The Assassin’s Creed: Shadows Fallout Continues To Go Nuclear

The re-imagined Yatsuke, a former slave turned retainer returned to his slave owners under the next regime, as featured in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, and the source of the game’s continuing controversy.

If you already know this story, yes, that article title is a pun.

I really do try to avoid the internet drama. I want to see the end product, but the creative process is also fascinating. What’s happening now as Ubisoft continues to commit the public relations version of a kamikaze run with Japan over Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is a fascinating train wreck of mistake after mistake in an effort to continue the historically inaccurate narrative that Yasuke was some great black samurai when he basically carried the weapons, less Tiger Woods and more Tiger Woods’ caddy.

As fans want to be playing ninjas in a game where ninjas are practically the inspiration for the player character in previous games, they instead get some scenes with a female ninja (rare but likely enough to not raise too many eyebrows) and a hulking (for Japan) samurai, but it’s the treatment of that “samurai” that has gotten Ubisoft in continuing trouble, and their latest blunder with a little statuette and recent response to the Tokyo Game Show…by avoiding it…is doing a lot of eyebrow raising.

Some of you may call this choice controversial, if not for sociopolitical reasons then for his cursing, but Az of the YouTube channel HeelvsBabyface has a really good compilation of every mistake that has come along in this game and in other recent Ubisoft releases, except he missed one (see, that’s an IGN link: political affiliations be damned around here–I look at stories) involving the appropriation of fan-created flags treated as real life historical feudal era Japan flags for an art book. In other words, whether we’re talking the game itself or the promotional and licensed material Ubisoft can’t help but fail at this project time and again. Az has the rest of it, though.

I can’t speak to the story of Star Wars: Outlaws, although the idea that you’re so important to JABBA THE HUTT that he came out to personally save your sorry bacon is rather hilarious, but you can see the bugs and stunted cutscene animation in pretty much any playthrough video. Nobody talks about the story because they’re too busy looking at the technical failures and yet another female protagonist that looks more manish that feminine. I’ve seen more feminine tomboys. First though, can we look at that picture of the development team again?

That’s more crackers than a box of saltines telling Japan what their history is. While game-specific events of the Assassin’s Creed franchise is made up (usually involving the templars being evil and going after magic devices–odd for a band of Christian Knights who sought to protect the Holy Land during the Crusades against Muslim occupation–and the Assassin’s Guild trying to stop them because of course ye olden hit men were the guys who saved the world…you can see why I never got into this franchise), the local history has strived to be accurate outside of the signature weapon of the game, a wrist mounted extending blade, and the aforementioned magic space devices. The fact that they’re trying this hard to make the black man one of the playable heroes in a game set in feudal Japan would be confusing if I didn’t already chronicle the assault on Japanese media for how it depicts Japanese people, aka themselves, and an intended Japan-set Assassin’s Creed mobile game that sounds more faithful to the games and history than what we have here. And yet Shadows is the one we’re getting.

Even if you have two characters to bounce back and forth between, and it’s already questionable how well that mechanic would work, going between samurai and ninja even if both were rightfully Japanese is a stretch when you remember they dropped switching settings and characters before because people just wanted to play as the pseudo-ninjas. Originally the game followed a man from the future named Desmond, whose genetic history as part of a long line of guild Assassins had to be unlocked to fight a new plan by the templars in the future that tied to plans they made in the past. So they’re wrecking history to fight for a mechanic that was already rejected and ruining their own lore. That still makes no sense to me.

On the other hand, I do want to give Ubisoft and the creators of that statuette the benefit of the doubt if not for what has already been discussed. The tori gate in question wouldn’t have even been damaged during the time Shadows was set in and thus this could be simply the statuette background only covering the area the scene is showing, Yatsuke hanging out by the gate. Like I said, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. It could also be somebody wanted to use the famous gate as inspiration if not actual homage, which is dumb. You can’t even blame this on them being French. French and Japanese media companies have worked together at least since the 1980s with shows like The Mysterious Cities Of Gold and into today with Miraculous: Tales Of Ladybug And Cat Noir. Could they really be that ignorant? Given what we’ve seen thus far, quite possibly. Someone should have mentioned this, even if it wasn’t intentional. Their PR is already in the dumpster with Japanese gamers and this just makes it worse.

