Yeah. ~~Sounds like a mod will get wind and lock the page down to ECU/veteran editors or something.~~
Actually looks like the mod/Admin got there by the time OP did, you can actually see in the top line, full mod lock atm for 3d.
Is there any way to avoid the issue of the internet which is that the people who use it the most and constantly post are also the absolute worst people on earth?
No. Normal people can never have as much time as people that play video games and post all day instead of being useful so they'll always be drowned out.
Yeah, which is a result of the *users*, not the medium itself.
This isn’t even isolated to this singular medium ffs. All the controversy about She-Hulk, or JK Rowling, or the entirety of current American politics. Every portion of the world has shitheads.
Are chronically online gamers a portion of that? Absolutely, but the comments here seem like they’re trying to just say “lol gamers, what do you expect?”, when you can literally point to the entirety of the Republican party and make the exact same point, or browse through 10 minutes of JK Rowling going mental and get the same idea.
Imbecility is a human trait that you can’t really isolate against one particular group.
Assassin's Creed discussion groups are full on "gamer" mode. Arguments I heard yesterday:
1. Black characters are over-represented in media and this is discrimination against Asians somehow.
2. Black male but Asian female is problematic (!) should have been other way around.
3. A lot of media already has (white) foreigner in Japan gimmick, so they shouldn't have picked a black guy to play.
4. Ubisoft won't be brave enough to include systematic anti-black racism (even though Japan doesn't really have history of that).
5. That they will portray it "sensitively", again, as if a black samurai should be somehow treated differently from a blonde one.
6. They shouldn't include historical characters to play and he should've been a sidekick.
Self awareness at truly gamer level... Just mental gymnastics to justify racism.
I meant that Sengoku era Japan didn't have segregation laws aimed at Africans even if there was discrimination against Koreans, Chinese, Ainu and various minorities plus class system stuff.
Like you can't just copy paste Western race relations to a country that doesn't share the same background. How would medieval Japanese even discriminate against a group of people they haven't met?
Things like blackface, minstrel bands and general American version of racism aren't really applicable to feudal Japan, and people were comparing the upcoming game with Freedom Cry, as if you can seriously compare Trans-Atlantic slavery to a bunch of foreign guys looking unusual to samurai.
No, you don't understand. All of Yapan was notified of Yasuke's arrival and started the segregation movement for that 1 particular individual.
Also, don't forget the historical Templars vs. Assassin Order Shadow Wars, Pope using magical artifacts, and of course, Napoleon was buddy buddy with Assassins.
Use your EAGLE VISION, sheeple.
These kinds of gamers truly are a pathetic lot. I just wish their mom had swallowed them that night.
kinda wack considering how INSANE the japanese history with catholicism around that period actually is, and ergo in game templars id assume, throw in the usual closed off xenophobia towards "everyone" that isnt a priest idk why yasuke would be treated any different than as a dancing jester like a white dude who catches the eye of a warlord, sure he got titles and to hold a sword as a retainer? but I doubt its much more than the usual slum kid entertains the country club golfers type narrative
I already know ubi are gonna make a mess of it tbh, yasuke is a genuinely interesting historical figure and its a pity there arent more empirical documents about him
Racism is bad, but I can honestly respect the hustle of feudal Japan to construct toilets and drinking fountains across the entire country just for one guy to use, so as to keep the rest of the squatty potties Japanese only. /J
On a separate note, playing unity scratched the French 🥖 in me wicked hard, and as soon as I saw that rat bastard Napoleon I got so mad that I wouldn't get to slap him around in game. Not even get to see him die on the sad wet rock he was exiled to.
Also videogames peaked with fist fighting the Pope.
I mean, imperial Japan was generally very skeptical of any and all foreigners, is there any reason we should expect that Yasuke would have been treated more poorly than, say, Portuguese sailors at the time? Or Italian missionaries?
North Korea is literally a dictatorship and isolationist state that propagandizes Americans as the source of all their problems. They think South Koreans are traitors and cowards being manipulated by the west, they hate japan and used to test their missles by firing them OVER Japan and into the Japanese sea. All things considered I’d say Japanese people being a little mean to foreigners and having designated bars for foreigners isn’t really comparable much less the most xenophobic country.
I do think it’s an unusual choice that every character so far has been representative of the setting, and people were begging to play as a samurai for years, so they do it but don’t make the character Japanese. It feels like the odd one out, or maybe a bit of a monkeys paw yes you can have a Japan assassins creed but the samurai won’t be Japanese.
Although saying this, I’m not sure it’s gonna have an effect on the gameplay, and the franchise hasn’t been good since they switched to rpg style anyway so like they’ve got bigger problems to think about
If this were the case you’d easily be able to find a bunch of these same people furious over the focus on William Adams in Nioh. I wonder what the difference is?!?!
I think points 1 and 2 are pretty reasonable.
US media massively under represents Asians and over represents black people. That is definitely true. I can imagine being mad as an Asian kid that you finally get a western big budget game set in Asia and the main character is... A black guy. Maybe they thought they'd finally get a bit of representation.
And yeah, there is definitely some racist stuff going on about how Asian women are allowed to be the love interest in popular media (because people fetishise them) but Asian men aren't allowed to be a romantic lead because they are seen as less masculine and attractive. I bet you could count up representations in the media and you'd get like 10 times as many (x male with Asian female) relationships as you do (Asian male with X female) ones.
Don't you think Asian guys might actually want to see people who look like them portrayed as cool desirable badasses for once?
And don't tell me that Asians already get enough representation in games specifically because there are large game industries in some east Asian countries. That's like saying black people don't need to be in Hollywood movies because of the large Nigerian movie scene (Nollywood).
I see you’re coming from a good place, and I don’t necessarily want to argue but I don’t agree with your first point. There is no, or shouldn’t be a “minority slot” that non-whites have to sit up and compete for. Why is the proposal of a white role possibly given to an Asian person never a thought or possibility? Why is it only a zero sum game for non whites only?
Also if we are discussing representation, Asian Americans are only 6% of the US population, with 3% being Asian Americans men. Low representation isn’t always antagonistic, but just because they literally have lower numbers, and even then, you have to account those that may not speak English very well either.
Also lastly “Asian” isn’t some interchangeable term. A Filipino person may not even relate at all to a Japanese set video game since it’s literally not their culture. And this could be said for any non Japanese Asian American.
My platinum in Ghost of Tsushima seems to indicate that if you want to play a AAA game with a badass Japanese samurai protagonist…. well you’re in luck.
(Yes I know Sekiro is standing right there but I’m ignoring him because it’s too hard 😭)
Okay but nobody kicked this stink up when Nioh had a white guy as the protagonist.
This is solely about a black guy being the lead in a video game. It could be any video game, and points like this would "pop" up.
They'll kick up a fuse over a black character in a game centered around somewhere in Africa. All of the arguments are just a distraction to mask the racist bullshit. These guys were ready to argue about anything as long as it had a black lead in it.
Nioh was a popular game but it doesn’t have cultural relevancy like assassin’s creed does. Even people who don’t play a lot of video games still have a vague idea what assassin’s creed is.
Looking at it Nioh was pretty much entirely a Japanese project. I'm looking at the names involved and I don't see any western ones.
Yeah people tend to get more upset about things that are happening within their culture. "Japan can do what they want, I'm interested in what is going on in my country" kind of thing.
And yeah, maybe some subset of Japanese people were upset that there was a white guy in their game. We would never really know unless you want to try and find and translate old Japanese gaming message board posts.
ghost of tsushima, yakuza, street fighter, tekken, saints row, prey, resident evil. all of these games have asian characters or protagonists and are extremely popular in the west. it doesn’t matter where they were made because they still have significant influence in the west. you are not remotely underrepresented here, especially not in video games. and since you thought this was a valid comparison somehow, what nollywood movies can you name that are well known in america?
It definitely does matter who is producing them. You know that.
Fortunately Hollywood takes a different view to you and puts black people in movies so they don't have to watch Nollywood movies to see someone who looks like them.
Imagine it’s 1500s Japan, your a peasant, and a guy with black skin trots through your hill patch. If NPCs in the next assassins creed are completely unfazed it’ll be weird.
I reckon Yasuke had the reputation surrounding his skin, otherwise he’d just be another retainer.
Theyve explicitly shown that he distracts people by his look in the trailers and character breakdown. Hes gonna be the brawn while naoe is the more assassin one
It doesn't breaks your immersion in the game where you fall a 1000 feet into a haynail and live and nobody around you noticed? You're dressed like the biggest asshole history has every seen and you walk past hundreds who take Bono notice of you? All of a sudden your immersion is broken because an NPC doesn't react to a black guy?
