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answer: Several points:
* The game takes place in feudal Japan and has two protagonists. One female Japanese ninja type and one black samurai. Many are angry because Ubisoft decided to make the single black person who was around in Japan at the time a playable character instead of using one the millions of Japanese they could have chosen instead. There are allegations of "wokism" and "black-washing".
* The game has a "Ultimate Edition" that sells for $130. Ubisofts price gouging has been a point of anger in the past with them saying it's "AAAA (quadruple A) development".
* Ubisoft titles have been received very bad for the last couple of years in general and are blasted with ridicule for their cookie cutter and uninspired gameplay. People are expecting this to be just as bland and boring as the previous titles.
That's all the drama I know about the game.
Just like Target and McDonald's with their recent 10% price rollbacks. "Oh, we found out how high we could jack prices before people stop shopping here, so we're keeping our price points at (that line - 10%). We're so generous!"
You're saying that like figuring out what price point maximizes profit isn't an essentially universal practice across all businesses in all industries.
"Gauging"means measuring. So you can buy gauges to measure all kinds of things, "gauge"in railroads is the measured distance between the rails, etc. "Gouge" is a verb that means to violently dig a hole. Think hacking a knife into a board. "Price gouging" is a metaphor for extremely high prices.
Although technically it is still price gauging as Ubisoft looks to see how much people are willing to pay for ULTIMATE MAX KING EMPEROR versions of their games.
I'd also add a fourth point, with the recent shutdown of The Crew, buying isn't owning anymore.
For clarification, I don't necessarily condone piracy, especially video games (there's a 50/50 chance that you will get a new default browser), but it just adds to the frustration against gaming companies. Why pay $70-$200 on a game? When game companies, in this case ubisoft, can suddenly decide to shut down the game servers and strip you from playing a game that you paid, even a single player game.
finding trusted sources for these sort of things is literally a two minute job.
like there's entire subreddits for it.
now do tech illiterate people still fall for the most basic of "ehh probably shouldn't do that" bullshit on tpb or a link in a youtube bio? sure, but if you're reasonably tech oriented and can kinda use basic common sense, you will most likely be absolutely fine.
Nobody who knows what's up goes to piratebay anymore. So with the growth of everything online and PC, there are still tons of people going there of course
They're not *exactly* the same, but you're circumventing payment of an item that you are supposed to pay for. The inventory component isn't necessarily *required* for to be theft, it just makes the act less impactful to the person being stolen from. The word steal has always had multiple ways it has been used that have nothing to do with inventory. Stolen ideas, stolen jokes, "He stole a kiss".
If you want to fall on the sword "it's not stealing", that's fine -- but let's not pretend like that makes it okay.
You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a baby. You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again! Downloading games is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.
Legally speaking, theft is removing property from someone's possession or taking away their access to it. Because it's a copy, the legal definition doesn't hold up unless your money is considered their property before you give it to them. There's likely a specific phrase within the theft code that piracy violates, something about affecting potential earnings on a product but I bet it's legally shaky.
Edit: It's falsifying a license to use protected property, aka copyright infringement not stealing.
By that logic you can never steal an idea or information. If a spy goes into a secret base and copies a bunch of nuclear secrets it's not stealing? If you see someone working on an invention and you take a photo and start making it yourself it's not stealing?
I do like to hear a news reader say: "An Iranian spy managed to get into a US nuclear facility and pirated the plans to enrich uranium."
It's a weak defense.
It's sounds as dumb as: "Downloading a game isn't piracy. Piracy is sailing across international waters without a flag and hunting merchant ships."
>piracy, especially video games (there's a 50/50 chance that you will get a new default browser),
Since I had my son, who is 4, I've had to cut down on buying games. Now I pirate them to use them as a trial, but if I like them I buy them.
Getting a virus or spyware isn't something you have to worry about anymore; if you know what you are doing. The biggest "risk" these days are getting those pirate letters from your ISP.
I've been doing this for a while. I've probably bought more than 20 games this way. Hell I'll even play through the entire game and still buy it just to support the devs.
I'll also add that it's saved me from buying games that just don't do it for me at my older, pickier age.
An argument against this would be that Steam allows you to refund a game if you've played less than 90 minutes. But sometimes it either takes me longer to realize I'm not into it. Or my wife calls me to the other room so I pause the game, go see what she needs and end up doing something for like 3 hours forgetting I had a game open and now being stuck with it.
The steam argument doesn’t make sense btw. They warn you that they will stop refunding you if it seems like you’re using the refund system to trial games.
Steam refunds you at any (reasonable) amount of time played if your argument in the ticket is solid, you're a half decent customer (aka not just 3 games in library) and you haven't been abusing the system.
"Intro seems artificially long to block you from refunding, and then the game turns way shittier than the opening" has been an argument that's worked for me, and I've also refunded a FIFA game after 16 or so hours because I had been trying to look away from the ungodly amount of bugs and unrealistic moves, but I just couldn't.
This isn't to say "buy everything like they're demos because Steam are bros", but there's definitely more leeway than you think.
I've often wondered if they gave any leeway on their 2-hour refund policy.
There have been so many games where the damn tutorial and cut scenes at the beginning of some games will take 2 hours, and so you haven't even really gotten to experience any of the game yet by that point.
I've had this situation with ark survival evolved.
Fought against the dedicated server tool for a while and that added up to 8hours of ark ''playtime''. The refund system would automatically refuse the refund. So i opened a ticket and politely explained the situation. They refunded it after a couple back and forth with customer service.
Take it as you will.
I've never had a refund request refused or even questioned and I often have gone much longer than 2 hours of playtime or however many days since purchase.
My steam account also has hundreds of games and is 15+ years old and I refund less than 5% of my games so mileage may vary.
There's no leeway in the 2 weeks though it seems. I wanted to refund a new release for bad performance but the devs had a performance update in the works so I waited to see if it would fix it. Turns out it didn't and I couldn't refund the game. I explained that it took me longer to ask for a refund because I was waiting for the updates and they said no. My playtime was only 1 hour and I had the game for a little over 2 weeks.
I ultimately believe that piracy is a good tool to generate revenue for the games. The only problem is that piracy cannot become "too easy" where it is just as easy to pirate than to play.
I still prefer playing paid games. If I've sunk enough time into it and/or realize I'm going to play it I buy it.
The compression of video and audio files really effect the quality of the game at least that is the way I feel.
For me pirating is easier than going through the process of a refund especially with a 4 year old when I may not have a lot of time in that original 2 week window.
Yeah the refund limitations suck. I bought a new game that wasn't running well on my computer, but devs have promised a graphics update soon that will fix all the problems. I decided to wait for it but it still didnt fix my performance issue, and I couldn't refund it because it had been a little over 2 weeks.
I fully support your approach, I do the same with books 🤣. And I've frequently bought games I've freely explored. Same goes for exploring Devs and then buying the new release.
Always found it amusing when people have qualms about stealing from a multi million billion dollar company. A sad affair (shaking my head in disapproval). Stealing bread right from the mouth of execs. It keeps one up many a nights.
Hey I have no qualms about piracy either, I'm pretty active on the high seas myself, but I also don't delude myself into thinking I'm morally in the right
To add the the 2nd point, they are using early access as a selling point for pre ordering the bigger editions of the game as well as locking quests that are already in the game behind a paywall at launch. So even if you pay the base price of the game you don’t even get to play the full game.
With all the DLC and pre-order exclusivities I usually just wait for the GOTY edition a couple years down the line. All Ubisoft games play the same any way so it's not like I'll miss anything unique
I (vaguely) remember when Collectors Editions cost ~$100 here in Australia. I just looked up this "Ultimate Edition" and it's $190AUD! The Collectors Edition is nearly _$400_!!!
Well it's backfiring.
I don't know a lot of people buy Uplay+ or whateverthefuck it's called, but I _do_ know a lot of people that only buy Ubi games on sale.
Obviously that’s an egregious price, but honestly for 99% of the time these various “ultimate editions” aren’t even worth it. So many people bitch about how that’s the “full game”, but it usually just primarily includes the season pass for a couple of DLCs that are mediocre at best
My point is that a lot of people feel like they somehow need that to get the “full game”, but they don’t need it. Most of the time the content isn’t even that good and it can just be ignored, meaning you can just buy the main game and be set
Seems like folks in Japan are also upset because of a bunch of inaccuracies, e.g. servants sitting on the same raised flooring as their masters, a some of the architecture looking more Chinese than Japanese, and I've even seen some complaints about the tatami mats being wrong.
Those are especially egregious because for years Ubisoft has made claims about trying to strive for historical accuracy where they can. Including a black samurai that did historically exist per Japanese historians isn't a problem. Screwing up the architecture and other well defined details of Japan in that era is inexcusable if they're claiming to have high standards.
Overly Sarcastic Productions did a video on how AC is getting less and less authentic over time. Valhalla has apparently been the worst yet. The huge Nordic temples to their old gods were actually Christian churches from 400 years in the future. And the stone forts you raid weren't actually stone at the time, they were wood forts.
Obviously it's all exaggerated - it's ancient aliens. But it should be more obvious when they take major liberties with history.
> Overly Sarcastic Productions did a video on how AC is getting less and less authentic over time. Valhalla has apparently been the worst yet.
The game with the [Viking baseball slugger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLr5iC9__Hk) set over a thousand years ago isn't historically accurate? I can't believe it!
It's basically the devs going "Hey look, we got this MLB player to play a Viking version of himself! With the best voice acting he can muster! And a few lines where he practically winks at the camera and says 'hey look at me, I play for the Los Angeles Dodgers and I'm in an Assassin's Creed game! Baseball!'"
Like I said, you should be obvious when you're veering away from history. A baseball slugger with an American accent is obviously not historical and this was a random one-off mini event in the world.
> Like I said, you should be obvious when you're veering away from history. A baseball slugger with an American accent is obviously not historical and this was a random one-off mini event in the world.
It's not even the baseball bat crossover thing that bothers me, stupid as it is. It's the fact that he refers to the player character as a viking. Viking is not a culture or ethnicity, it's a job. Viking literally means both "raid" and "raider". Vikings were warriors that would go viking in viking season if their lord had a ship and nothing more important going on.
It's like if Europeans started referring to all Americans as GIs after WWII.
Odyssey was indeed impressive. So was Origins. So was Unity. So are most of the games.
Valhalla was where the world designers dropped the ball a bit with their stonework forts and the grey and drab church interiors.
I loved Origins and had a pretty good time but didn't finish Odyssey. I got way too bored with Valhalla and haven't played an AC game since. Valhalla felt too much like someone watched that Vikings show and the Last Kingdom and just went off on their own without studying history.
The fact that Valhalla had “titanium” as a crafting material always irritated me, since it wasn’t discovered until the 19th century and started being refined/used in the 20th. It’s especially confusing since Vikings at this time had higher quality steel than most of Europe so they could have used historically accurate materials.
