people or color, or say that interracial couple shown are some sort of Jewish conspiracy to dilute white blood. I grew up in the 2000 era where black people could not even be considered in other media\genre except comedy; it was always the stereotypical black angry man\woman and he\she have to die fast. I remember growing in France, and all the media about WW2 was about Normandy\Dunkerque, cool, no pb. But if you want to talk about Senegalese tirailleurs, or other unknow black soldiers who ACTUALLY fought in WW2 with the allies, there we go, it become a problem, we want to replace them, etc. When all the media space have their stories, crazy shit. There is LEGIT interesting stories about people of color who could be made in games\movies, but reality is even is well done, people will find all the excuse to not try or take it down because it cause an issue when blacks are at the center of something. Look at Zau, this 2D game made with African context, but no one talk about it except to trash talk and says it was co-opted by SBI, DEI and stuff. I didn't saw a lot of content creator giving a fair shot. For once, it seems company finally decide to put some spotlight on people of color, that doesn't mean this will replace yt people stories , classic will ALWAYS be there. But why it pose such an issue when they had Yasuke, as a second character, in a series where you fought Georges Washington controlling people's mind with a magical object (AC 3) ? Now all the sudden, people NEED to talk about historical accuracy when a black man is around ? or can we stop the BS excuses and admit the problem is somewhere else ? The main character is literally Japanese, the shinobi girl lmao, but the main controversy is about the black man... Reality is if there was an AC set in Africa(other than North Africa and Egypt),a lot of you people would NOT pay attention to the game because of the premise. Or they will play and make some racist remarks every 5s..and truth to be told: if AC decide to make a game in Africa and put a white man in it as the main protagonist, I wouldn't see it as an issue, as long as the story makes sense.

People get mad over anything these days.

Asians not being represented in video games as a false argument, especially when you look at all the games that come out of Asia and a lot of the Asian companies. It’s manufactured outrage DEI is a thing however that doesn’t mean Asians aren’t represented unless you’re gonna tell me every Asian game features a white man only and that’s a completely different conversation that they need to have with Asian companies.

He was Da Samurai! Funky chop! Whack-a-hack! 😂

Am I problematic? I want to play as a fictional African samurai character, not as a historical figure.

Did you just delete my previous comment? lol

people will call you racist because you think you are taking the middle path but you are not , when you are clearly advocating for different races/ groups to only exist with in the limited narritive you are comfortable seeing them within ,so native america should only tell culturally accepted nation american story as you know them. Africans should do more african foke lore stories & African theme stories & not step within other cultures , because any of these groups existing outside of your view of them that way is FORCED courprate diversity , would there be this amount of outrage if the male in the game was another tom cruse white man or can the white man exist within all cultures & it not be forced diversity. we are all blind to our own biases & calling you take middle is blind

We wuz important in Japan n shiiie

Yes it's very dumb to make videos about this very stupid "issue" but here you are..

No there is no debate at all there was never ever a African samurai he never ever existed debate over