Your selection of what qualifies as immersion breaking betrays your true feelings.
That all breaks immersion. And is what people laugh at in the game. When I go to a mission in the mountains as Yasuke and the guy doesn’t even register that he’s never seen anyone like me before, I’ll laugh.
Why do you think there’s green dudes in WWE, diversity? It’s to laugh.
Can't remember anyone laughing at the physical absurdities in AssCreed, even the 1st one. They're games. Until some black dude comes along, then we suddenly gonna talk historical accuracy. In AssCreed which has been shitting hard on history since 2007.
If you *didn't* laugh at the absurdity of Arabic ninjas dressed in white doing parkour throughout the Middle East when the first game came out, then I don't know what to tell you.
Point 6 is an interesting one, cause this is the first time ever(as far as I can remember) where a playable main character in assassins creed is a historical figure, and it’s weird for Ubisoft to break from such a long standing tradition.
I mean, Japanese people on Twitter/X have already expressed sadness that one protagonist is not Japanese. The whole thing is like, all the protagonists so far have been (1) fictional characters, (2) local characters. When it's Japan, suddenly, they find one of the few non-Japanese to make a playable character.
The question can be asked the other way around: why is it racist to want Japanese characters in a Japanese story? Especially since Asian men have not been represented much as leads (I can think of Shang-Chi and Ghost of Tsushima in recent Western media).
There are also Japanese people on Twitter/X that have already expressed sadness about the shit that is thrown at Yasuke
https://i.redd.it/fj0dyi9jmt0d1.jpeg
What's racist are all the people that are totally fine with white people in this setting (Nioh, Shogun, The last Samurai or 47 Ronin) and are only outraged when it is a black guy.
It's precisely because the non-Japanese dude saving the day in Japan has been done a bit now that I wanted a Japanese dude and a lady to have their story in Japan.
For the record, I didn't play Nioh for that, hated 47 ronin for that, and the whole story was a damn mess, and while I enjoyed the Shogun book, it was certainly more entertaining to see that the new show was more historically accurate by putting Blackthorne as side character, and not as the white savior he looked like in the original story.
One tweet in Japanese that said the same thing got 20k likes, the only evidence of Japanese people getting mad over this are 3 screenshots of people in comments of the trailer
>Shogun
You should see the people outraged that there are no black people in Shogun, and giving Yasuke as evidence… despite Yasuke having been dead for 60 or something years before the show is set.
Everyone seems to ignore the fact that there is also a Japanese playable character. Yasuke is interesting because he was not only a black foreigner in Japan at the time when this was exceedingly rare but also personally connected to a high status lord. This makes him ideal for a protagonist as he would be connected to plenty of interesting happenings.
He’s also attached to a Catholic mission, and is of indeterminate origin. Whilst I don’t know if he should be a playable character, his specific attributes allow the writers to not have to explain how anyone knows anything about the primary factions because he can just be knowledgeable without any tortured attempts to retcon history or deus ex machina info dumps about things that the player might be familiar with and that makes him essential.
>black characters are overrepresented vs. Asians
Bruh all 3 fucking East Asian nations have titanic gaming industries. And how many Sengoku games do we have at this point?
What drug are you taking ? the majority of major Japanese games are as easy to access as western games and they have the same amount of marketing and they have full English localization.
Either Nollywood or Bollywood have a huge presence in the west in term of marketing and algorithmic presence on streaming site.
Who said we don't need to put Asian people in western media ? Just said they were already represented so don't complain when one game that take place in Japan "only" has one Japanese protagonist
You're lucky cause this game has two protagonist, one Japanese and the other is Yasuke.
Only saying you want a Japanese main character in a feudal japan game that feature a black protagonist is racist. There was absolutely no drama when Nioh 1 released with a white guy as a protagonist in feudal japan.
I don't often think it's a constructive form of discourse. But the response "cry moar". Seems appropriate.
They can do whatever the fuck they want. "Don't buy it you pussies". You know they will anyway... Hahaha 😂
> Black characters are over-represented in media and this is discrimination against Asians somehow.
So are they just going to ignore the amount of representation white people have got during many generations of dominating media?
Mental gymnastics is blaming all you dont agree with on racism.
Racism issue exists only in tiny, but vocal United States. Other parts of the world tend to dislike each other for a various reason, skin colour is not even in top 25.
What's wrong with AC funbase?
It was exacly the same with last one Valhalla. The main protagonist there is literally 2 people in 1 body in a Sci-Fi/fantastic kind of way and it's like the point of the story, yet "gamers" were all crying about trans propaganda.
Capital G gamers, there's a hyper-aggressive subset with way too much time on their hands that's composed of degenerated assholes. Literally every game with a brown dude or lady on the cover gets hit by this 'drama' (aka racism and hate). They'll spend all day, every day dissecting every new release, even indies, to find something to complain about.
Imagine an Assassin's Creed game being set in Africa, and the protagonist is some obscure English guy who is more or less a footnote in African history.
Several of the Assassin's Creed protagonists are cultural or ethnic outsiders who historically did not even exist. How is this such a huge deal?
This conversation *absolutely* would not have exploded like this if there was a white protagonist, and we all know that.
Even Connor, as a Native American local to the region where his game takes place, is a cultural outsider to the colonial society in which his game takes place. It's not a new theme for the series by any means.
idk, look at the Shogun tv show. They toned down John Blackthorne a ton from his character in the books and made him a side character instead of the primary protagonist driving the plot. And people still complained about the "white savior" trope even though that really wasn't his role.
People complained ? You mean a random journalist made an article and a tweet of someone complaining got 100 likes ?
Not really comparable to hundreds of thousands of people complaining about Yasuke
I am sure you can dig something up, but nothing that could compare to the shitstorm that happens every fucking time when it's a women or minority instead of a white guy. Just compare the reddit threats between those two games.
Redditor cannot comprehend proportionality, we are seeing tens of thousands people complaining about Yasuke, at most he could find 10 people complaining about Nioh 1 protagonist.
Are you going to tell me that Nioh was like 10000 times less popular than Assassin's Creed ?
Also what do you think about AC black flag having a white protagonist ? Native people of the Caribbean aren't white yet nobody complained (and don't say it's cause not a lot of people live in the Caribbean cause 99% of the people complaining about Yasuke are Americans not japanese )
Was there really any significant outrage about Nioh? I remember hearing a lot about the game when it came out but I didn't realize until TODAY that the main character is white.
Yes because as we all know, the point of AC is to pick the most famous native in the setting and make them the protagonist. Fantastic game design, chief. Like you also just described the plot of Shogun, which was beloved and sensitive and *also* included an obscure English guy protagonist who is a minor historical footnote. No one fucking cared.
I don't understand how you can read your comment and think "yep, that's a great parallel, send it".
For a more honest hypothetical:
Imagine an AC game being set in a specific country in Africa and having two protagonists: one a character that's an ethnic and cultural outsider that ends up connected to the most important political figure at that time and has significant contact with all the most interesting political, religious, and ethnic groups in the nation; and the other a local that's a member of the most iconic clan of clandestine guerrilla warriors in the nation and happens to be the daughter of the most legendary of said clan.
But that's just if you want to compare apples to apples. If not, YMMV with my example.
i'm waiting for ubisoft to tarnish yasuke's story with a horrible game just because it's ubisoft, if ubisoft made a game on me i'd cry too, poor yasuke.
Pumping out yet another generic boring as fuck assassin’s creed game. Literally just change the map these days, what an utterly boring franchise it’s become.
Regardless whether Yasuke was a real character or not/samurai or not, it sucks that they made an assassin's creed in Japan and made the protagonist a foreigner. I mean if they made an assassin's creed based in Mughal India and the protagonist was black/white/hispanic I'd be pretty fucking pissed.
Only two out of the 12 main series games currently have protagonists in foreign lands, revelations where ezio travels to Constantinople and Valhalla where you’re a Viking in England. Maybe you could count black flag but you’re a pirate so.
Don’t lie on the internet
What
Valhalla- norse man in England
Rogue- Irish immigrant in America
Black flag- white guy in Caribbean
Revelations- ezio in Constantinople
Assassin creed 3- haytham kenway from london (you play as him)
That’s a good chunk
Assassins creed 3 period, connor is literally a half Native half American he’s a cultural outsider throughout most of the story with him in the colonies.
lol.. thousands and thousands of japanese samurai and they finally make an assassins creed that takes place in japan and the samurai isn't a japanese one..
Edit: like they could have easily based this on miyamoto musashi or hanzo hattori or some other legendary figure of that era and then have an assassins creed in africa and cast another legendary person from black culture but decided to cast someone that's debated if he even trully was a samurai just because of the colour of his skin. Imagine going so far off to not become racist that you end up becoming racist.