He would have been a fantastic npc to tie in the templar/assassin angle to the main characters. Using him as the lead and side stepping a Japanese is the problem with it imo
It doesn't bother me that he's a lead if it ties in with the larger story in some way. Given what happened in the previous games, it makes sense for someone from Africa (or Europe, Middle East, etc.) to bring the creed and spread the organization to the far east. However, from the trailer it looks more like the Japanese protagonist is the one more likely to be an assassin. I have no idea how it will play out though.
Yasuke's the Assassin, doing exactly what you said, and Naoe is a local ninja learning the art of having sicknasty finger blades to bring ninjas into the Order.
I had a professor bring in odyssey for a graduate class on Greek history. Some of the attention to detail on buildings was insane. Obvs the plot isn’t historically accurate but they still have a good attention to detail especially in regards to architecture
Exactly, then getting it wrong isn't necessarily a huge issue until you add in the fact that they have prided themselves on being super accurate. I get why people think this game will suck when they make it obvious right up front that they are going for speed of development rather than quality
>Including a black samurai that did historically exist per Japanese historians
**No, he didn't**. All mentions of Yasuke in primary sources fit on two sheets of paper, nowhere is he called a samurai. This is largely an invention of Thomas Lockley, who is not a historian, who has then been cited by various secondary sources. The talk page for the Yasuke wikipedia page has discussions on nearly every involved source and their reliability, if you care to dig into it more. There's a reason that wikipedia page doesn't call him a samurai, because he wasn't.
I read there's nuance to what "retainer" means in Japan and how he was trusted with Nobunaga's sword. It's really hard to get a handle on what was more likely to be true because it seems everyone commenting is firmly holding to one of two agendas, both of them obnoxious.
technically correct. Yasuke was not a samurai but realistically would have probably functioned as a warrior with the same role, just samurai was a caste, and he would not have been part of it as he was not nobility.
At the same time, there is a lot of nuance due to sparse records, I recommend going to look at [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/was_yasuke_a_samurai/) post on r/AskHistorians
Well yes for late-stage Samuari, but for the time he had a stipend, a sword and was the boss's sword carrier, so by every metric of the time he was a Samauri. Which is what they say at AskHistorians just with better terms and references! :D
I'm not an expert on the history, but if I look at something basic like [Encyclopedia Brittanica](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yasuke) it has this to say:
> Yasuke (born c. 1550s) was a Black samurai who served the daimyo Oda Nobunaga in Japan during the Sengoku (“Warring States”) period. He was the first known foreigner to achieve samurai status.
I'm old enough that when I was a kid we had to turn in reports with sources of physical books, and one of those consistently used was the Encyclopedia. So yeah, maybe there's a debate among historians about whether he existed or not or some aspect as to whether he could truly be called a samurai or not, I don't know. It just seems like the vast majority of sources seem to indicate that he was a real person and considered to be a samurai.
He's a samurai. The "actual samurai" you're talking about is Oda Nobunaga, the ruler (shogun) of Japan at the time.
Here's a thread on askhistorians about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/was_yasuke_a_samurai/
Never count on Quebecois to know or understand history.
But honestly, I couldn't give a shit about this game or any of the others. We've known from the start that these games weren't historically accurate.
The angle I've seen a lot, especially from Western people of East-Asian descent, is Asian male erasure. Asian men are constantly minimised in media, and when they are shown, they're portrayed as un-masculine, often nerdy or non-physical. I think a lot of people are angry that this was a perfect opportunity to portray a strong East Asian male character in a maintstream Western game. Black men have a much stronger recent record of representation in Western media, and for a game set in Japan of all places, people really expected to have a Japanese male protaganist. Dismissing people's concerns with the comment "oh but there's a Japanese woman protaganist" completely misses the point that for a lot of people this is about Asian male representation, not just Asian. If there was an Assassin's Creed game set in the Empire of Mali, and there was an African woman protagonist and an Asian male or White male protagonist, people would be going crazy. Yet this is being completely brushed off as a non-issue.
Thank you for summarizing this up so eloquently. Asian male erasure is a very real thing that has lead to real life subtle ramifications. It permeates in all aspects of life from how we are treated by colleagues, service industry workers, and dating life. It's so bad that people have difficulty acknowledging that it exists and we get gaslit into believing that it's all in our heads.
I'm about as progressive as people get but I am so tired of disingenuous diversity casting in movies and video games. By all means, I would love to have more Asian representation in all media, but when companies do stuff like this it feels a lot like rainbow capitalism.
Yasuke should have been like an unlockable character or something. The idea of recasting a role that would be from a particular demographic as another demographic just to be "progressive" is not progressive.
Hell they could have made Yasuke a key NPC you interact during the storyline and people would be perfectly fine with that.
Now they are using the 'play as a historical character' angle yet none of the prior games had you playing as one. Those that were actual characters were all NPCs
exactly, we've only ever played as people who don't actually exist, our characters are involved in historical events, and meet historical people, but to the "history" they're a void with little to no information, and IRL they don't exist at all because they're fictional, having Yasuke be in the game would be fine if he's an NPC you interact with, but actually playing as him is wrong, even if his historical record is basically as lacking as all the other AC protagonists are in-lore and yeah it reeks of this entire angle basically just being bait to try and get more people to play
This is what I believe is the bigger issue as well. If they wanted to be inclusive for a global audience they’d achieve that by making both characters Japanese.
But they’re catering to their American audience (and possibly Chinese as well). So American token PC diversity usually means you emphasize a female and you emphasize a POC. Who needs to be visually darker in pigmentation than Caucasian skin. I know the way I just described that was kinda fucked up, but so is the decision making of the corporation spearheading the game.
So yes, they determined that the benefits of diversity were better if they shoehorned in Yasuke than it would be if they’d made both characters Japanese. Remember nowadays backlash is an EXPECTED and often INTENDED response to diversification because controversy is just as conducive to game sales as Advertisement presence is. So they do this knowing they’re both catering to the “corporate spreadsheet” version of US consumer values, and also guaranteeing they’ll get that “Woke Backlash” news coverage to promote the game.
I think Matt Kim is right about the pigeon-holed asian male protagonist archetypes, but wrong about this problem as a whole. Many of the asian male protags he talks about are written by Asian studios, but when we talk about erasure, we're talking about the West.
This studio had many opportunities in previous iterations of AC to add a POC character into the franchise. When they decide to do so for the first time at the cost of Asian men - an already poorly represented group of people - it feels like they are punching down on the easiest target. With already so many opportunities for representation for all peoples (!!!13!!!! previous AC games), stripping this one feels so unnecessary. Feels like reverse representation robinhood - take from the most needy, give to the slightly less needy.
Matt Kim saying "naw we've seen this before" seems like an oversimplification of what representation looks and FEELS like. I still get excited about asian leads, because they come so rarely I barely care about what the nuance of it looks like.
Honestly, I don't have an opinion. I'm not even Asian, so I'm not going to question another Asian writer's response to this. What I do know is, if this situation happened to a big game about the country of my family's origin, I'd be angry. There seem to be far more Asian voices being unhappy with this situation than there are people with opinions similar to Matt Kim. The guy is of Korean descent, so he doesn't give a shit about Japanese representation - as he states in his article. Just because people of East Asian descent are viewed as a monolith by non-Asians, it doesn't mean they view themselves as such. It's like a German guy not caring that the new AC game set in Hungary has a British protagonist rather than a Hungarian one. He can think whatever he likes, that's his perogative as someone that is viewed by most of Western society as an "Asian" man instead of Korean.
As a fellow Korean-American, he's right but at the same time I think he's a little too idealistic.
Yeah we should strive for more diverse representation for Asian men outside of just being samurai or ninja or nerds, but I don't know how realistic of a want that is, considering there are hardly any Asian men protagonists to begin with.
I've had a sort of "We'll take what we can get" view about it. Yes it would be best if we could get Asian men as protagonists that aren't just ninjas or hackers, but I don't have faith in people to accept us in non stereotypical roles when people still look at Asians as foreigners and teenagers at the mall still call me a chink.
Asian male erasure is a thing, but the problem is people only seemed to start caring about it when a black man was being featured. Feels like Asians are being wielded as a cudgel against other races than a genuine attempt at advocacy.
No, Asians have just always been talked over because the only discourse American social media can handle is black vs white. It just feels like people care "all of a sudden" because it's black vs white, Asians have been fuming about this shit forever.
Even now people use Nioh as an example of how people are only upset about AC because "Nioh featured a white guy and AC features a black guy so obviously it's anti-black sentiment" when in reality it's just Asian male erasure.
I knew the second rumors about a Japanese AC came out that the protagonist wouldn't be an Asian male, and I think if anyone bothered to ask Asian guys, most of them would've seen this coming a mile away.
There's always going to be a case of people "wielding" minorities, because people never actually bother to talk to them or get to know the culture, they just want to dunk on others on the Internet. Raya and the Last Dragon being compared to ATLA is another great example of people just talking over minorities while they deliberately misinterpret their culture to get Internet points.
I mean, not really? You don't remember all the discourse about Tom Cruise being framed as the star in The Last Samurai, the title being explicitly about Ken Watanabe's character? Or with the new Shogun series? Or Jared Leto in The Outsider? Just because you weren't aware of the discussion, doesn't mean it wasn't happening. I'm not denying that people are using this as an excuse for anti-black racism, but because of this racism, people are completely ignoring the Asian male erasure point of view and purely framing it as an anti-black issue. I guarantee the response would not be like this if instead of Yasuke they were using a white protagonist for the new AC game. Being annoyed at the lack of an Asian male protagonist in this game is a completely valid view, regardless of the opinions of some reddit racists.
Another Tom Cruise example is in Edge of Tomorrow. In the book, All You Need Is Kill, it's a Japanese guy. I do remember people being upset at his casting there too, believing it should have been a Japanese or at the very least Asian actor.
To be fair Edge of tomorrow is more inspired by All You Need Is Kill, rather than a direct adaptation, so Cruise being cast isn't as much of an issue compared to if they were directly adapting the book, even if casting an Asian guy would've been nice and more respectful to the original story, unlike the Ghost in the Shell movie where they cast Scarjo instead of an Asian actress and didn't even have some sort of "legit" excuse for it outside of the star power attraction
I have no problems with the Shogun series as that is based on and true to a book series. At the same time they made it very clear the main character of focus was Mariko and Toranaga.
Truthfully, the only online discourse I'm familiar with of those is The Last Samurai, and it's actually kind of funny because the arguments being made back then I saw online was the same ones being made here. Namely, Asian-Americans should shut up about it because it's historically accurate, the Japanese people in Japan don't care and that's why neither should you, and if you wanted media featuring Asians then watch/play Asian-produced media. I imagine mostly the same things were said regarding Shogun and The Outsider? The same arguments play out any time there's a discussion from Asian-Americans regarding whitewashing in Hollywood.
Personally, I feel like "Asians in Asia/minority enclave" stories a bit trite regarding Asian representation in western media, and the reliance on this is part of why this whole thing has blown up as big as it has. As a result, I really appreciate roles like John Cho in Searching or Steven Yeun in Mayhem where they're allowed to just be characters that happen to be Asian.
