Okay, here is what is going on and why people are getting mad. A lot of people are getting sick of the pandering to other cultures that seems way out of place. They just want their games to be games without some political message or propaganda being pushed to them.
This is not the case with this AC game. The person actually exists and Ubisoft loves putting notable historical people in the ACU.
When I see this outrage though I just think of the stink that was caused by Stellar Blade. It was super uncalled for and game media outlets have wild takes on the issue.
All I can say is stay informed and research the issue before seeing a post and getting upset about it. Don’t automatically assume malice or racism (though some people really are) and try to deduce where the anger is coming from.
Okay, here is what is going on and why people are getting mad. A lot of people are getting sick of the pandering to other cultures that seems way out of place. They just want their games to be games without some political message or propaganda being pushed to them.
When gamers complain about this shit, it’s usually just dog whistling. These same gamers never complain about the political bias inherent in the call of duty franchise. They’re doing the enlightened centrist thing where they pretend to hold a moderate position but are actually deeply reactionary.
This is not the case with this AC game. The person actually exists and Ubisoft loves putting notable historical people in the ACU.
Yeah exactly my point.
Don’t automatically assume malice or racism
Void of logic and reason, I can only assume their position does boil down to malice and racism. Or are you being charitable and assuming ignorance?
I genuinely do not get why people get so angry about the color of a character’s skin in a work of historical FICTION. I dgaf about things being historical accurate in my video games. Does the guy look cool? Yup he sure do. Is the game gonna be good? It’s Ubisoft so probably not. But let’s assume that it will be for arguments sake.
Why is it so important to you that the character not be black? Assassin’s creed as a franchise has been around for like what? Almost two decades now? And in all that time we’ve basically played as only white characters (with some exceptions). I don’t see anything wrong with increased representation in works of art or entertainment. The more representation we see in media for any minority group the less likely it will be for the kids that grow up playing these games to grow up as racist assholes. And if you belong to a minority group, seeing someone with your skin tone represented in media will make you less likely to grow up with internalized self loathing. Like you might if all you see in media is the white dude saving the day.
At the end of the day these are works of entertainment. Their purpose isn’t historical accuracy. It’s entertainment and escapism. If we can’t escape racism in a fucking video game how tf are we supposed to prevent it in real life?
Dude, these same folks flipped their shit when the default main character in Crackdown was black, way back in 2007. These idiots don’t quit. I mean, we’re talking about a game where you’re a genetically engineered super-cop and had multiple choices of character race but their fragile egos were shattered because the default choice wasn’t the white guy.
It’s pathetic.
Mind you, I’m sure they were all fine and nodding their heads when Tom Cruise did the whole white savior thing in The Last Samurai.
Tom Cruise did the whole white savior thing in The Last Samurai.
Did you actually watch the movie?
Spoilers: The Samurai all die in the end. White guy does NOT save the Samurai. In fact the he is the one saved by the Samurai, in a mental health kind of way.
It’s not at all a white savior movie. Tom Cruise is more of an audience surrogate character. When they explain Japanese culture to Tom Cruise, the audience also learns about Japanese culture. It wouldn’t make any sense for Japanese people to be explaining Japanese culture to each other so there needs to be an outsider in the story for it to work.
You should watch the movie instead of judging it from the movie poster. It really pays a lot of respect to Japanese culture and portrays a sense of loss that happened in the rush to modernize during the Meiji era.
It was also a huge boost to Ken Watanabe’s career. He was actually the star of the movie, just that he was an unknown in the west at the time. So they put Tom Cruise on the poster to bring in an audience, but it’s really Ken Watanabe’s movie. You’re missing out if you can’t get over the movie poster.
Man that game was so fun.
Yeah, was a blast. Shame Crackdown 3 didn’t recapture the magic.
From the trailer he just seems so terribly out of place. Also, it’s bullshit to have a samurai in Japan in a game about assassins when they had fucking ninjas, the Japanese equivalent of assassins.
The AC games haven’t been about covert assassination since Syndicate. They’re much more focused on open combat now, and playing a samurai fits that better. Yeah, it’s pretty stupid that a game series about assassins isn’t really about assassination anymore, but that’s where they’re at.
He’s for players like me who like to hit stuff, not sneak around. There’s another stealth main character for people who wanna be sneaky.
So it’s like in Syndicate? That’s cool
I’d wager there’s no accurate historical depiction in any media.
Everything is stylized or fictionalized to some degree.
Maybe The Passion of the Christ is closest I can think of as they did all the speech in Aramaic and Old Latin
If we are talking about ethnicity, there were huge liberties taken. I think a few of the romans were actually Italian but no one else was close to plausible.