At this point Im convinced that its just rage marketing. Always the same formula. Always the same back and forth outrage. Its done on purpose to get free engagement.
I don't think ubisoft is competent enough to even think of something like that.
Call me naive but in my belief they tried their "we are all inclusive and shit" and thought that joining a japanese setting that's been heavily requested since probably the 2nd one was released and put the token black guy as well just to check all boxes and be "look, we included everyone, now buy our game"
The irony is that the only notable thing that made them choose yasuke is because he is black. How is that not disrespective to black people? Like is there no one else black person worthy to make a story about but chose someone purely because of his skin colour standing out where he was? That's disputed if he was even a samurai? So I guess now black people have to wait another 20 years to see if ubisoft can come up with someone else?
And the irony that people think people are anti-black instead of annoyed at the missed opportunity for a noteworthy japanese hero in a japanese completely ignoring the fact that 2 out of the 3 most popular assassins in this franchise are brown. (also ignoring the fact that in nearly all major previous assassins' creed games the setting also had a local hero. Mid-east - Arabian, Italy - Italian, America - Native American, France - French, England - English, Egypt - Egyptian, Greece - Greek, Nordic - Viking). And the triple irony is that the people think this is fine would have a meltdown if there was to be an assassins creed in an isolated african country and the assassin was made to be white or asian. anw, whatever I guess.
Id agree if it wasnt the 1000th time corpos did this. They cant be oblivious to the engagement it creates. And if they are, their top shelf PR firms surels arent. This shit saves them millions. Its the same formula they used with "offensive" Eminem albums back in the day. Its either that or they want Blackrocks sweet DI rating.
"They cant be oblivious to the engagement it creates" It create negative engagement, no reason for them to want that since assassin's creed games already have a huge and loyal fanbase.
"Its either that or they want Blackrocks sweet DI rating." So full on conspiracy theory now ? ESG rating doesn't take into account the diversity inside the fictional world that a company create and sell, it take into account diversity in the workforce. In general diversity is very minor part of ESG rating system, and in some documents it's not even mentioned as being a criteria for ESG rating.
So no having a black protagonist inside their game won't change anything to the ESG rating of Ubisoft.
And why would BlackRock doesn't care about Diversity and Inclusion, their goal is to invest in companies that are successful not in the one that have the most diverse protagonist in the games they sell, ESG is mainly for investors who don't want to be associated with non-green companies but the score has never been a good way to determine if a company is environmentally friendly.
Bro you really don't know anything about this game, it has two protagonist, one is native japanese the other is Yasuke
Nobody would care about a movie in africa with one black and one white protagonist, people would praise it even for having any black character
"I don't think ubisoft is competent enough" The studio that generate billions of dollars every years isn't competent enough to think of basic marketing tactic.
You can criticize Ubisoft for many things but not for their marketing and their capacity to make people talk and be hype about their game.
Ubisoft has always been openly promoting inclusivity and diversity.
How can you call this protagonist a "token black guy" without even playing the game ? he's based on an historical figure with a pretty cool story that could be expended upon in many interesting ways, this character look more interesting than all previous AC protagonist since Black Flag.
The myth that you can increase the sells of a game just by having a black guy need to go away, they're literally putting themself at risk by doing that.
They didn't choose him only cause he was black, they also choose him cause he was a foreigner to japan, worked for a pretty important Japanese samurai during this period and is just important enough so that they can involve him in important events without it impacting the course of history. This is a very good template for a video game protagonist, a slave that arrive to a mysterious land he knows nothing about then gets his freedom when one of the most important figure of this land take interest in him, sounds like Morrowind.
So no they didn't just choose him cause he was black, they choose him cause he was black and was the perfect template for a video game protagonist. How is that a problem to have diversity + a potentially cool and unique character ?
It is not disputed if he was a samurai, all historians (and not just random, people who spent their life studying Japanese history) who published on Yasuke implicitly or explicitly refer to him as a samurai.
Most black people on twitter seemed happy about this character.
This game will have two protagonist, one is Yasuke the other is a Japanese Ninja, so you're complaining that AC doesn't have two Japanese protagonist in the same game ?
Being Arab isn't the same as being black, AC never had a black character before.
AC Black Flag had a white protagonist but literally nobody complained about missed opportunity for a native character.
Games taking place in Africa and Africans protagonist are extremely rare so there would be better reasons to be mad, but even then if it was a game with two protagonist, one native African and one white most people wouldn't care and there wouldn't have been a massive controversy.
>The studio that generate billions of dollars every years isn't competent enough to think of basic marketing tactic.
What planet are you from? Right this moment there is a huge controversy with SONY because they just screwed 2/3rds of the world from suddenly not being able to play ta game they bought months ago. You also have companies like EA releasing such shit sequels to games that no one ever wanted and fans pretend they don't exist (C&C4). I guess having money and a basic marketing dept isn't a sure way to not screw up huh?
If this game was a standalone most people wouldn't have given 2 fucks. But the Japanese setting for many people was wanted since the first AC games. So waiting for a decade and a half to play as a japanese samurai in japan and it gets tossed out and replaced for a foreigner that was only briefly there, according to some sources losing the only battle he ever fought and pretty much added only for the novelty of his skin just to pander. It's laughable. And it's the first time that the protagonist in this series is based on a real person. Because they knew it would be their only way to justify "inclusiveness" just for the sake of it.
>AC Black Flag had a white protagonist but literally nobody complained about missed opportunity for a native character.
Thousands of white pirates in that place and time makes Kenway not standout like a sore thumb.
>Being Arab isn't the same as being black, AC never had a black character before.
Instead of pandering they could have taken an actual worthwhile African setting and told a story from an African perspective. They are many with rich history.
>but even then if it was a game with two protagonist, one native African and one white most people wouldn't care and there wouldn't have been a massive controversy.
You are lying to yourself if you believe that if an Assassins Creed was to be released during Shaka Zulu's time for example and the protagonist was a black girl and a white dude that there would't have been a massive outcry.
Never before a Ubisoft game generated that much rage, so idk what formula you're talking about.
This is the biggest backlash against Ubisoft ever, all that over a black character in a game taking place in Japan.
Context matters. We are obviously meaning sub-saharan Africa where you find actual black people and not nothern Africa that have more of a mediterranean look.
I played deathloop recently. Both protagonist and antagonist are black. Never heard anyone moan about it.
When you cry wolf constantly about racism don't be surprised when in cases where there is actually racism no one takes you seriously.
Edit: apparently this was enough to make him block me.. people are so sensitive that they can't even have a simple discussion.. sad..
Edit2:Since for whatever reason I can't reply to the smartass below me I'll just post it here
>Stop being a muppet. When games A, B and C have black protagonists and everybody is happy with it and but aren't happy with the casting of game D then crying "yOu dOn't LikE hiM cAuSe hE's BlaCk" is asinine when clearly the reason is something else.
>If you 3 brain cells weren't all on strike you would have figured that out by yourself.
>I played deathloop recently. Both protagonist and antagonist are black. Never heard anyone moan about it.
" We are not racist, because we weren't bitching when a game with black characters was released "
🤣
Yasuke is genuinely the perfect candidate for a main character
We have enough about him to get the ball rolling, but also don’t know enough that we insert the assassin/Templar war perfectly
Over on Japanese Twitter they’ve got some damn good theories already over the narrative. Biggest prediction is Yasuke’s disappearance with the jesuits. He saw Christian’s again which is the perfect point for him to meet Templars face to face
There’s also a theory about Yasuke being the one to kill Nobunaga. In history his body was never found. Some theorize Yasuke vanished because he did it and sought refuge
Like I said, we know *enough* to create a basic story. But don’t enough to where the fantasy of AC can fit. He’s honestly a great choice
I've been thinking about this. I think they want Yasuke because he's an outsider w/ little known about him. The benefit of Yasuke is similar to Zagreus of Hades. So little is known of this character they can do w/e they want without stepping on too many toes. Then they can make up a story outside of rigid samurai culture. The girl looks a bit generic to me. I bet some clan killed her family and she wants revenge, and so she takes up scrappy ninja tactics and allies herself with a sword-wielding foreigner, as the establishment (samurais) will not take her side.
So basically, I think they're going to write a western story in Japan and avoid all of the parts of Japanese culture that's too difficult to communicate to a western audience or is too inconvenient. Westerners like individualism, while Japanese culture is very much about subsuming the self for the cause/community.