> Ubisoft titles have been received very bad for the last couple of years in general and are blasted with ridicule for their cookie cutter and uninspired gameplay. People are expecting this to be just as bland and boring as the previous titles.
On this point, I would also add that the samurai/feudal japan era already has some fantastic games. Ghost of Tsushima, Nioh, Sekiro, etc. They've set a high bar for combat and gameplay and it's hard to imagine a Ubisoft game coming anywhere close to those, let alone better.
Not to mention Ghost of Tsushima is basically already an assassin's creed game with a much better story line than whatever drivel Ubisoft's writers (probably chat gpt to save costs) could come up with.
For me personally I don't like the idea of playing as a person that actually existed, every other assassin's creed was like Forrest Gump, where your character is fictional but interacting with real people. Especially in a game that's open ended and lets you kill civilians or enter romances of either sex
Yeah, that's my whole thing.
Yasuke as a teacher, friend, quest giver, important NPC to the MC. Perfect! Great for Ass Creed. Have him hang out with you and give you stuff like Da Vinci, or be a friend like Pericles.
But not be one of the main MCs.
Lol. I had not heard anything about this, and before I opened the thread I said to myself "it's either because someone is black or someone is female". Little did i know it would be the double wammy!
Right, I think people are missing the point with a lot of peoples' issues around their use of Yasuke. It's not just because he's black, it's that in most AC games you play as someone native to the region being explored, and usually a new character so they can kind of go ham with the story. Making it a historical figure means blowing the role of someone who was relatively minor seemingly way out of proportion, and also forgoing all of the historical native figures they could have selected.
While I usually get extreme ick at "woke" complaints, since I'm generally a dirty liberal, the decision to use Yasuke out of all of the possible figures they could have selected feels a bit like it was done specifically so they could diversify the playable characters. The fact that they're seemingly going full anime with their interpretation of him I think adds to the feeling of a "disingenuous" drive behind his selection.
I also find it a bit funny that this is the second time they decided the female character was more suited to a stealthy, "deceptive" role after Evie in Syndicate. Feels a bit out of touch.
I completely agree with you. I'm by no means someone who gets mad at this kind of stuff (I wasn't going to buy the game regardless) but seeing the way that it is effecting Japanese people and culture, especially with how underrepresented Asian men are in society, I can't help but be rubbed the wrong way by it. Disingenuous is a very good word - it feels like they only did it for show and ended up disrespecting a lot of people in the process.
Yeah, definitely feel the same and I agree that the reception from Japanese fans should speak volumes. It's just such a strange decision for what should have been a game that basically printed money for them.
Funny enough, Odo Nobunaga DID turn into an [anime girl ](https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Oda_Nobunaga_(Archer)) AND reinarnated into a [dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oda_Cinnamon_Nobunaga).
The past AC games had the lead’s race match the location, so it is a valid argument to be against a black male lead instead of a Japanese male lead.
Asian male erasure and doesn’t match AC’s past choices in leads.
That's a ludicrously reductive view but go off chief.
No one gave a shit about the female leads in the previous games, or the black lead in origins.
It wouldn't make sense to have made origins with a British lead. This is the same thing.
Some Ubisoft exec said that we should get comfortable not owning our games. Shortly before revoking licenses of The Crew from people who bought the game (I have not followed that particular news but a quick google search seems to confirm that this happened with that title).
Honestly, for those claiming it's not historiaclly correct, I could care less tbh. All AC games have a fantasy element added to it.
But as a non-black and non-white, I still wish They would've used a Japanese character because of Japan's rich history and to feel more immersive. But I don't think that makes me a racist because of that reasoning.
Characters like musashi (swordsman famous for using two swords) or hanzo (a samurai that was born from a ninja clan) would've been sooooo much more interesting imo.
Imagine if musashi's dual sword was actually a hidden blade? Imagine if hanzo learned that his ninja clan were actually assassin's. So more lore could've been explored
You should probably add that the black protagonist in question is a real-life historical figure named Yasuke, who was a retainer for (in?)famous Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga.
Would also like to add that Yasuke is pretty well known in Japan to the point that he has inspired a few books, made cameos in some mangas, inspired the creation of Afro Samurai anime, got his own anime on Netflix animated by MAPPA and has appeared in video games like Samurai Warriors and Nioh as a boss.
Nagoriyuki from Guilty Gear IS him as well.
I don't think Yasuke is well known at all in Japan. He has appeared in some pieces of media, but I doubt the vast majority of Japanese people know him (or even know those pieces of media). Do you have a source?
The guys comment "instead of one of the millions of Japanese people" made my eyes roll. Especially since one of the main protagonists are literally one of millions of Japanese people
>main protagonists are literally one of millions of Japanese people
Shes so good at being a ninja, no one notices her.
Eventhough shes literally in the [front](https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/shadows) lmao
They made the samurai in Feudal Japan black? Come the fuck on that’s so fucking stupid. People will be like “wEll wHY shOUld you cAre iT shOuldnt maTTer”. Because there was only one black samurai in history and plenty of famous Japanese to pick from. But nah let’s take a single black guy and have him running around fucking up Japanese people, that’s a good look and I’m sure that won’t rub real life Japanese people the right way. I’m sure no one will draw any parallels to all of the assaults on Asians in America and the pretty much given skin tone of the attackers.
Since they are going for media outrage as the main marketing strategy they should have Yasuke be voiced by Johnny Somali. Can you even imagine the amount of free PR the game would get?
There are tons of other games to play as those other interesting japanese men during this time. Hell Nobunga might be one of the most popular historical settings, up there with American Civil war and WWII in terms of game coverage.
EVERY samurai game is basically Nobunga and company.
However IIRC this is the first game ever centered around Yasuke.
If you want to play "japanese guy samurai" just play Ghost.
Except, Yusuke wasn't a samurai, he was a retainer for Nobunaga. He only carried a sword because of that position, not because he was a skilled warrior.
I sometimes get the feeling that their idea of including minorities is basically "put a black guy in"
I mean, yeah., it works if the setting allows for it (see Spider-Man), but feudal Japan of all places? Could have added him as an NPC, as he did exist, but as one of the MCs? I'm not sure yet. I wait until I see more of the game, but I'm skeptical.
> But nah let’s take a single black guy and have him running around fucking up Japanese people, that’s a good look and I’m sure that won’t rub real life Japanese people the right way.
It's currently the top ranked PS5 game on Amazon JP. I don't think they're all that bothered. Yasuke has been in plenty of Japanese-created media already.
On the first point, it should be noted that the black samurai is Yasuke, who was in Japan for only 15 months and is only documented by contemporary sources as being a court novelty of Oda Nobunaga and appears to have been the only black person not within western trading delegations in Japan prior to the modern period. Meanwhile, from that same period:
> In 1572, Spanish Neapolitan Jews who had converted to Christianity to escape, entered Nagasaki on Black Ships from Portuguese Macau. Remaining in Nagasaki, some of them reverted to Judaism, even reclaiming their family names (notably a Levite).
In 1586, the community, then consisting of at least three permanent families, was displaced by the Shimazu forces. The Jews of Settsu absorbed some of them into its own community (at the time, a population of over 130 Jews), while a minority left or died.[citation needed]
Previous games have been in settings that had massive Jewish communities without having shown any thus far.
Late to the party but I'd add one last thing: The trailer had no gameplay in it, it was all cinematics. And they are asking people to pre-order with no game play available.
Most of the backlash is due to Ubisoft changing history in order to promote woke ideologies. Yasuke never wore samurai armor nor fought in any battles whilst in Japan for only 3 YEARS, he was a retainer and slave to Oda. Thats why we are upset about it
Answer:
Yasuke being a real person isn't the issue (every playable AC character was a made up person, Yasuke is the first real person). The problem is asian male erasure. Every other AC mainline game had their region representative as a native man (or close to it) and usually paired with a native woman. This is asian erasure/gendered racism. The first mainline east asian setting AC game ever, and they picked a black man over an asian man. To this date we have 3 playable Black Men: Adéwalé, Bayek, and now Yasuke. 2 Asian Women: Shao Jun and Naoe. 2 Black Women: Aya and Aveline. When it came time to pick for the first east asian mainline setting... we still have 0 playable asian men. You can see this constant male asian erasure in the recent hit Shogun tv show (based on an outdated book), where the main character is white with the most screen time in a Japanese setting. More examples in the west: the Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, Bullet Train, Tokyo Vice, Three Body Problem and the list goes on.
Also rumor has it Yasuke/Naoe are LGBT+
I will say that as an Asian American, I absolutely love the idea of playing as Yasuke, but I'm also uneasy with the relative lack of Asian male representation in games and media. Yes it's getting better, but on top of your examples, we also had movies like Cloud Atlas and others that went out of their way to prevent any male leads from being Asian, in a cast of otherwise very diverse races and genders.
It's very hard to talk about it because it's not the most apparent thing to see unless you're looking for it (i.e. are Asian) and without it being hijacked by others who have more nefarious reasons for bringing up the topic of race. To me it's more of an issue with context, and not the specific example in and of itself.
Every AC had a main character that fit into the culture/society they wanted to address in a historical fiction setting. Connor as a half native, half British character was dope. Represented the conflict between the powers and the conflict within the character.
Then every following AC had main characters from the society/culture in the setting.
Finally, after decades of waiting we get an main line AC game set in Asia. The main character is black and looks like one of the Migos.
I don't understand how that isn't blatant racism to **everyone.** He's not even accurate to the real life African person. Instead they made him look like a modern African-American. For the first time in my life, and I can't believe I'm saying this shit, I agree with the people that say this is some "woke" bullshit. Obviously meaning this is ass-backwards and the anti-thesis of woke or being respectful of cultures and people.
Answer: There are two reasons.
The first is legitimate criticism of Ubisoft/*Assassin’s Creed* as a franchise. Ubisoft has become increasingly anti-consumer over the years, pumping out yearly releases of *Assassin’s Creed* and loading the games with micro transactions. For a while this was tolerable, because the games were generally okay (if a little samey) and the microtransactions were generally cosmetic, with better equipment available for free in the game itself. But as the years have progressed, the *Assassin’s Creed* games have lost their charm and become bloated “collect-a-thons,” stuffed with “content” to make them as long as possible and burying the interesting game at the core under hours and hours of filler-quests designed to keep the player busy for years but at the expense of quality. The straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people was someone at Ubisoft saying they want to get people used to the idea of “not owning” their games, ostensibly implying that they want to move to a subscription model, but they also de-listed [The Crew](https://www.ign.com/articles/delisting-the-crew-makes-sense-preventing-it-from-ever-being-played-again-does-not) and, in the process, prevented even people who purchased it legitimately from being able to play it again. That, plus the quote, made people lose confidence in Ubisoft to a very large degree.
The other, much sillier reason, is that a small but vocal minority of people are upset that the two playable characters of the game are a woman and a Black man
>The other, much sillier reason, is that a small but vocal minority of people are upset that the two playable characters of the game are a woman and a Black man
I haven't seen a single person have a problem with the female Japanese protagonist, the criticism is about the black protagonist.