This is some of the worst discourse I’ve seen. I went to the latest Asmongold video about this topic and asked as many people as I could to explain how a black protagonist is pushing an agenda. Not replies. Guess it is hard to explain without claiming “not historically accurate” or just sounding like a white supremacist.
We already have afro samurai games
I thought it was common knowledge that “retainer” was literally the job description of all samurai… but I guess I should have known that the Weaboo Gamergate Brigade would conveniently ignore actual history.
There’s a lot of nuance and hair-splitting involved; it’s unlikely Yasuke would have been granted the title of samurai, but he was referred to as kosho. He was given a short sword, but not a long sword to pair with it. Samurai were required by law to wear the paired swords, known as daisho, and anyone else was forbidden.
Almost all samurai were indeed retainers, with the exception of ronin. But bushi who were not samurai could still be retainers. It’s all kind of a huge classist mess. Thanks feudalism!
If you throw out the hierarchical nonsense, Yasuke fit the role of what most people today would think of as a samurai. It’s kind of weird for anyone to argue against that in the fast and loose setting of an Assassin’s Creed game. Ubisoft aren’t known for churning out painstakingly accurate historical reference works. It’s a game with a character roughly based on a distinct historical figure.
The argument is always the same. The CHUDS don’t want to see black people, women, the gays, etc.
Actually was expecting a Japanese man and woman to choose from.
There’s a playable Japanese woman in parallel to the Black man but I guess women don’t count because gAmErS.
Wait the black character is optional??? That would make this extra petty.
So far it looks like they both take part in the story, with their own sections to play through. The character introduction video seems to say you might have sections where you chose between offensive or stealth approach so you’ll switch characters, but they want you to experience both so there will most likely be sections that force the use of one or the other.
People who still complain are just saying they refuse to play a Black man at all, so that’s still a trash take.
Why does the black man have to be the offensive fighter? Is Ubisoft implying black people are violent and can’t be sneaky?
The black guy is Yasuke, a historical figure who fought as a samurai for Oda Nobunaga. While it’s pretty stereotypical, it’s also accurate to have Yasuke as the combat character if they’re splitting combat and stealth. I mean, it’s also pretty stereotypical to have a woman as the stealth character, which they’ve basically already done twice. Elise in Unity, while non-playable, was decidedly less combat focused and more stealthy and diplomatic while Arno fought. In Syndicate, Elise was the stealth character and Jacob was the combat character.
In short, it’s probably less that he’s black and more that the formula has the man be the combat character and the woman be the stealth character.
Well then they are sexist. Why does the man have to be the offensive fighter? Is Ubisoft implying men are violent and can’t be sneaky? They also seem to be implying women can’t be strong and defend themselves.
Yeh I know, I’m a lady myself ☺️
Chuds want to see women, just scantily-clad and helpless.
I mean, me too, but only if they’re into it.
I beat an ancient Egyptian god to death with a Q-tip. Any claim Assassin’s Creed might have had to approximating historical accuracy died several games ago even if we ignore the Ancient Aliens bullshit that’s been around since the begining.
I was guessing this was about Ghost of Tsushima since it just released on PC. Is his an assassin creed thing?
Yeah it’s for the new AC Shadows trailer, one of the main characters is a black samurai.
Ah ok thanks. Good on Ubisoft I guess? Black people are part of the world and deserve to be represented. I’m sad that this is a fucking point of contention.
Wasn’t the original premise that you were a dude in the present using a time machine to explore “generic memory” in a real time simulation in order to find the ark of the covenant or spear of destiny or someshit for the Illuminati?
Yes, this was carried until Syndicate, which is the sixth game in the mainline series I believe. That was then changed in Origins.
Yeah, I think they crammed “becuz aliens” in there a few games later to explain away all the magic.
They did that in the first game, actually. The apple and other artifacts were always tech left behind by an extinct “first civilization,” later named the Isu. Part of the series’ problem is that the actually interesting ideological conflict between the Assassins and the Templars was put on hold to explore increasingly elaborate Isu junk after Desmond was killed off.
Correct, they were looking for the “apple of eden” (golden orb from the first few games). It gets revealed by the end of the Renaissance arc that objects they are looking for are technological remnants of an ancient civilization that created humans as a slave race by stripping out parts of their own genetic code. It’s a bastardized version Sichin’s Ancient Aliens “theory”.
Shame, I love the first few AC’s ☺️ It was so immersive with good stories. This franchise is dead to me.
Because a black person is the main character?
The bloatware, mtx’s and crappy stories
Considering that this is about people complaining about a game having a black main character, you might want to explain that it’s not about the game having a black main character.
