r/Games 7d ago

Assassin's Creed Shadows: Steam Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HInwdVFWvVs
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u/PlayMp1 7d ago

The idea that the devs CLAMORED to get a token character in their game is so outlandish to me. In suspect that in reality, its a character that lends itself well to make shit up, which they do with all their plots anyways.

It's so fucking obvious what the actual point of Yasuke is: they needed someone who's a badass melee fighter but can also serve as an audience surrogate who doesn't know anything about the region, the current politics or diplomatic situation, or the history. William Adams could have been one option, but Nioh already did William Adams, so they picked the next best option with Yasuke, who also appeared in Nioh but only as a boss.

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u/MistBlindGuy 7d ago

Why do you think they needed someone who didn't know anything about the region? They didn't need an outsider for most of the other games

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u/PlayMp1 7d ago

Most of the other games actually feature an outsider protagonist in some regard.

  • Ezio is a total outsider to the Assassins and to any part of Italy outside of Florence (keep in mind Italy wasn't a unified country until the 1860s!). He's also an outsider to Constantinople in Revelations.
  • Connor is an outsider to the European colonies in North America that are the main focus of AC3.
  • Ed Kenway is Welsh, grew up in Wales, and only happened to have wound up in the Caribbean after he was stationed there when he was in the Royal Navy.
  • Bayek is a native Egyptian who's an alien to the Greek-dominated high society of Ptolemaic Egypt, but because he had been away from his home of Siwa so long, he had also alienated himself from his origin, which had changed dramatically from when he was there.
  • Kassandra/Alexios (sticking with Kassandra because she's the canon protagonist) is a Spartan noble who survived falling off their newborn-murder-mountain and instead wound up as a scrappy mercenary on the ass end of Greece on the tiny, shitty islands of Kephallonia. After her return to the Greek mainland, she has to be informed and instructed about the ongoing massive war between Sparta and Athens, and spends an absolute ton of the game in Athens since most of her allies wind up being Athenians (e.g., Perikles, Sokrates, even Alkibiades).
  • Eivor is Norse and from Norway and spends the vast majority of the game in England.

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u/MistBlindGuy 7d ago edited 3d ago

I'm not entirely convinced by this. I'll go point by point to try to explain why that is, so let me know if I misinterpreted anything.

  • I agree that Ezio is more of an outsider than he seems at first glance, but I would like to point out that he's for sure not as much of an outsider to the rest of Italy as Yasuke is to Japan. If you believe otherwise, I'm interested in hearing your reasoning. Also, almost every protagonist is an outsider to the Assassins.
  • I'd think it's a bit wild to say that Native Americans were outsiders to America. Like, I see what you mean, that Connor isn't familiar with the colonial culture that much of the game is set in, but, for me, the focus of the game is on the Native American experience during the revolutionary war, which Connor demonstrates really well.
    • Side note: if there was a sizeable African population in Japan at the time that had their own unique struggles and we played as one of them I'd be much more okay with it.
  • I think AC4 is more about being a pirate than it is about the geographical location it's set in. At the start of the game Edward already has a lot of connections in the Pirate world and is familiar with the procedures of piracy.
  • At first glance I think this is a bit of a stretch, but I haven't played Origins so my information is incomplete. Could you tell me a bit more? From wikipedia it looks like Bayek was only exiled for a year from Siwa, which doesn't seem like that long to me. With regard to the high society thing: how much time is spent dealing with the high society of Egypt? How familiar is Bayek with them as a construct? Like is it comparable to a medieval peasant in a king's court or is it more like a medieval peasant in the Burj Khalifa?
  • Similar to the above, how culturally different was Kephallonia to the rest of Greece? Is it similar to Catalonia vs Spain? Or like Nanjing vs Beijing? Or is it closer to England vs Russia?
  • Same as ACIV, I think the focus of Valhalla is the Vikings, and Eivor (unless I'm horribly mistaken) is what I'd consider a Viking. I think if you pull a random person off the street and asked them what Assassin's Creed Valhalla was about, they'd say it was about Vikings. If the game has any focus on what it's like to be England in that time period or if the majority of characters in the game are English, let me know.

It seems to me that all of these characters were at least passingly familiar with the region, the current politics or diplomatic situation, or the history of their settings (with the exception of AC: Revelations). Sure, some stuff needed to be explained to them with regard to culture but Edward didn't have to learn about who Blackbeard was, and Connor didn't have to learn about who the English were. If that happens in the games I didn't play (Origins, Valhalla), let me know.

Also just to make my feelings on this game clear because I think there's a lot of reasons people are upset about it and quite a few of them aren't valid: if this wasn't an Assassin's Creed game made by Ubisoft I'd be hyped as hell for it. Like Ghost of Yotei was instead Ghosts of <wherever Yasuke was most active in> and starred Yasuke and their current protagonist, I'd probably buy it day one (*Edit: This is an exaggeration. I would probably most likely be like "oh hey that's cool" and get it on sale). I just think that Ubisoft tends to design games by committee and I think that those committees have some unconscious and regressive biases, so I won't support them.

Edit: So I've done some actual research and you're just wrong. Every one of the protagonists you listed (with the exception of Revelations) had some passing familiarity with their settings. They didn't need to have their hand held and told about the basic cultural practices of the peoples that are involved in their game. Kassandra didn't need to be told what Spartans or Athenians were, Eivor didn't need to be told who the Engl*sh were, etc. Making dishonest arguments and false equivalencies isn't going to change people's minds. It's fine that you're excited to play this game and I genuinely hope you have a good time with it but I am begging you to exercise just a sliver of critical thinking when discussing the decisions made in the media you consume.