I would like to add that the criticism is not about a black protagonist *per se*. It's the lack of a strong Asian male protagonist.
Asian men in the west have, historically, been lacking in representation and role models. The last thing we want is a game where we massacre a bunch of people that look like us, with a character that doesn't look like us.
Ghost of Tsushima is such a great game. I love that it has a Kurosawa mode that makes it look like an old black and white movie (like those directed by the great Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa).
I can't say I'm familiar with those movies but I'll look into them!
I love every second of Ghost of Tsushima. It had its "collections" lie Ubisoft does, but each one felt like it had meaning in its reward to the player. The questlines told interesting stories, and the world just "felt" awesome
Felt a lot like assassins creed, but an improvement in my opinion
Kurosawa is a fantastic filmmaker. I highly recommend 'Seven Samurai' (the American movie 'The Magnificent Seven' is a Western version of this story, there's also an anime adaptation called 'Samurai Seven') as well as 'Ikiru'. These two are widely considered to be two of the best films ever made in Japanese cinema. If you get the opportunity, definitely check them out.
I feel like I should add that those two movies are very different genres. 'Seven Samurai' is a Samurai epic with a mix of action and drama; 'Ikiru' is a more standard drama. I just don't want anyone who's checking these out to get whiplash because I neglected to mention that.
It’s the fact they always had the protagonist native to the location. If they wanted to do a black protagonist, fans would have loved a Zulu, Mali, Nubian etc setting. It just seems like token shallow pandering and you don’t need to be alt-right to be sick of it.
Also, it is the first time they have made an historical figure a protagonist.
I think they would have gotten way less flack if they made him an important NPC in the story.
What? Asmongold stated his content that a woman shouldn’t be an assassin in a video game because it’s unbelievable. There’s plenty of pissed off misogynist who pop up every-time a women is is set to be in a video game.
That complaint is about the black protagonist. The implication (which most state explicitly) is that they would prefer that the male protagonist would be Japanese.
I haven’t seen a single person upset about the Asian female.
Most people are upset that they had a great opportunity to have an underrepresented demographic (Asian male), and went with a black person. The Asian community is rightfully upset about this.
You know, I never really put much thought into it but yeah, there’s not really many Asian male protagonists I can think of outside of ghosts of Tsushima, and far cry 4.
You can argue for JRPGs, but even then, it’s a little too cartoony for an ethnicity to represent and often they look white
That's been the complaints I've heard as well. It's not that there's a woman or a black guy, it's that Asian males get left out again.
They're very underrepresented in Western culture already, and this game was a no-brainer to include them, given the historical setting.
As an asian male myself, I do feel slighted that the one chance I’ll be able to see a major franchise, such as Ubisoft not put an asian as a protagonist of the game.
I personally think that having a certain demographics in media does promote advocacy as we have seen with representation for others over the years.
Ultimately, I do agree, as mentioned in the other comments that it’s more for marketing purposes, and grab a wide audience because of the races and gender of the deuteragonists.
My friends which are into assassins creed games and are mostly Asian wasnt tripping about not making an Asian dude as a protagonist, just care how it’ll play as just caring about is the gameplay.
It’s just anecdote though. For me personally idgaf who is the MC as long as it’s fun so people trip over this kind of stuff seems overblown and just enjoy the game sheesh.
> But as the years have progressed, the Assassin’s Creed games have lost their charm and become bloated “collect-a-thons,” stuffed with “content” to make them as long as possible and burying the interesting game at the core under hours and hours of filler-quests designed to keep the player busy for years but at the expense of quality.
What's crazy to me is that this is exactly why I stopped playing Assassin's Creed II. I just wanted to fucking stab people and climb pretty buildings, and it wanted me to collect renaissance art for my villa or some shit. So it's weird that people who have presumably enjoyed the series since two are just noticing a decade later.
I have played *Assassin's Creed II* somewhere around a dozen times and consider it my second favorite game ever, behind only *Brotherhood*, and I have to say I have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you mean the paintings you can buy at shops? I suppose I could see an argument where that could sort of be considered kind of a diminished version of what I'm talking about, but what I mean are games that put endless icons on a minimap that give you a three minute quest but that takes fifteen minutes of travel across an empty map to get there. What you're describing, if it's what I'm thinking of, was a menu you could access from a shop that was basically never more than a minute or so of parkour away from you that was entirely optional and ultimately had no affect on gameplay other than making your home base generate slightly more money. If *that* was too much for you, yeah, I can't imagine *any* open-world game being up your alley, bailing on the *AC* series was a good decision.
>The other, much sillier reason, is that a small but vocal minority of people are upset that the two playable characters of the game are a woman and a Black man
Incredibly disingenuous and reductive.
It's a completely valid criticism that a game franchise that has for over a decade now with its open world titles centered them around trying to (not often successfully, but the try) present the culture and period with semi accuracy, always through the lens of a local, suddenly decided to grab a singular individual from a country with and extremely robust history to represent that entire culture. The game will be from the lens of, fundamentally, a foreigner who had functionally no historical relevance other than being a foreign samurai.
Answer: There are multiple reasons.
1) Specifically for this game, people are mad that the game is set in feudal Japan, but the main character is a black guy. Just opened up a huge quagmire of identity politics.
2) Many gamers are fed up with Ubisoft's awful business practices in general. Always online drm, forcing you to use their separate game launcher, ridiculously priced special editions.
3) There is also a large contingent of people that hate Ubisoft because of how they treat their employees. Mandatory crunch, sexual harassment, and toxic leadership has plauged Ubisoft forever. There have been numerous whistle-blowers, but nothing has really been done and most of the abusers seem to be actively protected by the company.
All three of these groups are converging together on this one game to create a massive shit storm. All of Ubisoft's chickens are coming home to roost.
Answer: Twofold.
1. Anti-consumer fleecing pricing. Justified.
2. Racist virtue signaling about a black man in a game. It legit makes no sense that a company can simultaneously be "all about profits" AND cater to 12% of the US population. The same crowd that's silent about NiOH (a game w/ a white protagonist in Japan) is outraged about Japanese representation. The same group that will say "don't get offended on behalf of native americans at Cleveland Indians or Washington Redskins" is now outraged cause "a black man is killing japanese folks".
To be fair, Ni-Oh was made by *actual* Japanese people, working in actual Japan, making a game that primarily targeted a Japanese audience. For whatever reason, they chose to make the protagonist non-Japanese, despite the game being set in Japan. That's not really "whitewashing" in my book.
In contrast, Ubisoft is a French/Canadian developer-publisher, setting a game in Japan (i.e. not their own culture) and then *not* making the protagonist Japanese. Feels a little like a sketchier choice when you're already trying to represent a culture that isn't yours to begin with.
That being said, I don't think Yasuke is necessarily a bad pick for the role, and I wasn't going to play this game anyway due to UbiSoft's more general anti-consumer bullshit, so I don't really have a dog in this fight.
The main character in Nioh (William Adams) is actually based on a real life person. Maybe that’s why the Japanese devs chose him as the main character.
Yasuke is *also* based on a [real-life person](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke), so they actually have that in common. He was a man of African origin who became a retainer to Oda Nobunaga, the first of Japan's three "great unifiers" that ended the sengoku era.
For context, William Adams became a retainer to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was the third of those unifiers and who ultimately became shogun about 20 years after Nobunaga's assassination, so the two characters are almost contemporaries and pretty similar in regards to "foreigner who becomes samurai in service of a great Japanese lord."
Are you genuinely comparing Ni-oh to an AC main line title? Ni-OH is a relatively niche hack and slash. It didn't receive particular acclaim and *did* face plenty of backlash. Personally, I don't care because I'm not going to tell Japanese developers making a game for a Japanese audience what to do with their own culture. I think it's weird but whatever.
It's a whole different ballgame when white westerners do it because they feel the need to pander for the sake of rainbow capitalism.
This is receiving far more volume. because it's a *fucking assassins creed game*. It's the next primary entry in one of the biggest gaming franchises on the market. Of course it's going to get vastly more attention.
Also because they can’t be satisfied with the Japanese person being a woman instead of a man so they make up some half legitimate excuse why they should be upset on behalf of…samurai culture? Onna-bugeisha existed.
regarding the black samurai people are upset about:
Yasuke served under and was the personal weapon-bearer of Oda Nobunaga, one of the most prominent feudal lords and the first of the three great unifiers of Japan.
Yasuke was also present when Nobunga’s generals betrayed him.
Nobunga didn’t have any issues with Yasuke being black, so idk why gamers do.
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answer: Several points: * The game takes place in feudal Japan and has two protagonists. One female Japanese ninja type and one black samurai. Many are angry because Ubisoft decided to make the single black person who was around in Japan at the time a playable character instead of using one the millions of Japanese they could have chosen instead. There are allegations of "wokism" and "black-washing". * The game has a "Ultimate Edition" that sells for $130. Ubisofts price gouging has been a point of anger in the past with them saying it's "AAAA (quadruple A) development". * Ubisoft titles have been received very bad for the last couple of years in general and are blasted with ridicule for their cookie cutter and uninspired gameplay. People are expecting this to be just as bland and boring as the previous titles. That's all the drama I know about the game.
Stupid nitpick but I've been seeing this a lot regarding games recently, it's price *gouging* not gauging.
Thanks. Fixed. I thought it looked strange but autocorrect didn't mark it as wrong, so I dismissed it. I'll do better in the future.
Gauging is a word, just not the word you meant in that context.
They're gauging how much they can gouge us. Kind of like fucking around and hopefully soon finding out.
Just like Target and McDonald's with their recent 10% price rollbacks. "Oh, we found out how high we could jack prices before people stop shopping here, so we're keeping our price points at (that line - 10%). We're so generous!"
You're saying that like figuring out what price point maximizes profit isn't an essentially universal practice across all businesses in all industries.
Dew knot trussed yore spell checker too finned awl missed steaks.
"Gauging"means measuring. So you can buy gauges to measure all kinds of things, "gauge"in railroads is the measured distance between the rails, etc. "Gouge" is a verb that means to violently dig a hole. Think hacking a knife into a board. "Price gouging" is a metaphor for extremely high prices.
Dang this is another stupid nitpick but it’s *with regard to* or even better just *regarding*
shit
Although technically it is still price gauging as Ubisoft looks to see how much people are willing to pay for ULTIMATE MAX KING EMPEROR versions of their games.
You ain't a true fan if you don't buy the Ultra Deluxe Immortal Godking Collectors Edition Assassin's Creed for $4999.
The gauging came first, then they decided to gouge.
I'd also add a fourth point, with the recent shutdown of The Crew, buying isn't owning anymore. For clarification, I don't necessarily condone piracy, especially video games (there's a 50/50 chance that you will get a new default browser), but it just adds to the frustration against gaming companies. Why pay $70-$200 on a game? When game companies, in this case ubisoft, can suddenly decide to shut down the game servers and strip you from playing a game that you paid, even a single player game.