I do find it confusing a Japanese man wasn’t chosen as well though considering the focus is a black samurai that’s fine. The mtx’s will help their game profit like the others.
It’s a game with magic in it. The main character could be an Aztec and it would be just as silly to complain about it.
Yeh the ancient aliens vibe with magic isn’t my cup of tea. Just my opinion and all are free to object.
I’m sure they’ll be crying themselves to sleep.
They never care until stocks plummet and long time fans avoid the game until sales come along. Think the cheapest package will be 70$ while the highest is subscription based.
Stocks won’t plummet because they had a black character. Grow up.
Oh no, a black man in a videogame? Your sensibilities must be in shambles.
No one tell them who’s under the mask in Spider Man: Miles Morales.
Wait there was a Black samurai? That’s fucking awesome! I need to see more media about this
Thank you!
Yasuke’s a playable character in Samurai Warriors 5 As a fan of that game I’m confused to why people are suddenly upset that he exists
Because AC series on downhill for so long and Ubisoft tried to save it not by making a good game but making moves on “inclusive” propaganda.
I hate to burst your little reactionary bubble but there is zero chance that a key stakeholder said “sales are down, we need to include a black person”. AAA games have been growing worse as developers seek minimum risk for maximum profit and what you’re deeming “inclusive propaganda” simply doesn’t translate into lower risks nor higher profits.
If you can’t handle a black person in your game, don’t play it. Culture and society are going to leave you behind anyway so you may as well get used to missing out.
AAA games have been growing worse as developers seek minimum risk for maximum profit
Yeah see, it’s cause of this and the whole nature of capitalism that assures me this decision is an attempt to make more money.
Changing a character’s race is rather cheap from a cost perspective and clearly it gives it free publicity.
Changing a characters race? What character has had their race changed? The entire story is absolutely going to revolve around him being a black man in Japan and has likely been that way from the earliest preproduction.
Culture and society are going to leave you behind anyway so you may as well get used to missing out.
Lmao mic drop. I could feel how barren your field of fucks for culture war bullshit has grown. Some people want to solve problems and some people just want to bicker over nonsense which saps bandwidth (intentionally or otherwise). Weaponizing fomo is a bit of a hail mary play, but if it jumpstarts the empathy then mission accomplished without exhausting yourself haha.
Who said I can’t handle black people in my game? I just want a AC game in Japan, during samurai’s era, to have, you know, Japanese samurai. Would you be okay with AC2 Ezio to be Chinese for example?
Congratulations! It has all of those things.
Black people in vidya gaem=propaganda
Got it.
My guess is its because some numpty on rumble or twitter went on a rant about it recently.
Everyone’s arguing about whether or not the main character should be black while forgetting the more important point: Ubisoft is trash, and we shouldn’t be buying their uninspired shovelware anyway.
The other commenters don’t seem to understand the difference between boycotting and gatekeeping…
I’m with you man, I haven’t bought any Ubisoft stuff for over 10 years now. And the more I learned the more I got surprised by how shovelware can be made even worse.
The last Ubisoft game was Assassin’s Creed 3, right?
I only played until revelations which was the ending of part 2 I think which honestly felt pretty mid to me, though the over arcing story was good. Black flag was quite popular no? The one with the naval combat. I don’t remember anything beyond that.
So they’re boycotting Ubisoft because they’re trash and make uninspired shovelware? Do you understand the difference between boycotting and gatekeeping?
Increasing amounts of dlcs(Cut off from original) & microtransactions(Gambling). They have not mended their ways so I did not support them since then. Teach me where I went wrong with my Boycott?
I don’t understand the gatekeeping here, do you get mad that people enjoy the fast and furious movies? It’s not like these are funneling resources away from the tons of great indie games that are literally constantly coming out these days.
you get mad that people enjoy the fast and furious movies
No, because they are action comedies that consistently deliver.
Also, I’d be hard pressed to name a more ethnically diverse movie cast. The epitome of a “something for everyone” movie.
I’m not for gatekeeping but I can understand the pushback in this case. People had the same argument for Bethesda horse armor in the past and it’s gradually been abused to stuff like day 1 dlc and Diablo IP becoming a predatory mtx handphone game. At some point if you don’t voice concerns over Ubisoft delisting games (the crew) or $100+ pricing bundles, you shouldn’t be surprised if Ubi opts to mess with previously beloved IPs for a quick buck.
It’s great that you love indies and all but shaming other people for being frustrated at Ubi’s business practices is no better than gatekeeping people for liking their new games.