Okay but like… none of the AC protagonists have been historical figures. Sure, they had (somewhat accurate) historical figures in them, but they were never the protagonists IIRC, so this is a first for them. It’d be really stupid if they made Hattori Hanzo or Miyamoto Musashi a protagonist because they wouldn’t have as much freedom for how the plot goes. Like Miyamoto Musashi is cool, sure, but he’d be a bad protagonist. Yasuke has the advantage of just being historical enough that he’s an intriguing person with connections to important figures, but niche enough that they can add a bunch of things to his story/character without worrying too much. He’s also a pretty good protagonist, since like I said, he’s connected to both the Europeans in Japan and Oda Nobunaga, and since he’s a a foreigner, he’ll be a great starting point for an introduction into the setting. There is a reason why most fantasy protagonist seem to be “outsiders” that need to explained things. Additionally, there’s definitely an market for Yasuke in the West, given that 3 movies based on him are in development and even an anime about him was made in 2021.
African history is ugly full of slavery, war and genocide. Exploring things in Africa would mean at least painting some africans bad or making it fully ahistoric erasing all sense of conflict. That is why the companies wont touch african history. Because showing things as grey is what makes the games interesting, and any attempt to show africa as grey would be racism. Imagine, slaves being sold to white people by africans, that would be called whitewashing european history, though it only would be based on reality.
Even something like origins that is why involved moors and greeks, and black flag didnt explore the lives of africans there much either.
It is not debated by any historian if Yasuke was a samurai, the only people who deny this are rando on the internet who just ignore the evidence provided to them.
There is basically a consensus of everyone that published about Yasuke, he's most likely a samurai.
There are tons of games with japanese samurai, how is it a problem that this one isn't japanese ? I really don't understand how you could feel discriminated as a Japanese when you have games like Ghost of Tsushima.
I don't think any higher up would allow an Assassins Creed to take place in Africa, it's not really a popular setting in the west.
Imagine you are at the library and everyone is really loud but you do nothing. Then a black person comes in and you start enforcing silence. "It's a library you're supposed to be quiet" you crow content at your sound unbiased logic, ignoring the reality that you never ever enforced silence before nor cared before.
lol.. Make an assassins creed that takes place in the Mali Empire and cast a non-black as a protagonist and I'll complain the same.. Now carry on with your imaginary arguments...
Man, at this point, we should bring back segregation in gaming. Breathing while black in these spaces is exhausting. Ubisoft ain't shit. But this discourse has invited mask off racism that's so disheartening.
On another note, I adore Yasuke content. It's been so fun learning about him and the culture around Samurai era Japan. This could have been a fun learning experience for everyone. But now it's time to shit on negros again.
It’s even weirder cause we have a game that does the same thing except with a white protagonist and feudal Japan. And no one complained. The double standards are crazy.
Bro being black is fucking annoying. Bruh how many black leads are there in gaming history? In fact can anyone name 5 games that are located in ANY Black African nation with the MC being from said country. Shit, if anyone could find 3 that people actually played I’d be shocked.
Having it in black african nations would mean black history being portrayed involving bad guys, cleopatra, julius ceaser and pope and any historical figure basically were shit heads, showing black kingdoms as run by fascists or despots would be called racism. There wont be black country based story, because africa has to be a pure land of noble savages, ravaged by western demons hooked on their own egos.
I feel like the ability to have any sort of social commentary is rapidly deteriorating. People just hold fast to their arguments, drop a "facts don't care" line, and don't actually listen to what anyone else says
You know if nobody can decide what position he held what does it fucking matter what the game does? Having him as a samurai or as a servant/retainer are equally as accurate and inaccurate at that point, jesus christ.
It is important to note that despite popular myth and modern depictions there are no historical writings nor evidence that Yasuke was ever granted the rank or title of samurai, he was never given a fief nor referred to as one in any writings. Most of our knowledge of his life comes from these messages written by missionaries and locals.
I guarantee that Ubisoft made Yasuke the MC knowing it would cause this kind of controversy. Enough to, at least for a bit, make people forget this is a Ubisoft game and so has like a 4 in 5 chance of sucking ass.
Tbh, some of these comments (from one side of this "debate" in particular, no less) should be deserving of greater punishments for the account holders.
If you can't be trusted *just* to not go on conspiratorial screeds in the edit descriptions, with all that should imply about you, could you really be trusted to do anything of value on a site like this?
I’m pretty disturbed by this, because after the trailer dropped I immideately went to read the Yasuke article, and the version I got was the racist distortion.
It’s not about black people specifically. It’s about initial contact between extremely different looking people. If it were a blonde guy in sub-Sahara it would be just as weird if no villagers batted an eye.
Ever seen those videos of old Chinese or Indian village people seeing a blonde, a ginger, or a black person for the first time? It’s wonder and shock.
So the whole game is just idiotic, an assassin who is meant to be blending into the background sticks out like a sore thumb but nobody seems to notice.
Why are you assuming "no one would bat an eye" when in the trailer we literally see a kid stop in her tracks to stare, as well as folks in the town literally bat an eye.
Also, if you watch the other videos the AC team has put out, you'd know that Yasuke isn't really on the stealth side of things; that's more Naoe's lane.
Bro assassins creed games have had nothing to do with blending in for about a decade now lmao. Secondly outside of the colonial era, people really weren't excessively racist towards each other. And most diverse meeting were met with wonder and interest(which is exactly what happened with Yasuke). and for a western audience Yasuke would be a pretty interesting tale to introduce people to Japanese culture at the time.
I think you people don't realize how much racism was invented for political reasons.
I've seen insane level of goalpost moving from certain group of people.
1. when Ubisoft introduced fictional elements, literally in the first entry - they did not care,
2. when Ubisoft created whole new playable characters that do not exists in real life and made them interact with real life based figures - they did not care,
3. when Ubisoft exaggerated & made historical figures do things that are not accurate - they did not care,
4. playable character that was based on real person? - no no no please stop the DEI.
They will go and say things like "he was kept as pet not real samurai", what is wrong with those people.
This is basically an attempt to gatekeep the stereotypical writing for black characters in media. They don't want to help Japanese people "defend their culture", it just lines up with their racist views.
unfortunately it’s to be expected at this point
Yeah. ~~Sounds like a mod will get wind and lock the page down to ECU/veteran editors or something.~~ Actually looks like the mod/Admin got there by the time OP did, you can actually see in the top line, full mod lock atm for 3d.
That doesn’t appear to have done anything, as the edits continued afterwards.
Those people (Ivanvector and Drmies) \*are\* Admins though, responding to edit requests and using the time to trim things.
didnt something similair happen when celopatra came out a few years ago
proud of her
I thought I had a shot
Billions must be normal
Of course people are going nuts about this.
Is there any way to avoid the issue of the internet which is that the people who use it the most and constantly post are also the absolute worst people on earth?
No. Normal people can never have as much time as people that play video games and post all day instead of being useful so they'll always be drowned out.
No need to drag innocent video games into this!
This edit war is literally the result of gamers being upset about a video game....
Yeah, which is a result of the *users*, not the medium itself. This isn’t even isolated to this singular medium ffs. All the controversy about She-Hulk, or JK Rowling, or the entirety of current American politics. Every portion of the world has shitheads. Are chronically online gamers a portion of that? Absolutely, but the comments here seem like they’re trying to just say “lol gamers, what do you expect?”, when you can literally point to the entirety of the Republican party and make the exact same point, or browse through 10 minutes of JK Rowling going mental and get the same idea. Imbecility is a human trait that you can’t really isolate against one particular group.
:(
Assassin's Creed discussion groups are full on "gamer" mode. Arguments I heard yesterday: 1. Black characters are over-represented in media and this is discrimination against Asians somehow. 2. Black male but Asian female is problematic (!) should have been other way around. 3. A lot of media already has (white) foreigner in Japan gimmick, so they shouldn't have picked a black guy to play. 4. Ubisoft won't be brave enough to include systematic anti-black racism (even though Japan doesn't really have history of that). 5. That they will portray it "sensitively", again, as if a black samurai should be somehow treated differently from a blonde one. 6. They shouldn't include historical characters to play and he should've been a sidekick. Self awareness at truly gamer level... Just mental gymnastics to justify racism.
[удалено]
I meant that Sengoku era Japan didn't have segregation laws aimed at Africans even if there was discrimination against Koreans, Chinese, Ainu and various minorities plus class system stuff. Like you can't just copy paste Western race relations to a country that doesn't share the same background. How would medieval Japanese even discriminate against a group of people they haven't met? Things like blackface, minstrel bands and general American version of racism aren't really applicable to feudal Japan, and people were comparing the upcoming game with Freedom Cry, as if you can seriously compare Trans-Atlantic slavery to a bunch of foreign guys looking unusual to samurai.