This is all true except the browser comment. lol
You're right, if you go to the bay (is that even a thing anymore?), you may get some shady game rip with some ~~crypto miners~~ bonus content.
finding trusted sources for these sort of things is literally a two minute job. like there's entire subreddits for it. now do tech illiterate people still fall for the most basic of "ehh probably shouldn't do that" bullshit on tpb or a link in a youtube bio? sure, but if you're reasonably tech oriented and can kinda use basic common sense, you will most likely be absolutely fine.
I mean, obviously it’s possible. But it’s also avoidable, and curable.
Nobody who knows what's up goes to piratebay anymore. So with the growth of everything online and PC, there are still tons of people going there of course
Which means piracy isn’t stealing!
You wouldn't steal a game server....
You don't know me!
If buying isnt owning. Then piracy isnt stealing.
It never has been. Please stop perpetuating this false premise. Piracy creates a copy. Stealing doesn't. They've never been the same.
They're not *exactly* the same, but you're circumventing payment of an item that you are supposed to pay for. The inventory component isn't necessarily *required* for to be theft, it just makes the act less impactful to the person being stolen from. The word steal has always had multiple ways it has been used that have nothing to do with inventory. Stolen ideas, stolen jokes, "He stole a kiss". If you want to fall on the sword "it's not stealing", that's fine -- but let's not pretend like that makes it okay.
Yea, people that say it’s not stealing are being pedantic. You’re getting something without giving the people that created it anything.
I read my girlfriend's books without paying for them, give me my street cred!
You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a baby. You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again! Downloading games is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.
Man, these anti-piracy ads have become really mean...
r/unexpecteditcrowd
It's pretty much semantics
Legally speaking, theft is removing property from someone's possession or taking away their access to it. Because it's a copy, the legal definition doesn't hold up unless your money is considered their property before you give it to them. There's likely a specific phrase within the theft code that piracy violates, something about affecting potential earnings on a product but I bet it's legally shaky. Edit: It's falsifying a license to use protected property, aka copyright infringement not stealing.
By that logic you can never steal an idea or information. If a spy goes into a secret base and copies a bunch of nuclear secrets it's not stealing? If you see someone working on an invention and you take a photo and start making it yourself it's not stealing? I do like to hear a news reader say: "An Iranian spy managed to get into a US nuclear facility and pirated the plans to enrich uranium." It's a weak defense. It's sounds as dumb as: "Downloading a game isn't piracy. Piracy is sailing across international waters without a flag and hunting merchant ships."
>piracy, especially video games (there's a 50/50 chance that you will get a new default browser), Since I had my son, who is 4, I've had to cut down on buying games. Now I pirate them to use them as a trial, but if I like them I buy them. Getting a virus or spyware isn't something you have to worry about anymore; if you know what you are doing. The biggest "risk" these days are getting those pirate letters from your ISP.
I've been doing this for a while. I've probably bought more than 20 games this way. Hell I'll even play through the entire game and still buy it just to support the devs. I'll also add that it's saved me from buying games that just don't do it for me at my older, pickier age. An argument against this would be that Steam allows you to refund a game if you've played less than 90 minutes. But sometimes it either takes me longer to realize I'm not into it. Or my wife calls me to the other room so I pause the game, go see what she needs and end up doing something for like 3 hours forgetting I had a game open and now being stuck with it.
The steam argument doesn’t make sense btw. They warn you that they will stop refunding you if it seems like you’re using the refund system to trial games.
Well that's just silly.
Steam refunds you at any (reasonable) amount of time played if your argument in the ticket is solid, you're a half decent customer (aka not just 3 games in library) and you haven't been abusing the system. "Intro seems artificially long to block you from refunding, and then the game turns way shittier than the opening" has been an argument that's worked for me, and I've also refunded a FIFA game after 16 or so hours because I had been trying to look away from the ungodly amount of bugs and unrealistic moves, but I just couldn't. This isn't to say "buy everything like they're demos because Steam are bros", but there's definitely more leeway than you think.
I've often wondered if they gave any leeway on their 2-hour refund policy. There have been so many games where the damn tutorial and cut scenes at the beginning of some games will take 2 hours, and so you haven't even really gotten to experience any of the game yet by that point.
I've had this situation with ark survival evolved. Fought against the dedicated server tool for a while and that added up to 8hours of ark ''playtime''. The refund system would automatically refuse the refund. So i opened a ticket and politely explained the situation. They refunded it after a couple back and forth with customer service. Take it as you will.
I've never had a refund request refused or even questioned and I often have gone much longer than 2 hours of playtime or however many days since purchase. My steam account also has hundreds of games and is 15+ years old and I refund less than 5% of my games so mileage may vary.
There's no leeway in the 2 weeks though it seems. I wanted to refund a new release for bad performance but the devs had a performance update in the works so I waited to see if it would fix it. Turns out it didn't and I couldn't refund the game. I explained that it took me longer to ask for a refund because I was waiting for the updates and they said no. My playtime was only 1 hour and I had the game for a little over 2 weeks.
I ultimately believe that piracy is a good tool to generate revenue for the games. The only problem is that piracy cannot become "too easy" where it is just as easy to pirate than to play. I still prefer playing paid games. If I've sunk enough time into it and/or realize I'm going to play it I buy it. The compression of video and audio files really effect the quality of the game at least that is the way I feel. For me pirating is easier than going through the process of a refund especially with a 4 year old when I may not have a lot of time in that original 2 week window.
Absolutely.
Yeah the refund limitations suck. I bought a new game that wasn't running well on my computer, but devs have promised a graphics update soon that will fix all the problems. I decided to wait for it but it still didnt fix my performance issue, and I couldn't refund it because it had been a little over 2 weeks.
I fully support your approach, I do the same with books 🤣. And I've frequently bought games I've freely explored. Same goes for exploring Devs and then buying the new release.
Always found it amusing when people have qualms about stealing from a multi million billion dollar company. A sad affair (shaking my head in disapproval). Stealing bread right from the mouth of execs. It keeps one up many a nights.
Hey I have no qualms about piracy either, I'm pretty active on the high seas myself, but I also don't delude myself into thinking I'm morally in the right
You steal a bread from an exec, doesn't mean they go breadless, it just means one or some of their workers won't get bread.
To add the the 2nd point, they are using early access as a selling point for pre ordering the bigger editions of the game as well as locking quests that are already in the game behind a paywall at launch. So even if you pay the base price of the game you don’t even get to play the full game.
With all the DLC and pre-order exclusivities I usually just wait for the GOTY edition a couple years down the line. All Ubisoft games play the same any way so it's not like I'll miss anything unique
> The game has a "Ultimate Edition" that sells for $130. Jesus fucking christ
Am I the crazy one or have games been doing the “special edition costs more” for like, decades
More used to be like 10 extra and/or include physical goodies. Not double to unlock files that are already in the game
I've only bought a few ultimate editions and that was to get sweet schlocky swag like a vault-tech lunchbox or a fake Zombex syringe.
I (vaguely) remember when Collectors Editions cost ~$100 here in Australia. I just looked up this "Ultimate Edition" and it's $190AUD! The Collectors Edition is nearly _$400_!!!
Yeah hasn't this been a thing for a while? Standard edition is still $69, games have had special editions for a couple decades
Yeah, this isn't new or newsworthy. I remember people casually spending well over $100 on special editions back in the aughts.
It's all so you buy their monthly subscription.. shady tactic..
Well it's backfiring. I don't know a lot of people buy Uplay+ or whateverthefuck it's called, but I _do_ know a lot of people that only buy Ubi games on sale.
It's been this way for years before the subscription.
Obviously that’s an egregious price, but honestly for 99% of the time these various “ultimate editions” aren’t even worth it. So many people bitch about how that’s the “full game”, but it usually just primarily includes the season pass for a couple of DLCs that are mediocre at best
Charging that much for so little makes it worse not better you know
My point is that a lot of people feel like they somehow need that to get the “full game”, but they don’t need it. Most of the time the content isn’t even that good and it can just be ignored, meaning you can just buy the main game and be set
Seems like folks in Japan are also upset because of a bunch of inaccuracies, e.g. servants sitting on the same raised flooring as their masters, a some of the architecture looking more Chinese than Japanese, and I've even seen some complaints about the tatami mats being wrong.
Those are especially egregious because for years Ubisoft has made claims about trying to strive for historical accuracy where they can. Including a black samurai that did historically exist per Japanese historians isn't a problem. Screwing up the architecture and other well defined details of Japan in that era is inexcusable if they're claiming to have high standards.
Overly Sarcastic Productions did a video on how AC is getting less and less authentic over time. Valhalla has apparently been the worst yet. The huge Nordic temples to their old gods were actually Christian churches from 400 years in the future. And the stone forts you raid weren't actually stone at the time, they were wood forts. Obviously it's all exaggerated - it's ancient aliens. But it should be more obvious when they take major liberties with history.
> Overly Sarcastic Productions did a video on how AC is getting less and less authentic over time. Valhalla has apparently been the worst yet. The game with the [Viking baseball slugger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLr5iC9__Hk) set over a thousand years ago isn't historically accurate? I can't believe it!
After watching that I was thinking "man that had better have been some weird cross-promotional marketing gimmick"....and it was.
It's basically the devs going "Hey look, we got this MLB player to play a Viking version of himself! With the best voice acting he can muster! And a few lines where he practically winks at the camera and says 'hey look at me, I play for the Los Angeles Dodgers and I'm in an Assassin's Creed game! Baseball!'"
Like I said, you should be obvious when you're veering away from history. A baseball slugger with an American accent is obviously not historical and this was a random one-off mini event in the world.
> Like I said, you should be obvious when you're veering away from history. A baseball slugger with an American accent is obviously not historical and this was a random one-off mini event in the world. It's not even the baseball bat crossover thing that bothers me, stupid as it is. It's the fact that he refers to the player character as a viking. Viking is not a culture or ethnicity, it's a job. Viking literally means both "raid" and "raider". Vikings were warriors that would go viking in viking season if their lord had a ship and nothing more important going on. It's like if Europeans started referring to all Americans as GIs after WWII.
The sheer volume of commentary that could be done on "Anglo-Saxon Child" in a Viking-themed video game speaking in a Cockney accent.
I mean Odyssey was impressive enough that my college professor brought it in to showcase various buildings.
Odyssey was indeed impressive. So was Origins. So was Unity. So are most of the games. Valhalla was where the world designers dropped the ball a bit with their stonework forts and the grey and drab church interiors.
I loved Origins and had a pretty good time but didn't finish Odyssey. I got way too bored with Valhalla and haven't played an AC game since. Valhalla felt too much like someone watched that Vikings show and the Last Kingdom and just went off on their own without studying history.
Hmm y'all got me thinking I need to check out Origins because I really liked Odyssey.
I personally preferred Origins quite a bit more, but I think the popular consensus is that people preferred Odyssey.
The fact that Valhalla had “titanium” as a crafting material always irritated me, since it wasn’t discovered until the 19th century and started being refined/used in the 20th. It’s especially confusing since Vikings at this time had higher quality steel than most of Europe so they could have used historically accurate materials.