Meanwhile, Sucker Punch, a company out of Belview, Washington with a shorter history, just dropped a trailer to a sequel to Ghost Of Yushima, a Western game so praised for fidelity to feudal Japan historically some people thought it was actually a Japanese game, including Japanese gamers. Ghost Of Yötei returns to ancient Japan…and with a female protagonist.

From the announcement blog post:

Today we are so happy to announce Ghost of Yōtei, the latest game from Sucker Punch and the introduction of our new hero, Atsu.

When we set out to make a new Ghost game, we wanted to maintain the core pillars established in Ghost of Tsushima: playing as a wandering warrior in Feudal Japan, offering freedom to explore at your own pace, and highlighting the beauty of the world.

We also wanted to continue to innovate. To create something fresh but familiar, we looked beyond Jin Sakai’s story and the island of Tsushima, and shifted our focus to the idea of the Ghost instead. At Sucker Punch we love origin stories, and we wanted to explore what it could mean to have a new hero wearing a Ghost mask, and uncovering a new legend. This led us to Ghost of Yōtei: a new protagonist, a new story to unfold, and a new region of Japan to explore.

While we aren’t diving into story specifics yet today, we can reveal that Atsu’s journey takes place in 1603, more than 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima. Our story is set in the lands surrounding Mount Yōtei, a towering peak in the heart of Ezo, an area of Japan known as Hokkaido in present day. In 1603, this area was outside the rule of Japan, and filled with sprawling grasslands, snowy tundras, and unexpected dangers. It’s a far cry from the organized samurai clans who lived in Tsushima, and it’s the setting for an original story we can’t wait to tell.

Hey, if they want more Jin stories, they can still make a Ghost Of Yoshima II down the line, or just do a bunch of Ghost games with a bunch of other protagonists all over feudal Japanese history (much like the Assassin’s Creed games did with European history and are now branching out around the world) and see if any of them also invoke sequels. It’s a whole Ghost Of franchise.

As of this writing I don’t know what the general response is to this game and playing a female ronin (wandering samurai), but almost nobody has had anything bad to say about Naoe, the girl ninja (kunoichi, the “girl version” of a shinobi, aka “boy ninja”) you play as in Shadows. Her they’re actually interested in. It’s all the out-of-place-but-history-lets-us-do-it-if-you-squint “black samurai” that is getting Japanese gamers and their Western counterparts up in arms. Now the game is delayed until 2025, which hasn’t been updated on the preorder site as of this writing. Whether they really do have bugs to deal with to avoid the biggest complaint about Star Wars: Outlaws, they actually plan to make Japan happy and rework Yasuke into an actual Japanese man (not holding my breath) or an original character who could share Yasuke’s history but attain a higher rank with a different Shogun, or they’re just hoping the heat will die down and they can release it anyway because they’re that convinced people will like it if they play it (still breathing clear) we don’t know. That would take more than a reskin in cutscenes since you have to reanimate eye levels of the other characters talking to him, or lose half your gameplay if he’s removed entirely. In the game itself you has have hitboxes and other game mechanics unique to his levels to readjust.

And like Az I have to drop in a last minute article link when I thought my commentary was done. Ubisoft’s CEO insists there is no agenda in their games, which given everything discussed I don’t seen convincing anybody.

I wouldn’t want to be in Ubisoft’s place right now. Failure seems to be less an option and more a way of life right now. This has been a public relations nightmare that keeps getting worse as a bunch of French white people are telling a country not theirs what their history is and they need to accept it, which has not worked well in the past. Just ask Egypt. Now they’re poised to be outdone again by a game that can make them happier by not treating them as morons. I really don’t want to talk about this again, but when you botch a story so badly that a good chuck of a whole country accuses you of appropriating their culture and trashing their history, that’s terrible storytelling. This does not end well for anybody, but it could be avoided by doing some research, listening to your audience, and just using some common sense.