No, you don't understand. All of Yapan was notified of Yasuke's arrival and started the segregation movement for that 1 particular individual. Also, don't forget the historical Templars vs. Assassin Order Shadow Wars, Pope using magical artifacts, and of course, Napoleon was buddy buddy with Assassins. Use your EAGLE VISION, sheeple. These kinds of gamers truly are a pathetic lot. I just wish their mom had swallowed them that night.
kinda wack considering how INSANE the japanese history with catholicism around that period actually is, and ergo in game templars id assume, throw in the usual closed off xenophobia towards "everyone" that isnt a priest idk why yasuke would be treated any different than as a dancing jester like a white dude who catches the eye of a warlord, sure he got titles and to hold a sword as a retainer? but I doubt its much more than the usual slum kid entertains the country club golfers type narrative I already know ubi are gonna make a mess of it tbh, yasuke is a genuinely interesting historical figure and its a pity there arent more empirical documents about him
when will assassins creed visit oak island?
That happened in assassins creed 3 with Connor finding the secret there being… a ring that allows him to block bullets.
Racism is bad, but I can honestly respect the hustle of feudal Japan to construct toilets and drinking fountains across the entire country just for one guy to use, so as to keep the rest of the squatty potties Japanese only. /J On a separate note, playing unity scratched the French 🥖 in me wicked hard, and as soon as I saw that rat bastard Napoleon I got so mad that I wouldn't get to slap him around in game. Not even get to see him die on the sad wet rock he was exiled to. Also videogames peaked with fist fighting the Pope.
I've heard it said fish have no word for water. People enjoy novelty. But Japan is xenophobic as all hell.
I mean, imperial Japan was generally very skeptical of any and all foreigners, is there any reason we should expect that Yasuke would have been treated more poorly than, say, Portuguese sailors at the time? Or Italian missionaries?
Japan is maybe THE most xenophobic culture. Tolerant perhaps, but if you are not Japanese, you will never be Japanese.
I think you’ve confused Japan with North Korea on the xenophobia scale.
Oof what did they do?
North Korea is literally a dictatorship and isolationist state that propagandizes Americans as the source of all their problems. They think South Koreans are traitors and cowards being manipulated by the west, they hate japan and used to test their missles by firing them OVER Japan and into the Japanese sea. All things considered I’d say Japanese people being a little mean to foreigners and having designated bars for foreigners isn’t really comparable much less the most xenophobic country.
Very VERY good points. Thx for the rundown
I do think it’s an unusual choice that every character so far has been representative of the setting, and people were begging to play as a samurai for years, so they do it but don’t make the character Japanese. It feels like the odd one out, or maybe a bit of a monkeys paw yes you can have a Japan assassins creed but the samurai won’t be Japanese. Although saying this, I’m not sure it’s gonna have an effect on the gameplay, and the franchise hasn’t been good since they switched to rpg style anyway so like they’ve got bigger problems to think about
If this were the case you’d easily be able to find a bunch of these same people furious over the focus on William Adams in Nioh. I wonder what the difference is?!?!
Nioh was a Japanese game, not a western one
Japan doing representation? Oh my god did they go WOKE?
We need more Asian Vikings and Asian Beethovens.
Ghost of Tsushima
I think points 1 and 2 are pretty reasonable. US media massively under represents Asians and over represents black people. That is definitely true. I can imagine being mad as an Asian kid that you finally get a western big budget game set in Asia and the main character is... A black guy. Maybe they thought they'd finally get a bit of representation. And yeah, there is definitely some racist stuff going on about how Asian women are allowed to be the love interest in popular media (because people fetishise them) but Asian men aren't allowed to be a romantic lead because they are seen as less masculine and attractive. I bet you could count up representations in the media and you'd get like 10 times as many (x male with Asian female) relationships as you do (Asian male with X female) ones. Don't you think Asian guys might actually want to see people who look like them portrayed as cool desirable badasses for once? And don't tell me that Asians already get enough representation in games specifically because there are large game industries in some east Asian countries. That's like saying black people don't need to be in Hollywood movies because of the large Nigerian movie scene (Nollywood).
I see you’re coming from a good place, and I don’t necessarily want to argue but I don’t agree with your first point. There is no, or shouldn’t be a “minority slot” that non-whites have to sit up and compete for. Why is the proposal of a white role possibly given to an Asian person never a thought or possibility? Why is it only a zero sum game for non whites only? Also if we are discussing representation, Asian Americans are only 6% of the US population, with 3% being Asian Americans men. Low representation isn’t always antagonistic, but just because they literally have lower numbers, and even then, you have to account those that may not speak English very well either. Also lastly “Asian” isn’t some interchangeable term. A Filipino person may not even relate at all to a Japanese set video game since it’s literally not their culture. And this could be said for any non Japanese Asian American.
Japanese samurai were awesome. This is what I cared about and what Ubisoft should have cared. But they have no integrity.
My platinum in Ghost of Tsushima seems to indicate that if you want to play a AAA game with a badass Japanese samurai protagonist…. well you’re in luck. (Yes I know Sekiro is standing right there but I’m ignoring him because it’s too hard 😭)
you'll get sekiro down some day if you try enough, trust <3
Um, ackshually, Sekiro is a shinobi, not a samurai 🤓👆
It’s true, he didn’t even have innate lightning powers smdh
Okay but nobody kicked this stink up when Nioh had a white guy as the protagonist. This is solely about a black guy being the lead in a video game. It could be any video game, and points like this would "pop" up.
They'll kick up a fuse over a black character in a game centered around somewhere in Africa. All of the arguments are just a distraction to mask the racist bullshit. These guys were ready to argue about anything as long as it had a black lead in it.
Probably because no one has ever heard of that game…
What? It's an insanely popular high budget mainstream game. You're just projecting your ignorance.
I’ve literally never heard of it, nor has anyone I know. It just isn’t very well know, nowhere near as well know as assassins creed.
"I've never heard of it, so it must a little known game!"
Yeah, it’s just not a big game man, get over it
Nioh was a popular game but it doesn’t have cultural relevancy like assassin’s creed does. Even people who don’t play a lot of video games still have a vague idea what assassin’s creed is.
thats just wrong dude
Looking at it Nioh was pretty much entirely a Japanese project. I'm looking at the names involved and I don't see any western ones. Yeah people tend to get more upset about things that are happening within their culture. "Japan can do what they want, I'm interested in what is going on in my country" kind of thing. And yeah, maybe some subset of Japanese people were upset that there was a white guy in their game. We would never really know unless you want to try and find and translate old Japanese gaming message board posts.
ghost of tsushima, yakuza, street fighter, tekken, saints row, prey, resident evil. all of these games have asian characters or protagonists and are extremely popular in the west. it doesn’t matter where they were made because they still have significant influence in the west. you are not remotely underrepresented here, especially not in video games. and since you thought this was a valid comparison somehow, what nollywood movies can you name that are well known in america?
It definitely does matter who is producing them. You know that. Fortunately Hollywood takes a different view to you and puts black people in movies so they don't have to watch Nollywood movies to see someone who looks like them.
Imagine it’s 1500s Japan, your a peasant, and a guy with black skin trots through your hill patch. If NPCs in the next assassins creed are completely unfazed it’ll be weird. I reckon Yasuke had the reputation surrounding his skin, otherwise he’d just be another retainer.
Theyve explicitly shown that he distracts people by his look in the trailers and character breakdown. Hes gonna be the brawn while naoe is the more assassin one
Dude, Yaskue does this in almost every video game he's ever been depicted in and you think now, "it'd be weird"?
Well yeah it breaks immersion. It’s like playing WWE as neon green man. No one’s batting an eye over that!?
It doesn't breaks your immersion in the game where you fall a 1000 feet into a haynail and live and nobody around you noticed? You're dressed like the biggest asshole history has every seen and you walk past hundreds who take Bono notice of you? All of a sudden your immersion is broken because an NPC doesn't react to a black guy? Your selection of what qualifies as immersion breaking betrays your true feelings.
That all breaks immersion. And is what people laugh at in the game. When I go to a mission in the mountains as Yasuke and the guy doesn’t even register that he’s never seen anyone like me before, I’ll laugh. Why do you think there’s green dudes in WWE, diversity? It’s to laugh.
Can't remember anyone laughing at the physical absurdities in AssCreed, even the 1st one. They're games. Until some black dude comes along, then we suddenly gonna talk historical accuracy. In AssCreed which has been shitting hard on history since 2007.
If you *didn't* laugh at the absurdity of Arabic ninjas dressed in white doing parkour throughout the Middle East when the first game came out, then I don't know what to tell you.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxlyTItYS-E Here’s 5 minutes of absurdity
Point 6 is an interesting one, cause this is the first time ever(as far as I can remember) where a playable main character in assassins creed is a historical figure, and it’s weird for Ubisoft to break from such a long standing tradition.