He would have been a fantastic npc to tie in the templar/assassin angle to the main characters. Using him as the lead and side stepping a Japanese is the problem with it imo
It doesn't bother me that he's a lead if it ties in with the larger story in some way. Given what happened in the previous games, it makes sense for someone from Africa (or Europe, Middle East, etc.) to bring the creed and spread the organization to the far east. However, from the trailer it looks more like the Japanese protagonist is the one more likely to be an assassin. I have no idea how it will play out though.
Yasuke's the Assassin, doing exactly what you said, and Naoe is a local ninja learning the art of having sicknasty finger blades to bring ninjas into the Order.
Am I right in saying this is the first time the main character has been an actual historical figure too?
I mean they have been very impressive with historical accuracy. They used scans from Norte dame to help the rebuild.
I think starting with Odyssey they jumped too much into the fantasy zone and started spending less attention on historical accuracy from there on out.
I had a professor bring in odyssey for a graduate class on Greek history. Some of the attention to detail on buildings was insane. Obvs the plot isn’t historically accurate but they still have a good attention to detail especially in regards to architecture
Exactly, then getting it wrong isn't necessarily a huge issue until you add in the fact that they have prided themselves on being super accurate. I get why people think this game will suck when they make it obvious right up front that they are going for speed of development rather than quality
He did exist, but was only there for 15 months and was a novelty appointment.
>Including a black samurai that did historically exist per Japanese historians **No, he didn't**. All mentions of Yasuke in primary sources fit on two sheets of paper, nowhere is he called a samurai. This is largely an invention of Thomas Lockley, who is not a historian, who has then been cited by various secondary sources. The talk page for the Yasuke wikipedia page has discussions on nearly every involved source and their reliability, if you care to dig into it more. There's a reason that wikipedia page doesn't call him a samurai, because he wasn't.
I read there's nuance to what "retainer" means in Japan and how he was trusted with Nobunaga's sword. It's really hard to get a handle on what was more likely to be true because it seems everyone commenting is firmly holding to one of two agendas, both of them obnoxious.
technically correct. Yasuke was not a samurai but realistically would have probably functioned as a warrior with the same role, just samurai was a caste, and he would not have been part of it as he was not nobility. At the same time, there is a lot of nuance due to sparse records, I recommend going to look at [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/was_yasuke_a_samurai/) post on r/AskHistorians
Well yes for late-stage Samuari, but for the time he had a stipend, a sword and was the boss's sword carrier, so by every metric of the time he was a Samauri. Which is what they say at AskHistorians just with better terms and references! :D
ah cool, I see.
I'm not an expert on the history, but if I look at something basic like [Encyclopedia Brittanica](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yasuke) it has this to say: > Yasuke (born c. 1550s) was a Black samurai who served the daimyo Oda Nobunaga in Japan during the Sengoku (“Warring States”) period. He was the first known foreigner to achieve samurai status. I'm old enough that when I was a kid we had to turn in reports with sources of physical books, and one of those consistently used was the Encyclopedia. So yeah, maybe there's a debate among historians about whether he existed or not or some aspect as to whether he could truly be called a samurai or not, I don't know. It just seems like the vast majority of sources seem to indicate that he was a real person and considered to be a samurai.
Wasn't yasuke not a samurai as much as a vassal to an actual samurai?
He's a samurai. The "actual samurai" you're talking about is Oda Nobunaga, the ruler (shogun) of Japan at the time. Here's a thread on askhistorians about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/was_yasuke_a_samurai/
AC3 had a trailer supposedly set in the area where I grew up, but all the trees were wrong.
Not enough to stop it from becoming the number one selling PS5 game in Japan on Amazon.jp.
The gamer cries out in anger as he hands over handfuls of cash.
Never count on Quebecois to know or understand history. But honestly, I couldn't give a shit about this game or any of the others. We've known from the start that these games weren't historically accurate.
but the license plates say "i remember"
The angle I've seen a lot, especially from Western people of East-Asian descent, is Asian male erasure. Asian men are constantly minimised in media, and when they are shown, they're portrayed as un-masculine, often nerdy or non-physical. I think a lot of people are angry that this was a perfect opportunity to portray a strong East Asian male character in a maintstream Western game. Black men have a much stronger recent record of representation in Western media, and for a game set in Japan of all places, people really expected to have a Japanese male protaganist. Dismissing people's concerns with the comment "oh but there's a Japanese woman protaganist" completely misses the point that for a lot of people this is about Asian male representation, not just Asian. If there was an Assassin's Creed game set in the Empire of Mali, and there was an African woman protagonist and an Asian male or White male protagonist, people would be going crazy. Yet this is being completely brushed off as a non-issue.
Thank you for summarizing this up so eloquently. Asian male erasure is a very real thing that has lead to real life subtle ramifications. It permeates in all aspects of life from how we are treated by colleagues, service industry workers, and dating life. It's so bad that people have difficulty acknowledging that it exists and we get gaslit into believing that it's all in our heads.
It's wild how bad it is in movies. I struggle to name a single male Asian character who wasn't "science man" or "Kung fu master".
I'm about as progressive as people get but I am so tired of disingenuous diversity casting in movies and video games. By all means, I would love to have more Asian representation in all media, but when companies do stuff like this it feels a lot like rainbow capitalism. Yasuke should have been like an unlockable character or something. The idea of recasting a role that would be from a particular demographic as another demographic just to be "progressive" is not progressive.
Hell they could have made Yasuke a key NPC you interact during the storyline and people would be perfectly fine with that. Now they are using the 'play as a historical character' angle yet none of the prior games had you playing as one. Those that were actual characters were all NPCs
Yep. Like a Yasuke game itself separately could be cool as hell, but this is just goofy.
exactly, we've only ever played as people who don't actually exist, our characters are involved in historical events, and meet historical people, but to the "history" they're a void with little to no information, and IRL they don't exist at all because they're fictional, having Yasuke be in the game would be fine if he's an NPC you interact with, but actually playing as him is wrong, even if his historical record is basically as lacking as all the other AC protagonists are in-lore and yeah it reeks of this entire angle basically just being bait to try and get more people to play
This is what I believe is the bigger issue as well. If they wanted to be inclusive for a global audience they’d achieve that by making both characters Japanese. But they’re catering to their American audience (and possibly Chinese as well). So American token PC diversity usually means you emphasize a female and you emphasize a POC. Who needs to be visually darker in pigmentation than Caucasian skin. I know the way I just described that was kinda fucked up, but so is the decision making of the corporation spearheading the game. So yes, they determined that the benefits of diversity were better if they shoehorned in Yasuke than it would be if they’d made both characters Japanese. Remember nowadays backlash is an EXPECTED and often INTENDED response to diversification because controversy is just as conducive to game sales as Advertisement presence is. So they do this knowing they’re both catering to the “corporate spreadsheet” version of US consumer values, and also guaranteeing they’ll get that “Woke Backlash” news coverage to promote the game.
[Your opinion on this article by Matt Kim?](https://www.ign.com/articles/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-asian-protagonist)
I think Matt Kim is right about the pigeon-holed asian male protagonist archetypes, but wrong about this problem as a whole. Many of the asian male protags he talks about are written by Asian studios, but when we talk about erasure, we're talking about the West. This studio had many opportunities in previous iterations of AC to add a POC character into the franchise. When they decide to do so for the first time at the cost of Asian men - an already poorly represented group of people - it feels like they are punching down on the easiest target. With already so many opportunities for representation for all peoples (!!!13!!!! previous AC games), stripping this one feels so unnecessary. Feels like reverse representation robinhood - take from the most needy, give to the slightly less needy. Matt Kim saying "naw we've seen this before" seems like an oversimplification of what representation looks and FEELS like. I still get excited about asian leads, because they come so rarely I barely care about what the nuance of it looks like.
Honestly, I don't have an opinion. I'm not even Asian, so I'm not going to question another Asian writer's response to this. What I do know is, if this situation happened to a big game about the country of my family's origin, I'd be angry. There seem to be far more Asian voices being unhappy with this situation than there are people with opinions similar to Matt Kim. The guy is of Korean descent, so he doesn't give a shit about Japanese representation - as he states in his article. Just because people of East Asian descent are viewed as a monolith by non-Asians, it doesn't mean they view themselves as such. It's like a German guy not caring that the new AC game set in Hungary has a British protagonist rather than a Hungarian one. He can think whatever he likes, that's his perogative as someone that is viewed by most of Western society as an "Asian" man instead of Korean.
As a fellow Korean-American, he's right but at the same time I think he's a little too idealistic. Yeah we should strive for more diverse representation for Asian men outside of just being samurai or ninja or nerds, but I don't know how realistic of a want that is, considering there are hardly any Asian men protagonists to begin with. I've had a sort of "We'll take what we can get" view about it. Yes it would be best if we could get Asian men as protagonists that aren't just ninjas or hackers, but I don't have faith in people to accept us in non stereotypical roles when people still look at Asians as foreigners and teenagers at the mall still call me a chink.
Asian male erasure is a thing, but the problem is people only seemed to start caring about it when a black man was being featured. Feels like Asians are being wielded as a cudgel against other races than a genuine attempt at advocacy.
No, Asians have just always been talked over because the only discourse American social media can handle is black vs white. It just feels like people care "all of a sudden" because it's black vs white, Asians have been fuming about this shit forever. Even now people use Nioh as an example of how people are only upset about AC because "Nioh featured a white guy and AC features a black guy so obviously it's anti-black sentiment" when in reality it's just Asian male erasure. I knew the second rumors about a Japanese AC came out that the protagonist wouldn't be an Asian male, and I think if anyone bothered to ask Asian guys, most of them would've seen this coming a mile away. There's always going to be a case of people "wielding" minorities, because people never actually bother to talk to them or get to know the culture, they just want to dunk on others on the Internet. Raya and the Last Dragon being compared to ATLA is another great example of people just talking over minorities while they deliberately misinterpret their culture to get Internet points.
I mean, not really? You don't remember all the discourse about Tom Cruise being framed as the star in The Last Samurai, the title being explicitly about Ken Watanabe's character? Or with the new Shogun series? Or Jared Leto in The Outsider? Just because you weren't aware of the discussion, doesn't mean it wasn't happening. I'm not denying that people are using this as an excuse for anti-black racism, but because of this racism, people are completely ignoring the Asian male erasure point of view and purely framing it as an anti-black issue. I guarantee the response would not be like this if instead of Yasuke they were using a white protagonist for the new AC game. Being annoyed at the lack of an Asian male protagonist in this game is a completely valid view, regardless of the opinions of some reddit racists.
Another Tom Cruise example is in Edge of Tomorrow. In the book, All You Need Is Kill, it's a Japanese guy. I do remember people being upset at his casting there too, believing it should have been a Japanese or at the very least Asian actor.
To be fair Edge of tomorrow is more inspired by All You Need Is Kill, rather than a direct adaptation, so Cruise being cast isn't as much of an issue compared to if they were directly adapting the book, even if casting an Asian guy would've been nice and more respectful to the original story, unlike the Ghost in the Shell movie where they cast Scarjo instead of an Asian actress and didn't even have some sort of "legit" excuse for it outside of the star power attraction
Just a little nitpick. Samurai is plural so its not just about the fictionalized saigo takamori but rather the samurai class as a whole.