You’re extrapolating a whole lot here, all I was responding to was OP saying “we” shouldn’t buy Ubisoft games because they’re trash and all they make is uninspired shovelware. Just a weird stance in my opinion to concern yourself with what shovelware other people are buying and enjoying in their free time. Guess that’s an unpopular opinion here haha
I think you’re somewhat demonstrating their point, given that I’ve fairly consistently liked D3 and D4 and don’t have any experience with Immortal. I’ve seen lots of critique about 4 that doesn’t necessarily ring true (I can’t imagine playing well at all on mobile, especially given my choice of skill rotation) and that makes sense mostly when it’s grouped with Immortal in a way I find somewhat arbitrary. Immortal itself isn’t especially predatory within the context of mobile games, though being one is a factor in why I haven’t tried it.
I think it’s easy to dunk and point out things like “you can’t earn enough currency to get the next battle pass for free” without honestly examining what the battle pass in D4 is and realising that it offers extremely little. The free armour is cool and interesting enough that I get the dopamine reward when looking at my toon on the loading screen without paying for it. Indeed I think paying for a set to some extent cheapens that experience vs. getting that reward multiple times via picking up gear and not using transmog at all.
Might be some other parts of its monetisation I’m not considering in my assessment but I don’t think it’s predatory. So when I constantly hear all about how predatory it is, often it instead serves to drive me toward the brand loyalist lapdog tribe. I wouldn’t say it’s shameful at all, but it’s tiring to engage with as though there’s a more nuanced perspective behind it than just general naysaying, when often that just doesn’t seem to be the case.
Immortal itself isn’t especially predatory within the context of mobile games
Damning with faint praise
Might as well say Alcatraz isn’t particularly difficult to escape from within the context of island prisons.
What about Gitmo or Nauru? I kid. I didn’t mean to praise it, my bad. I avoided it personally.
This is gonna be super offtopic: Diablo 4 was fine, I didn’t bring it up and only specified Immortal for a reason. If only the latest iteration of an IP counts, then I should have said OW2, but I mentioned Immortal because it was so terrible. It IS especially predatory even for a handphone game, worse than the final fantasy ones, Maple, PoGo etc. An actual fun app with it’s progression covered in so much monetization that f2p players can literally never catchup to payers, with gambling systems that can cost up to several thousands. Don’t take us ‘naysayers’ at our word, go ahead and invest your time into it if you’d like. People complain about OW2 mtx but it doesn’t even come close to how bad Immortal gets.
Still, I get your point as to why it’s better to have some nuance on this kinda thing and not hop on corpo hate trains.
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the nuance where it’s offered. I think the difference in my summary perspective of these issues is in considering its intended targets. I’m aware f2p players in Immortal don’t have a hope of catching up - I do think that’s a predatory part of the summary monetisation of the game - but I think it’s mitigated by being targeted at whales. Because paying in that game doesn’t only gatekeep player power; power scales linearly with the amount you pay. So even people tricked into paying for some power aren’t really able to realise that advantage. IMO this changes the paradigm a bit, because the material effect of the monetisation to the informed consumer (regardless of their level of participation) is to part rich people from some of their riches - something I don’t really find compelling as a summary argument against it. The main other group predated on would be those that choose to be uninformed, which is something that I can’t really think of a good a reason to take some kind of moral stance on
Movies don’t demand an unreasonable amount of money and time out of you the viewer, you buy your ticket and watch the film, maybe you buy the DVD, done end of story.
Ubisoft games demand a minimum of 70 dollars out of you and upwards of 60 hours all while blocking your progress with arbitrary experience checkpoints and pestering you about spending even more money for weapons, gear, mounts, etc. as if it were a free to play MMO like Fortnite, except you already dumped 70 dollars to play the damn thing.
Not sure where indie games have anything to do with Ubisoft.
I’m a huge fan but I still buy all games at the deepest discounts. There are also free trial periods, friend pass opportunities and giveaways of the games further down the line. Sure, most people fall for the tricks and buy the games right away and even pay for some microtransactions, but they don’t have to, so there’s no ostracizing the poor here.
They actually don’t demand anything from you, just don’t buy it if it’s not for you. That was my entire point and I’m not sure how you missed it, don’t tell people not to buy Ubisoft games if that’s what they enjoy? You all can play whatever niche and indie games you enjoy and others can play the new AC, live and let live.
“Just don’t buy it if you don’t like it” can apply to absolutely anything a consumer criticizes. It’s also extremely unhelpful.
Also, that’s a really strange argument from someone who also said:
it sucks to see the state of the industry as a whole right now and really hope we can get back to being respected as consumers some day.
Exactly, they are never getting my money.
Having the main character be from the minority of the game playerbase, unless it serves no major place in the storyline, is undemocratic.