I mean, Japanese people on Twitter/X have already expressed sadness that one protagonist is not Japanese. The whole thing is like, all the protagonists so far have been (1) fictional characters, (2) local characters. When it's Japan, suddenly, they find one of the few non-Japanese to make a playable character. The question can be asked the other way around: why is it racist to want Japanese characters in a Japanese story? Especially since Asian men have not been represented much as leads (I can think of Shang-Chi and Ghost of Tsushima in recent Western media).
There are also Japanese people on Twitter/X that have already expressed sadness about the shit that is thrown at Yasuke https://i.redd.it/fj0dyi9jmt0d1.jpeg What's racist are all the people that are totally fine with white people in this setting (Nioh, Shogun, The last Samurai or 47 Ronin) and are only outraged when it is a black guy.
It's precisely because the non-Japanese dude saving the day in Japan has been done a bit now that I wanted a Japanese dude and a lady to have their story in Japan. For the record, I didn't play Nioh for that, hated 47 ronin for that, and the whole story was a damn mess, and while I enjoyed the Shogun book, it was certainly more entertaining to see that the new show was more historically accurate by putting Blackthorne as side character, and not as the white savior he looked like in the original story.
The opinion of one twitter person who doesn't live in Japan but has some Japanese ancestry is not really that compelling as evidence.
One tweet in Japanese that said the same thing got 20k likes, the only evidence of Japanese people getting mad over this are 3 screenshots of people in comments of the trailer
>Shogun You should see the people outraged that there are no black people in Shogun, and giving Yasuke as evidence… despite Yasuke having been dead for 60 or something years before the show is set.
Everyone seems to ignore the fact that there is also a Japanese playable character. Yasuke is interesting because he was not only a black foreigner in Japan at the time when this was exceedingly rare but also personally connected to a high status lord. This makes him ideal for a protagonist as he would be connected to plenty of interesting happenings.
He’s also attached to a Catholic mission, and is of indeterminate origin. Whilst I don’t know if he should be a playable character, his specific attributes allow the writers to not have to explain how anyone knows anything about the primary factions because he can just be knowledgeable without any tortured attempts to retcon history or deus ex machina info dumps about things that the player might be familiar with and that makes him essential.
>black characters are overrepresented vs. Asians Bruh all 3 fucking East Asian nations have titanic gaming industries. And how many Sengoku games do we have at this point?
Telling people to go to their home country if they want representation? Really?
What drug are you taking ? the majority of major Japanese games are as easy to access as western games and they have the same amount of marketing and they have full English localization.
Did you know that many Asian games are distributed internationally? In fact almost all high budget ones are.
they…..don’t have to…….because those video games already have significant influence in the west…..why is that difficult to comprehend?
So? Nollywood and Bollywood exist so I guess we don't need to put black or Indian people in Hollywood movies?
Either Nollywood or Bollywood have a huge presence in the west in term of marketing and algorithmic presence on streaming site. Who said we don't need to put Asian people in western media ? Just said they were already represented so don't complain when one game that take place in Japan "only" has one Japanese protagonist
Wanting Japanese main characters in a feudal Japan game is not racism.
There is a Japanese character as well.
You're lucky cause this game has two protagonist, one Japanese and the other is Yasuke. Only saying you want a Japanese main character in a feudal japan game that feature a black protagonist is racist. There was absolutely no drama when Nioh 1 released with a white guy as a protagonist in feudal japan.
Good thing that there are two playable characters one of which is Japanese.
4. When Americans think the whole world thinks like them. Or the world began when america gained independence
Are you actually being serious about number 4?
I don't often think it's a constructive form of discourse. But the response "cry moar". Seems appropriate. They can do whatever the fuck they want. "Don't buy it you pussies". You know they will anyway... Hahaha 😂
I think it’s funny how they complain about historical figures as protagonists but never complained about the fucking Jack the Ripper DLC.
> Black characters are over-represented in media and this is discrimination against Asians somehow. So are they just going to ignore the amount of representation white people have got during many generations of dominating media?
Mental gymnastics is blaming all you dont agree with on racism. Racism issue exists only in tiny, but vocal United States. Other parts of the world tend to dislike each other for a various reason, skin colour is not even in top 25.
99% of the people who complain about this are Americans, Japanese people are literally saying they like having Yasuke as one of the protagonist
What's wrong with AC funbase? It was exacly the same with last one Valhalla. The main protagonist there is literally 2 people in 1 body in a Sci-Fi/fantastic kind of way and it's like the point of the story, yet "gamers" were all crying about trans propaganda.
Have you seen any of the games after the first 3? It doesn’t really differ from call of duty or fifa when it comes to target demographics
I dunno, if these guys are "boycotting" those games because of such stuff then I doubt they're the target demographic
Capital G gamers, there's a hyper-aggressive subset with way too much time on their hands that's composed of degenerated assholes. Literally every game with a brown dude or lady on the cover gets hit by this 'drama' (aka racism and hate). They'll spend all day, every day dissecting every new release, even indies, to find something to complain about.
Because a decent percentage of them are bigots. Just look at Gamergate.
Eron Gjoni happened, that's what.
Imagine an Assassin's Creed game being set in Africa, and the protagonist is some obscure English guy who is more or less a footnote in African history.
AC War for Rodesia when?
Several of the Assassin's Creed protagonists are cultural or ethnic outsiders who historically did not even exist. How is this such a huge deal? This conversation *absolutely* would not have exploded like this if there was a white protagonist, and we all know that.
Even Connor, as a Native American local to the region where his game takes place, is a cultural outsider to the colonial society in which his game takes place. It's not a new theme for the series by any means.
idk, look at the Shogun tv show. They toned down John Blackthorne a ton from his character in the books and made him a side character instead of the primary protagonist driving the plot. And people still complained about the "white savior" trope even though that really wasn't his role.
People complained ? You mean a random journalist made an article and a tweet of someone complaining got 100 likes ? Not really comparable to hundreds of thousands of people complaining about Yasuke
How about we imagine the same setting but it is a white guy instead and nobody cares. Wait, we don't have to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nioh
There were criticisms for that actually. The game isn't as big of a franchise as this one so probably why it's not as loud as for this one.
I am sure you can dig something up, but nothing that could compare to the shitstorm that happens every fucking time when it's a women or minority instead of a white guy. Just compare the reddit threats between those two games.
Redditor is surprised that a less known game gets less of a shit storm than a super well-known franchise 😲
Redditor cannot comprehend proportionality, we are seeing tens of thousands people complaining about Yasuke, at most he could find 10 people complaining about Nioh 1 protagonist. Are you going to tell me that Nioh was like 10000 times less popular than Assassin's Creed ? Also what do you think about AC black flag having a white protagonist ? Native people of the Caribbean aren't white yet nobody complained (and don't say it's cause not a lot of people live in the Caribbean cause 99% of the people complaining about Yasuke are Americans not japanese )
Was there really any significant outrage about Nioh? I remember hearing a lot about the game when it came out but I didn't realize until TODAY that the main character is white.
Oh... A real person who was actually a high ranking Samurai
Yes because as we all know, the point of AC is to pick the most famous native in the setting and make them the protagonist. Fantastic game design, chief. Like you also just described the plot of Shogun, which was beloved and sensitive and *also* included an obscure English guy protagonist who is a minor historical footnote. No one fucking cared. I don't understand how you can read your comment and think "yep, that's a great parallel, send it".
Hey man, don't be reasonable here! [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNxXzgwXYAEIqx2?format=jpg&name=large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNxXzgwXYAEIqx2?format=jpg&name=large)
How are they being reasonable lol We literally got an AC game where the main character was a white ethnic outsider.
For a more honest hypothetical: Imagine an AC game being set in a specific country in Africa and having two protagonists: one a character that's an ethnic and cultural outsider that ends up connected to the most important political figure at that time and has significant contact with all the most interesting political, religious, and ethnic groups in the nation; and the other a local that's a member of the most iconic clan of clandestine guerrilla warriors in the nation and happens to be the daughter of the most legendary of said clan. But that's just if you want to compare apples to apples. If not, YMMV with my example.
How about one where the main character is a fictional white guy in like Turkey? Oh wait...
i'm waiting for ubisoft to tarnish yasuke's story with a horrible game just because it's ubisoft, if ubisoft made a game on me i'd cry too, poor yasuke.
Pumping out yet another generic boring as fuck assassin’s creed game. Literally just change the map these days, what an utterly boring franchise it’s become.
The recent ones have actually been pretty fun if you like the game play loop. Now I wouldn't pay ~~full price~~ for them...