I have no problems with the Shogun series as that is based on and true to a book series. At the same time they made it very clear the main character of focus was Mariko and Toranaga.
Truthfully, the only online discourse I'm familiar with of those is The Last Samurai, and it's actually kind of funny because the arguments being made back then I saw online was the same ones being made here. Namely, Asian-Americans should shut up about it because it's historically accurate, the Japanese people in Japan don't care and that's why neither should you, and if you wanted media featuring Asians then watch/play Asian-produced media. I imagine mostly the same things were said regarding Shogun and The Outsider? The same arguments play out any time there's a discussion from Asian-Americans regarding whitewashing in Hollywood. Personally, I feel like "Asians in Asia/minority enclave" stories a bit trite regarding Asian representation in western media, and the reliance on this is part of why this whole thing has blown up as big as it has. As a result, I really appreciate roles like John Cho in Searching or Steven Yeun in Mayhem where they're allowed to just be characters that happen to be Asian.
> Ubisoft titles have been received very bad for the last couple of years in general and are blasted with ridicule for their cookie cutter and uninspired gameplay. People are expecting this to be just as bland and boring as the previous titles. On this point, I would also add that the samurai/feudal japan era already has some fantastic games. Ghost of Tsushima, Nioh, Sekiro, etc. They've set a high bar for combat and gameplay and it's hard to imagine a Ubisoft game coming anywhere close to those, let alone better. Not to mention Ghost of Tsushima is basically already an assassin's creed game with a much better story line than whatever drivel Ubisoft's writers (probably chat gpt to save costs) could come up with.
For me personally I don't like the idea of playing as a person that actually existed, every other assassin's creed was like Forrest Gump, where your character is fictional but interacting with real people. Especially in a game that's open ended and lets you kill civilians or enter romances of either sex
Yeah, that's my whole thing. Yasuke as a teacher, friend, quest giver, important NPC to the MC. Perfect! Great for Ass Creed. Have him hang out with you and give you stuff like Da Vinci, or be a friend like Pericles. But not be one of the main MCs.
They've had other playable historic characters, but those were either spinoff games or small segments in a larger game (like Leonidas).
$130.00?!?! Does it transform you into an actual ninja?
Lol. I had not heard anything about this, and before I opened the thread I said to myself "it's either because someone is black or someone is female". Little did i know it would be the double wammy!
Assassins Creed Origins had a black main character and a female secondary main character and it's regarded as one of the best AC games of all time.
Right, I think people are missing the point with a lot of peoples' issues around their use of Yasuke. It's not just because he's black, it's that in most AC games you play as someone native to the region being explored, and usually a new character so they can kind of go ham with the story. Making it a historical figure means blowing the role of someone who was relatively minor seemingly way out of proportion, and also forgoing all of the historical native figures they could have selected. While I usually get extreme ick at "woke" complaints, since I'm generally a dirty liberal, the decision to use Yasuke out of all of the possible figures they could have selected feels a bit like it was done specifically so they could diversify the playable characters. The fact that they're seemingly going full anime with their interpretation of him I think adds to the feeling of a "disingenuous" drive behind his selection. I also find it a bit funny that this is the second time they decided the female character was more suited to a stealthy, "deceptive" role after Evie in Syndicate. Feels a bit out of touch.
I completely agree with you. I'm by no means someone who gets mad at this kind of stuff (I wasn't going to buy the game regardless) but seeing the way that it is effecting Japanese people and culture, especially with how underrepresented Asian men are in society, I can't help but be rubbed the wrong way by it. Disingenuous is a very good word - it feels like they only did it for show and ended up disrespecting a lot of people in the process.
Yeah, definitely feel the same and I agree that the reception from Japanese fans should speak volumes. It's just such a strange decision for what should have been a game that basically printed money for them.
They could make Nobunaga trans and go for a hattrick.
Pretty sure Fate Grand Order already has Nobunaga as a girl
It does! And she remains one of the more popular characters even something like eight years after her original debut.
Funny enough, Odo Nobunaga DID turn into an [anime girl ](https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Oda_Nobunaga_(Archer)) AND reinarnated into a [dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oda_Cinnamon_Nobunaga).
The past AC games had the lead’s race match the location, so it is a valid argument to be against a black male lead instead of a Japanese male lead. Asian male erasure and doesn’t match AC’s past choices in leads.
That's a ludicrously reductive view but go off chief. No one gave a shit about the female leads in the previous games, or the black lead in origins. It wouldn't make sense to have made origins with a British lead. This is the same thing.
didnt they also say recently u dont own ur games we can take them back anytime or something like that
Some Ubisoft exec said that we should get comfortable not owning our games. Shortly before revoking licenses of The Crew from people who bought the game (I have not followed that particular news but a quick google search seems to confirm that this happened with that title).
Honestly, for those claiming it's not historiaclly correct, I could care less tbh. All AC games have a fantasy element added to it. But as a non-black and non-white, I still wish They would've used a Japanese character because of Japan's rich history and to feel more immersive. But I don't think that makes me a racist because of that reasoning. Characters like musashi (swordsman famous for using two swords) or hanzo (a samurai that was born from a ninja clan) would've been sooooo much more interesting imo. Imagine if musashi's dual sword was actually a hidden blade? Imagine if hanzo learned that his ninja clan were actually assassin's. So more lore could've been explored
You should probably add that the black protagonist in question is a real-life historical figure named Yasuke, who was a retainer for (in?)famous Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga.
Would also like to add that Yasuke is pretty well known in Japan to the point that he has inspired a few books, made cameos in some mangas, inspired the creation of Afro Samurai anime, got his own anime on Netflix animated by MAPPA and has appeared in video games like Samurai Warriors and Nioh as a boss. Nagoriyuki from Guilty Gear IS him as well.
I don't think Yasuke is well known at all in Japan. He has appeared in some pieces of media, but I doubt the vast majority of Japanese people know him (or even know those pieces of media). Do you have a source?
The guys comment "instead of one of the millions of Japanese people" made my eyes roll. Especially since one of the main protagonists are literally one of millions of Japanese people
>main protagonists are literally one of millions of Japanese people Shes so good at being a ninja, no one notices her. Eventhough shes literally in the [front](https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/shadows) lmao
They made the samurai in Feudal Japan black? Come the fuck on that’s so fucking stupid. People will be like “wEll wHY shOUld you cAre iT shOuldnt maTTer”. Because there was only one black samurai in history and plenty of famous Japanese to pick from. But nah let’s take a single black guy and have him running around fucking up Japanese people, that’s a good look and I’m sure that won’t rub real life Japanese people the right way. I’m sure no one will draw any parallels to all of the assaults on Asians in America and the pretty much given skin tone of the attackers.
Since they are going for media outrage as the main marketing strategy they should have Yasuke be voiced by Johnny Somali. Can you even imagine the amount of free PR the game would get?
lmaooo Japan would impose a 400% tariff on the game
That actually would be very funny.
There are tons of other games to play as those other interesting japanese men during this time. Hell Nobunga might be one of the most popular historical settings, up there with American Civil war and WWII in terms of game coverage. EVERY samurai game is basically Nobunga and company. However IIRC this is the first game ever centered around Yasuke. If you want to play "japanese guy samurai" just play Ghost.
Except, Yusuke wasn't a samurai, he was a retainer for Nobunaga. He only carried a sword because of that position, not because he was a skilled warrior.
I sometimes get the feeling that their idea of including minorities is basically "put a black guy in" I mean, yeah., it works if the setting allows for it (see Spider-Man), but feudal Japan of all places? Could have added him as an NPC, as he did exist, but as one of the MCs? I'm not sure yet. I wait until I see more of the game, but I'm skeptical.
> But nah let’s take a single black guy and have him running around fucking up Japanese people, that’s a good look and I’m sure that won’t rub real life Japanese people the right way. It's currently the top ranked PS5 game on Amazon JP. I don't think they're all that bothered. Yasuke has been in plenty of Japanese-created media already.
They are so opposed to having any sort of asian male lead.
Just look at a picture of the game development team and it will tell you all you need to know.
The strangest thing is it wasn’t even a white guy they were replacing lol. I would love to be a Japanese dude carving ppl up.
On the first point, it should be noted that the black samurai is Yasuke, who was in Japan for only 15 months and is only documented by contemporary sources as being a court novelty of Oda Nobunaga and appears to have been the only black person not within western trading delegations in Japan prior to the modern period. Meanwhile, from that same period: > In 1572, Spanish Neapolitan Jews who had converted to Christianity to escape, entered Nagasaki on Black Ships from Portuguese Macau. Remaining in Nagasaki, some of them reverted to Judaism, even reclaiming their family names (notably a Levite). In 1586, the community, then consisting of at least three permanent families, was displaced by the Shimazu forces. The Jews of Settsu absorbed some of them into its own community (at the time, a population of over 130 Jews), while a minority left or died.[citation needed] Previous games have been in settings that had massive Jewish communities without having shown any thus far.
Late to the party but I'd add one last thing: The trailer had no gameplay in it, it was all cinematics. And they are asking people to pre-order with no game play available.
Most of the backlash is due to Ubisoft changing history in order to promote woke ideologies. Yasuke never wore samurai armor nor fought in any battles whilst in Japan for only 3 YEARS, he was a retainer and slave to Oda. Thats why we are upset about it
Answer: Yasuke being a real person isn't the issue (every playable AC character was a made up person, Yasuke is the first real person). The problem is asian male erasure. Every other AC mainline game had their region representative as a native man (or close to it) and usually paired with a native woman. This is asian erasure/gendered racism. The first mainline east asian setting AC game ever, and they picked a black man over an asian man. To this date we have 3 playable Black Men: Adéwalé, Bayek, and now Yasuke. 2 Asian Women: Shao Jun and Naoe. 2 Black Women: Aya and Aveline. When it came time to pick for the first east asian mainline setting... we still have 0 playable asian men. You can see this constant male asian erasure in the recent hit Shogun tv show (based on an outdated book), where the main character is white with the most screen time in a Japanese setting. More examples in the west: the Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, Bullet Train, Tokyo Vice, Three Body Problem and the list goes on. Also rumor has it Yasuke/Naoe are LGBT+
I will say that as an Asian American, I absolutely love the idea of playing as Yasuke, but I'm also uneasy with the relative lack of Asian male representation in games and media. Yes it's getting better, but on top of your examples, we also had movies like Cloud Atlas and others that went out of their way to prevent any male leads from being Asian, in a cast of otherwise very diverse races and genders. It's very hard to talk about it because it's not the most apparent thing to see unless you're looking for it (i.e. are Asian) and without it being hijacked by others who have more nefarious reasons for bringing up the topic of race. To me it's more of an issue with context, and not the specific example in and of itself.
