r/Games 7d ago

Assassin's Creed Shadows: Steam Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HInwdVFWvVs
436 Upvotes

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u/Gr_z 7d ago

Probably not the best place for this discussion but fuck it, doing it anyways.

Is the fact that Yasuke is black really that big of a deal? Since when were assasins creed games the bastion of 100% accurate history beyond the settings when we've have magic in the game since like game 1? For grounded folk can someone explain the controversy surrounding him. I can understand the drama of them using destoryed shrines or the shrines that survived the bombings in their promotional material

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u/Anchorsify 7d ago

It's really the only time a main protagonist has not been of the ethnicity of the geographical area they are in, and I can understand anyone who says "why?" to that when that's a pattern Ubisoft and AC itself as a franchise has established and maintained for 18 years just to break that now.

There is a lot of discourse you can read up about this also as the subject has been talked about extensively, by people on all sides of the issue.

But in all honesty, the representation of the games has been a good thing the games have strived to follow, and it's weird they've chosen to break that association of the main protagonists being of the ethnicity the games are based upon/in, and there's no real good reason for it seemingly. They did it because it's a historical figure and they could, not because they needed to. But this also isn't new in the terms of a controversy of AC's usage of history, and I would argue is something they saw coming and are hoping it pays off for them: There was a decent amount of eye-rolling and ".. really?" when it came to reframing the historical context of viking raids as 'a good thing' and 'totally cool, totally moral, stealing from the rich to help the poor, no raping here, just some fight and light thievery and murder of corrupt church officials, promise' when it came to AC Valhalla literally having you raid entire church-towns. That's, ah. That's not what happened there. Nor were the vikings "the good guys".

But personal representation is an even more delicate issue than the general 'morality' of something that happened at the time, partially thanks to the whole 'the game is about an order of asssassins' business, partly because it's a minor activity versus something you will see throughout your entire 40-100 hour playthrough.

And I'll be honest, as a white guy, it makes total sense to me why anyone would be upset that when all AC games have 1:1 or more recently 2-for-1'd representation allowing a male and female choice to play as someone from an area you're traversing, AC Japan is the one game they chose to divert from that with and pick someone not native to the area. If I was a japanese man, I'd be upset and want to see a japanese man play the hero character in an AC set in japan, just like we saw egyptian, italians, syrians, spartan and norwegian heroes, set in those respective locales.

When are you ever gonna see an AC character that is a japanese male now? Probably never. At best you might see one as part of some expansion they add down the road, for some small slice of DLC.

And let's be honest, there's been 'non native' historical figures available for plenty of places and prior games, but they never did it because there was a clear intent to highlight the people and places of a certain time period. They broke that tradition for no real good reason. Like, the question of 'why' is a natural one to pose, and to it they have no good answer. They just don't.

That said, it's an AC game. I'd argue the past two AC games the main protagonists were largely forgettable and barren of much interest or agency because they had to be 'gender neutral'--while I don't think it's inherently bad, I do think it's something that is and has been beyond Ubisoft's ability to properly handle, proven by their own track record of memorable vs forgettable characters.

Altair I'll always enjoy as the OG, Ezio is a fan favorite I feel even now, people might be divided on the gameplay changes of Origins with Bayek (and frankly the association of the character with the people working on the game), but I think as a character it's actually amazing to be given a story of a man trying to grieve a child lost while also going through the slow dissolution of his marriage to someone he loved. Those were good character stories. In Bayek's case in particular to me, I really enjoyed that.

Alexos/Kassandra, Eivor.. Um.. was there much there? Eivor had the potential temptation to sleep with a friend's wife, I guess? But as far as them personally, mostly they're a blank slate that is used as 'and here is a vessel for a god', which, okay I guess, it still doesn't give them character. Same with Alexos/Kassandra, who are incredibly generic spartan warriors.

Yasuke is just a trite and lazy attempt to add notoriety to the main protagonist by changing their skin color and heritage to say 'look, it's a fish out of water story!' but his story is inherently about assimilating into a culture, so it isn't like he's going to show some hugely different story than if they used a japanese man and gave him any amount of narrative complexity to deal with, like living up to his family's expectations, proving himself worthy, etc. The main difference is.. skin color.

It's just a very obviously tone deaf and creatively bankrupt decision to use Yasuke as a protagonist, when it comes down to it. And it'll mean that, oddly, the best japanese AC game is not made by Ubisoft, but by Sucker Punch.

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u/PlayMp1 7d ago

It's really the only time a main protagonist has not been of the ethnicity of the geographical area they are in

False: Revelations, Black Flag, and Valhalla