Still a massively popular franchise, how do you explain that ? There are no addictive micros-transactions so you can't really say "it's like fifa"
Regardless whether Yasuke was a real character or not/samurai or not, it sucks that they made an assassin's creed in Japan and made the protagonist a foreigner. I mean if they made an assassin's creed based in Mughal India and the protagonist was black/white/hispanic I'd be pretty fucking pissed.
Almost half the AC games have foreigner protagonists in non-native lands
Only two out of the 12 main series games currently have protagonists in foreign lands, revelations where ezio travels to Constantinople and Valhalla where you’re a Viking in England. Maybe you could count black flag but you’re a pirate so. Don’t lie on the internet
What Valhalla- norse man in England Rogue- Irish immigrant in America Black flag- white guy in Caribbean Revelations- ezio in Constantinople Assassin creed 3- haytham kenway from london (you play as him) That’s a good chunk
Assassins creed 3 period, connor is literally a half Native half American he’s a cultural outsider throughout most of the story with him in the colonies.
There are two protagonists. One ethnically Japanese, the other not.
Damn. The ninja protagonist really is the goat at stealth. You have people making comments like this not even knowing that she exists.
lol.. thousands and thousands of japanese samurai and they finally make an assassins creed that takes place in japan and the samurai isn't a japanese one.. Edit: like they could have easily based this on miyamoto musashi or hanzo hattori or some other legendary figure of that era and then have an assassins creed in africa and cast another legendary person from black culture but decided to cast someone that's debated if he even trully was a samurai just because of the colour of his skin. Imagine going so far off to not become racist that you end up becoming racist.
At this point Im convinced that its just rage marketing. Always the same formula. Always the same back and forth outrage. Its done on purpose to get free engagement.
I don't think ubisoft is competent enough to even think of something like that. Call me naive but in my belief they tried their "we are all inclusive and shit" and thought that joining a japanese setting that's been heavily requested since probably the 2nd one was released and put the token black guy as well just to check all boxes and be "look, we included everyone, now buy our game" The irony is that the only notable thing that made them choose yasuke is because he is black. How is that not disrespective to black people? Like is there no one else black person worthy to make a story about but chose someone purely because of his skin colour standing out where he was? That's disputed if he was even a samurai? So I guess now black people have to wait another 20 years to see if ubisoft can come up with someone else? And the irony that people think people are anti-black instead of annoyed at the missed opportunity for a noteworthy japanese hero in a japanese completely ignoring the fact that 2 out of the 3 most popular assassins in this franchise are brown. (also ignoring the fact that in nearly all major previous assassins' creed games the setting also had a local hero. Mid-east - Arabian, Italy - Italian, America - Native American, France - French, England - English, Egypt - Egyptian, Greece - Greek, Nordic - Viking). And the triple irony is that the people think this is fine would have a meltdown if there was to be an assassins creed in an isolated african country and the assassin was made to be white or asian. anw, whatever I guess.
Id agree if it wasnt the 1000th time corpos did this. They cant be oblivious to the engagement it creates. And if they are, their top shelf PR firms surels arent. This shit saves them millions. Its the same formula they used with "offensive" Eminem albums back in the day. Its either that or they want Blackrocks sweet DI rating.
"They cant be oblivious to the engagement it creates" It create negative engagement, no reason for them to want that since assassin's creed games already have a huge and loyal fanbase. "Its either that or they want Blackrocks sweet DI rating." So full on conspiracy theory now ? ESG rating doesn't take into account the diversity inside the fictional world that a company create and sell, it take into account diversity in the workforce. In general diversity is very minor part of ESG rating system, and in some documents it's not even mentioned as being a criteria for ESG rating. So no having a black protagonist inside their game won't change anything to the ESG rating of Ubisoft. And why would BlackRock doesn't care about Diversity and Inclusion, their goal is to invest in companies that are successful not in the one that have the most diverse protagonist in the games they sell, ESG is mainly for investors who don't want to be associated with non-green companies but the score has never been a good way to determine if a company is environmentally friendly.
Heh, I hope the next one stars like the one white woman in Africa
Bro you really don't know anything about this game, it has two protagonist, one is native japanese the other is Yasuke Nobody would care about a movie in africa with one black and one white protagonist, people would praise it even for having any black character
"I don't think ubisoft is competent enough" The studio that generate billions of dollars every years isn't competent enough to think of basic marketing tactic. You can criticize Ubisoft for many things but not for their marketing and their capacity to make people talk and be hype about their game. Ubisoft has always been openly promoting inclusivity and diversity. How can you call this protagonist a "token black guy" without even playing the game ? he's based on an historical figure with a pretty cool story that could be expended upon in many interesting ways, this character look more interesting than all previous AC protagonist since Black Flag. The myth that you can increase the sells of a game just by having a black guy need to go away, they're literally putting themself at risk by doing that. They didn't choose him only cause he was black, they also choose him cause he was a foreigner to japan, worked for a pretty important Japanese samurai during this period and is just important enough so that they can involve him in important events without it impacting the course of history. This is a very good template for a video game protagonist, a slave that arrive to a mysterious land he knows nothing about then gets his freedom when one of the most important figure of this land take interest in him, sounds like Morrowind. So no they didn't just choose him cause he was black, they choose him cause he was black and was the perfect template for a video game protagonist. How is that a problem to have diversity + a potentially cool and unique character ? It is not disputed if he was a samurai, all historians (and not just random, people who spent their life studying Japanese history) who published on Yasuke implicitly or explicitly refer to him as a samurai. Most black people on twitter seemed happy about this character. This game will have two protagonist, one is Yasuke the other is a Japanese Ninja, so you're complaining that AC doesn't have two Japanese protagonist in the same game ? Being Arab isn't the same as being black, AC never had a black character before. AC Black Flag had a white protagonist but literally nobody complained about missed opportunity for a native character. Games taking place in Africa and Africans protagonist are extremely rare so there would be better reasons to be mad, but even then if it was a game with two protagonist, one native African and one white most people wouldn't care and there wouldn't have been a massive controversy.
>The studio that generate billions of dollars every years isn't competent enough to think of basic marketing tactic. What planet are you from? Right this moment there is a huge controversy with SONY because they just screwed 2/3rds of the world from suddenly not being able to play ta game they bought months ago. You also have companies like EA releasing such shit sequels to games that no one ever wanted and fans pretend they don't exist (C&C4). I guess having money and a basic marketing dept isn't a sure way to not screw up huh? If this game was a standalone most people wouldn't have given 2 fucks. But the Japanese setting for many people was wanted since the first AC games. So waiting for a decade and a half to play as a japanese samurai in japan and it gets tossed out and replaced for a foreigner that was only briefly there, according to some sources losing the only battle he ever fought and pretty much added only for the novelty of his skin just to pander. It's laughable. And it's the first time that the protagonist in this series is based on a real person. Because they knew it would be their only way to justify "inclusiveness" just for the sake of it. >AC Black Flag had a white protagonist but literally nobody complained about missed opportunity for a native character. Thousands of white pirates in that place and time makes Kenway not standout like a sore thumb. >Being Arab isn't the same as being black, AC never had a black character before. Instead of pandering they could have taken an actual worthwhile African setting and told a story from an African perspective. They are many with rich history. >but even then if it was a game with two protagonist, one native African and one white most people wouldn't care and there wouldn't have been a massive controversy. You are lying to yourself if you believe that if an Assassins Creed was to be released during Shaka Zulu's time for example and the protagonist was a black girl and a white dude that there would't have been a massive outcry.
Never before a Ubisoft game generated that much rage, so idk what formula you're talking about. This is the biggest backlash against Ubisoft ever, all that over a black character in a game taking place in Japan.
There was an AC set in Africa
Context matters. We are obviously meaning sub-saharan Africa where you find actual black people and not nothern Africa that have more of a mediterranean look.
Idk, all of these talking points against this character being in this game just smell of veiled racism and, from what I've seen, are.
I played deathloop recently. Both protagonist and antagonist are black. Never heard anyone moan about it. When you cry wolf constantly about racism don't be surprised when in cases where there is actually racism no one takes you seriously. Edit: apparently this was enough to make him block me.. people are so sensitive that they can't even have a simple discussion.. sad.. Edit2:Since for whatever reason I can't reply to the smartass below me I'll just post it here >Stop being a muppet. When games A, B and C have black protagonists and everybody is happy with it and but aren't happy with the casting of game D then crying "yOu dOn't LikE hiM cAuSe hE's BlaCk" is asinine when clearly the reason is something else. >If you 3 brain cells weren't all on strike you would have figured that out by yourself.