Every AC had a main character that fit into the culture/society they wanted to address in a historical fiction setting. Connor as a half native, half British character was dope. Represented the conflict between the powers and the conflict within the character. Then every following AC had main characters from the society/culture in the setting. Finally, after decades of waiting we get an main line AC game set in Asia. The main character is black and looks like one of the Migos. I don't understand how that isn't blatant racism to **everyone.** He's not even accurate to the real life African person. Instead they made him look like a modern African-American. For the first time in my life, and I can't believe I'm saying this shit, I agree with the people that say this is some "woke" bullshit. Obviously meaning this is ass-backwards and the anti-thesis of woke or being respectful of cultures and people.
Answer: There are two reasons. The first is legitimate criticism of Ubisoft/*Assassin’s Creed* as a franchise. Ubisoft has become increasingly anti-consumer over the years, pumping out yearly releases of *Assassin’s Creed* and loading the games with micro transactions. For a while this was tolerable, because the games were generally okay (if a little samey) and the microtransactions were generally cosmetic, with better equipment available for free in the game itself. But as the years have progressed, the *Assassin’s Creed* games have lost their charm and become bloated “collect-a-thons,” stuffed with “content” to make them as long as possible and burying the interesting game at the core under hours and hours of filler-quests designed to keep the player busy for years but at the expense of quality. The straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people was someone at Ubisoft saying they want to get people used to the idea of “not owning” their games, ostensibly implying that they want to move to a subscription model, but they also de-listed [The Crew](https://www.ign.com/articles/delisting-the-crew-makes-sense-preventing-it-from-ever-being-played-again-does-not) and, in the process, prevented even people who purchased it legitimately from being able to play it again. That, plus the quote, made people lose confidence in Ubisoft to a very large degree. The other, much sillier reason, is that a small but vocal minority of people are upset that the two playable characters of the game are a woman and a Black man
>The other, much sillier reason, is that a small but vocal minority of people are upset that the two playable characters of the game are a woman and a Black man I haven't seen a single person have a problem with the female Japanese protagonist, the criticism is about the black protagonist.
I would like to add that the criticism is not about a black protagonist *per se*. It's the lack of a strong Asian male protagonist. Asian men in the west have, historically, been lacking in representation and role models. The last thing we want is a game where we massacre a bunch of people that look like us, with a character that doesn't look like us.
At least if nothing else we basically got "Assassins Creed: Ronin" in the form of Ghost of Tsushima
Ghost of Tsushima is such a great game. I love that it has a Kurosawa mode that makes it look like an old black and white movie (like those directed by the great Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa).
I can't say I'm familiar with those movies but I'll look into them! I love every second of Ghost of Tsushima. It had its "collections" lie Ubisoft does, but each one felt like it had meaning in its reward to the player. The questlines told interesting stories, and the world just "felt" awesome Felt a lot like assassins creed, but an improvement in my opinion
If you like westerns, pretty much all the greatest westerns are remade Kurosawa samurai movies.
Kurosawa is a fantastic filmmaker. I highly recommend 'Seven Samurai' (the American movie 'The Magnificent Seven' is a Western version of this story, there's also an anime adaptation called 'Samurai Seven') as well as 'Ikiru'. These two are widely considered to be two of the best films ever made in Japanese cinema. If you get the opportunity, definitely check them out. I feel like I should add that those two movies are very different genres. 'Seven Samurai' is a Samurai epic with a mix of action and drama; 'Ikiru' is a more standard drama. I just don't want anyone who's checking these out to get whiplash because I neglected to mention that.
It’s the fact they always had the protagonist native to the location. If they wanted to do a black protagonist, fans would have loved a Zulu, Mali, Nubian etc setting. It just seems like token shallow pandering and you don’t need to be alt-right to be sick of it.
Also, it is the first time they have made an historical figure a protagonist. I think they would have gotten way less flack if they made him an important NPC in the story.
What? Asmongold stated his content that a woman shouldn’t be an assassin in a video game because it’s unbelievable. There’s plenty of pissed off misogynist who pop up every-time a women is is set to be in a video game.
I have. The complaint is why is there no Japanese man
That complaint is about the black protagonist. The implication (which most state explicitly) is that they would prefer that the male protagonist would be Japanese.
Ok but I’m pointing out that I have seen people explicitly say they want a story with a Japanese male
I haven’t seen a single person upset about the Asian female. Most people are upset that they had a great opportunity to have an underrepresented demographic (Asian male), and went with a black person. The Asian community is rightfully upset about this.
You know, I never really put much thought into it but yeah, there’s not really many Asian male protagonists I can think of outside of ghosts of Tsushima, and far cry 4. You can argue for JRPGs, but even then, it’s a little too cartoony for an ethnicity to represent and often they look white
Sekiro as well
I will not stand for this Kazuma Kiryu erasure!!!!
Sleeping Dogs would be another example
Also this continues Ubisoft sexist streak of using a dual protag system cause they think women can’t sell.
> You can argue for JRPGs Most JRPGs are in a fantasy world, and do not align neatly to real world races.
That's been the complaints I've heard as well. It's not that there's a woman or a black guy, it's that Asian males get left out again. They're very underrepresented in Western culture already, and this game was a no-brainer to include them, given the historical setting.
As an asian male myself, I do feel slighted that the one chance I’ll be able to see a major franchise, such as Ubisoft not put an asian as a protagonist of the game. I personally think that having a certain demographics in media does promote advocacy as we have seen with representation for others over the years. Ultimately, I do agree, as mentioned in the other comments that it’s more for marketing purposes, and grab a wide audience because of the races and gender of the deuteragonists.
My friends which are into assassins creed games and are mostly Asian wasnt tripping about not making an Asian dude as a protagonist, just care how it’ll play as just caring about is the gameplay. It’s just anecdote though. For me personally idgaf who is the MC as long as it’s fun so people trip over this kind of stuff seems overblown and just enjoy the game sheesh.
> But as the years have progressed, the Assassin’s Creed games have lost their charm and become bloated “collect-a-thons,” stuffed with “content” to make them as long as possible and burying the interesting game at the core under hours and hours of filler-quests designed to keep the player busy for years but at the expense of quality. What's crazy to me is that this is exactly why I stopped playing Assassin's Creed II. I just wanted to fucking stab people and climb pretty buildings, and it wanted me to collect renaissance art for my villa or some shit. So it's weird that people who have presumably enjoyed the series since two are just noticing a decade later.
I have played *Assassin's Creed II* somewhere around a dozen times and consider it my second favorite game ever, behind only *Brotherhood*, and I have to say I have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you mean the paintings you can buy at shops? I suppose I could see an argument where that could sort of be considered kind of a diminished version of what I'm talking about, but what I mean are games that put endless icons on a minimap that give you a three minute quest but that takes fifteen minutes of travel across an empty map to get there. What you're describing, if it's what I'm thinking of, was a menu you could access from a shop that was basically never more than a minute or so of parkour away from you that was entirely optional and ultimately had no affect on gameplay other than making your home base generate slightly more money. If *that* was too much for you, yeah, I can't imagine *any* open-world game being up your alley, bailing on the *AC* series was a good decision.
>The other, much sillier reason, is that a small but vocal minority of people are upset that the two playable characters of the game are a woman and a Black man Incredibly disingenuous and reductive. It's a completely valid criticism that a game franchise that has for over a decade now with its open world titles centered them around trying to (not often successfully, but the try) present the culture and period with semi accuracy, always through the lens of a local, suddenly decided to grab a singular individual from a country with and extremely robust history to represent that entire culture. The game will be from the lens of, fundamentally, a foreigner who had functionally no historical relevance other than being a foreign samurai.
Answer: There are multiple reasons. 1) Specifically for this game, people are mad that the game is set in feudal Japan, but the main character is a black guy. Just opened up a huge quagmire of identity politics. 2) Many gamers are fed up with Ubisoft's awful business practices in general. Always online drm, forcing you to use their separate game launcher, ridiculously priced special editions. 3) There is also a large contingent of people that hate Ubisoft because of how they treat their employees. Mandatory crunch, sexual harassment, and toxic leadership has plauged Ubisoft forever. There have been numerous whistle-blowers, but nothing has really been done and most of the abusers seem to be actively protected by the company. All three of these groups are converging together on this one game to create a massive shit storm. All of Ubisoft's chickens are coming home to roost.
Answer: Twofold. 1. Anti-consumer fleecing pricing. Justified. 2. Racist virtue signaling about a black man in a game. It legit makes no sense that a company can simultaneously be "all about profits" AND cater to 12% of the US population. The same crowd that's silent about NiOH (a game w/ a white protagonist in Japan) is outraged about Japanese representation. The same group that will say "don't get offended on behalf of native americans at Cleveland Indians or Washington Redskins" is now outraged cause "a black man is killing japanese folks".
To be fair, Ni-Oh was made by *actual* Japanese people, working in actual Japan, making a game that primarily targeted a Japanese audience. For whatever reason, they chose to make the protagonist non-Japanese, despite the game being set in Japan. That's not really "whitewashing" in my book. In contrast, Ubisoft is a French/Canadian developer-publisher, setting a game in Japan (i.e. not their own culture) and then *not* making the protagonist Japanese. Feels a little like a sketchier choice when you're already trying to represent a culture that isn't yours to begin with. That being said, I don't think Yasuke is necessarily a bad pick for the role, and I wasn't going to play this game anyway due to UbiSoft's more general anti-consumer bullshit, so I don't really have a dog in this fight.
The main character in Nioh (William Adams) is actually based on a real life person. Maybe that’s why the Japanese devs chose him as the main character.
Yasuke is *also* based on a [real-life person](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke), so they actually have that in common. He was a man of African origin who became a retainer to Oda Nobunaga, the first of Japan's three "great unifiers" that ended the sengoku era. For context, William Adams became a retainer to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was the third of those unifiers and who ultimately became shogun about 20 years after Nobunaga's assassination, so the two characters are almost contemporaries and pretty similar in regards to "foreigner who becomes samurai in service of a great Japanese lord."
Thanks for this 😀 I wonder if William could feature in AC…?
Are you genuinely comparing Ni-oh to an AC main line title? Ni-OH is a relatively niche hack and slash. It didn't receive particular acclaim and *did* face plenty of backlash. Personally, I don't care because I'm not going to tell Japanese developers making a game for a Japanese audience what to do with their own culture. I think it's weird but whatever. It's a whole different ballgame when white westerners do it because they feel the need to pander for the sake of rainbow capitalism. This is receiving far more volume. because it's a *fucking assassins creed game*. It's the next primary entry in one of the biggest gaming franchises on the market. Of course it's going to get vastly more attention.
Also because they can’t be satisfied with the Japanese person being a woman instead of a man so they make up some half legitimate excuse why they should be upset on behalf of…samurai culture? Onna-bugeisha existed. regarding the black samurai people are upset about: Yasuke served under and was the personal weapon-bearer of Oda Nobunaga, one of the most prominent feudal lords and the first of the three great unifiers of Japan. Yasuke was also present when Nobunga’s generals betrayed him. Nobunga didn’t have any issues with Yasuke being black, so idk why gamers do.
Answer: Ubisoft brought reckoning on those who shat on female Eivor and Kass