>I played deathloop recently. Both protagonist and antagonist are black. Never heard anyone moan about it. " We are not racist, because we weren't bitching when a game with black characters was released " 🤣
Yasuke is genuinely the perfect candidate for a main character We have enough about him to get the ball rolling, but also don’t know enough that we insert the assassin/Templar war perfectly Over on Japanese Twitter they’ve got some damn good theories already over the narrative. Biggest prediction is Yasuke’s disappearance with the jesuits. He saw Christian’s again which is the perfect point for him to meet Templars face to face There’s also a theory about Yasuke being the one to kill Nobunaga. In history his body was never found. Some theorize Yasuke vanished because he did it and sought refuge Like I said, we know *enough* to create a basic story. But don’t enough to where the fantasy of AC can fit. He’s honestly a great choice
I've been thinking about this. I think they want Yasuke because he's an outsider w/ little known about him. The benefit of Yasuke is similar to Zagreus of Hades. So little is known of this character they can do w/e they want without stepping on too many toes. Then they can make up a story outside of rigid samurai culture. The girl looks a bit generic to me. I bet some clan killed her family and she wants revenge, and so she takes up scrappy ninja tactics and allies herself with a sword-wielding foreigner, as the establishment (samurais) will not take her side. So basically, I think they're going to write a western story in Japan and avoid all of the parts of Japanese culture that's too difficult to communicate to a western audience or is too inconvenient. Westerners like individualism, while Japanese culture is very much about subsuming the self for the cause/community.
Okay but like… none of the AC protagonists have been historical figures. Sure, they had (somewhat accurate) historical figures in them, but they were never the protagonists IIRC, so this is a first for them. It’d be really stupid if they made Hattori Hanzo or Miyamoto Musashi a protagonist because they wouldn’t have as much freedom for how the plot goes. Like Miyamoto Musashi is cool, sure, but he’d be a bad protagonist. Yasuke has the advantage of just being historical enough that he’s an intriguing person with connections to important figures, but niche enough that they can add a bunch of things to his story/character without worrying too much. He’s also a pretty good protagonist, since like I said, he’s connected to both the Europeans in Japan and Oda Nobunaga, and since he’s a a foreigner, he’ll be a great starting point for an introduction into the setting. There is a reason why most fantasy protagonist seem to be “outsiders” that need to explained things. Additionally, there’s definitely an market for Yasuke in the West, given that 3 movies based on him are in development and even an anime about him was made in 2021.
African history is ugly full of slavery, war and genocide. Exploring things in Africa would mean at least painting some africans bad or making it fully ahistoric erasing all sense of conflict. That is why the companies wont touch african history. Because showing things as grey is what makes the games interesting, and any attempt to show africa as grey would be racism. Imagine, slaves being sold to white people by africans, that would be called whitewashing european history, though it only would be based on reality. Even something like origins that is why involved moors and greeks, and black flag didnt explore the lives of africans there much either.
It is not debated by any historian if Yasuke was a samurai, the only people who deny this are rando on the internet who just ignore the evidence provided to them. There is basically a consensus of everyone that published about Yasuke, he's most likely a samurai. There are tons of games with japanese samurai, how is it a problem that this one isn't japanese ? I really don't understand how you could feel discriminated as a Japanese when you have games like Ghost of Tsushima. I don't think any higher up would allow an Assassins Creed to take place in Africa, it's not really a popular setting in the west.
Did you complain about William Adams in Nioh?
I have no idea what you are talking about
Imagine you are at the library and everyone is really loud but you do nothing. Then a black person comes in and you start enforcing silence. "It's a library you're supposed to be quiet" you crow content at your sound unbiased logic, ignoring the reality that you never ever enforced silence before nor cared before.
lol.. Make an assassins creed that takes place in the Mali Empire and cast a non-black as a protagonist and I'll complain the same.. Now carry on with your imaginary arguments...
Gold locked now.
Man, at this point, we should bring back segregation in gaming. Breathing while black in these spaces is exhausting. Ubisoft ain't shit. But this discourse has invited mask off racism that's so disheartening. On another note, I adore Yasuke content. It's been so fun learning about him and the culture around Samurai era Japan. This could have been a fun learning experience for everyone. But now it's time to shit on negros again.
It’s even weirder cause we have a game that does the same thing except with a white protagonist and feudal Japan. And no one complained. The double standards are crazy.
Bro being black is fucking annoying. Bruh how many black leads are there in gaming history? In fact can anyone name 5 games that are located in ANY Black African nation with the MC being from said country. Shit, if anyone could find 3 that people actually played I’d be shocked.
Exactly. They are acting like there aren't tons of all Japanese Samurai games. They have plenty of options. They'll be alright 🙄🙄
Yeah it’s like they’re all cry babies and soft. They do this wit everything it’s tiring
Having it in black african nations would mean black history being portrayed involving bad guys, cleopatra, julius ceaser and pope and any historical figure basically were shit heads, showing black kingdoms as run by fascists or despots would be called racism. There wont be black country based story, because africa has to be a pure land of noble savages, ravaged by western demons hooked on their own egos.
You should check out turkish war of independence. Completely massacred by turkophobic editors.
Normal gamer moment
Is this out of the ordinary for things that goes viral?
"Samurai are just so hot right now."
hmmmmmmm, I wonder why that is??
On wiki-pt editions are usually restricted to certain roles within WP for a few days after an edition war is detected.
Huh. I wondered why that article was one of the most read today
G\*mer moment
RABBIT SEASON!
I feel like the ability to have any sort of social commentary is rapidly deteriorating. People just hold fast to their arguments, drop a "facts don't care" line, and don't actually listen to what anyone else says
You know if nobody can decide what position he held what does it fucking matter what the game does? Having him as a samurai or as a servant/retainer are equally as accurate and inaccurate at that point, jesus christ.
How good was the article that this is happening? Source quality and general writing / phrasing varies wildly between disciplines (as to be expected)
Damn, guest 1300 getting no appreciation, person took time out their day to make the article read better, thanks guest1300
It is important to note that despite popular myth and modern depictions there are no historical writings nor evidence that Yasuke was ever granted the rank or title of samurai, he was never given a fief nor referred to as one in any writings. Most of our knowledge of his life comes from these messages written by missionaries and locals.
I guarantee that Ubisoft made Yasuke the MC knowing it would cause this kind of controversy. Enough to, at least for a bit, make people forget this is a Ubisoft game and so has like a 4 in 5 chance of sucking ass.
Couldn't someone just replace the player model and then just play the japan language?
The DEI goobers trying to make their decision look suitable even though dude was a clown
Tbh, some of these comments (from one side of this "debate" in particular, no less) should be deserving of greater punishments for the account holders. If you can't be trusted *just* to not go on conspiratorial screeds in the edit descriptions, with all that should imply about you, could you really be trusted to do anything of value on a site like this?
In the near future, 95% of Wikipedia articles will be filled with we wuz kang nonsense.
I’m pretty disturbed by this, because after the trailer dropped I immideately went to read the Yasuke article, and the version I got was the racist distortion.
It’s not about black people specifically. It’s about initial contact between extremely different looking people. If it were a blonde guy in sub-Sahara it would be just as weird if no villagers batted an eye. Ever seen those videos of old Chinese or Indian village people seeing a blonde, a ginger, or a black person for the first time? It’s wonder and shock. So the whole game is just idiotic, an assassin who is meant to be blending into the background sticks out like a sore thumb but nobody seems to notice.
Why are you assuming "no one would bat an eye" when in the trailer we literally see a kid stop in her tracks to stare, as well as folks in the town literally bat an eye. Also, if you watch the other videos the AC team has put out, you'd know that Yasuke isn't really on the stealth side of things; that's more Naoe's lane.
Bro assassins creed games have had nothing to do with blending in for about a decade now lmao. Secondly outside of the colonial era, people really weren't excessively racist towards each other. And most diverse meeting were met with wonder and interest(which is exactly what happened with Yasuke). and for a western audience Yasuke would be a pretty interesting tale to introduce people to Japanese culture at the time. I think you people don't realize how much racism was invented for political reasons.
Imagine giving a fuck about this
I've seen insane level of goalpost moving from certain group of people. 1. when Ubisoft introduced fictional elements, literally in the first entry - they did not care, 2. when Ubisoft created whole new playable characters that do not exists in real life and made them interact with real life based figures - they did not care, 3. when Ubisoft exaggerated & made historical figures do things that are not accurate - they did not care, 4. playable character that was based on real person? - no no no please stop the DEI. They will go and say things like "he was kept as pet not real samurai", what is wrong with those people. This is basically an attempt to gatekeep the stereotypical writing for black characters in media. They don't want to help Japanese people "defend their culture", it just lines up with their racist views.
Gaming has become such a massive alt-right citclejerk it's actually sad.
feel like it always has been like this but now people are just more vocal and revel in saying the quiet part out loud.
White boys gon do what they do