Kerbal Space Program, most undemocratic game ever.
I’m not a green alien… who is this game even for?
I cannot imagine being so fragile that it would be upsetting to see a black character in a game. What’s it like?
I can’t play a black character in a game! It threatens my whiteness (somehow)!
Lol, imagine he was Japanese but no one in Japan made it a plot point
I know you’re not op but I don’t really engage with public gamer forums since gamergate. I don’t need the idiotic, racist/sexist/whateverist takes. I just want to forgot about the world for a bit and talk to my friends about how cool the pixels looked at that one point in time. I can get that with my friend on discord.
Where was that “historically accurate” crowd when Keanu starred in 47 Ronin?!
Or Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia. Or Finn Jones as Iron Fist.
Or Ben Affleck as Antonio J. Mendez in Argo, ffs. A role practically made for your Pedro Pascal type actor.
Hell, Tom Cruise pretending to be Irish in Far and Away was awful enough just because of the bad accent.
Iron fist is a white dude in the source material unlike the other examples.
Oh they were there lol.
Keanu is half Japanese. Tom Cruise as the Last Samurai though…
Uhm Tom’s character was never the last samurai. Did you watch it?
I’ve seen it, I’m just making a point that Keanu is actually half Japanese so he should be able to play a character of somewhat Asian descent without complaint, especially when the character he played in 47 Ronin was only half Japanese and all the characters shit on his character because of that. It wasn’t a ground breaking movie and there are plenty of reasons to shit on it, but the race card isn’t one of them.
But tom played an American soldier stationed in Japan.
He was already retired from the military in the movie, he went over as a mercenary to train the Japanese how to use guns more effectively.
We are getting off track.
I gave up on Far Cry and Watchdogs not because the games were deteriorating with each iteration (they were / are) but because the sexual harrassment ring on which the upper management fed and HR silenced the victims made supporting the company untennable. At least for me.
Since then I’ve found alternative indie projects that have scratched some of those itches pretty well. I don’t play Ubisoft, even those games I already
ownhave licenses for.Idc that he’s black my issue is that assassin’s in ac "blend " into their environment they are “ghosts” a black man in japan is gonna stick out like a sore thumb. They still do everyone stares at you. How is this man supposed to keep a low profile when its physically impossible to not be noticed by everyone.
Actual Ninjas blended in by just dressing as regular peasants (they came from the peasant class after all) and the nobles never really cared enough about the peasants to notice “hey I haven’t seen this guy around before”.
Probably not a technique that a black dude in Japan could use effectively.
Also it would probably be boring in terms of story. The shinobi being peasant class probably weren’t invited to the courts of nobles. Also not a good idea to have assassins hanging around for dinner. Just discretely pay them for the job you need and that would be the limit of the interaction with them.
A retainer would be invited to court so you can involve him with some palace intrigue and such.
I’m sure they’ll probably include ninjas in the story and have the protagonist spend some time with them and learn their secret ninjutsu techniques, though probably the more mystical (mythological) variety.
You’re working backwards trying to find excuses. Even disregarding the fact that “black guy is meant to be stealthy” is looking objectively wrong, the “I put my hood up and sat on a bench so now I’m invisible” mechanic has been a joke spanning back to literally the first AC game ever made. If you wanted to get upset about how implausible it is, you’re more than 15 years too late.
Idc that he’s black my issue is that assassin’s in ac "blend " into their environment they are “ghosts”
This hasn’t been true for a while, except Mirage that tried to do a callback to that. But you know there’s also a playable woman who is the perfect ninja archetype? Clad in black and hookchaining over buildings and throwing kunais in people’s necks from the shadows or from 10 feet in the air, the type that never actually existed in History.
This hasn’t been true for a while
Lmao You can literally stand next to just a large group of people in every single game and “blend in”
I don’t care about “history.” I have no issue with any of that shit. Ubisoft could say Cleopatra was black(lol) and i wouldn’t care. It just breaks the in universe rules a bit. And that bugs me slightly.
The stealth missions will use Naoe, the open combat missions will use Yasuke, nothing is broken. get a clue and drop the excuses already.
Lmao I’m black. Call me racist straight up.
Good for you? You’re still pretending that a Black guy in Japan somehow breaks some rules of the game. It’s still true to History, the stealth is still there, nothing is broken, this is still the same Assassin’s Creed as the previous games.
If your problem with games is a lack of realism, you must not play very many.
They do something similar in the first Nioh game, but the main character didn’t stand out in a world covered in half demons and spirits that all look way weirder than a foreigner with pale skin. Whatever locals they met were mostly dead or fleeing from monsters and the xenophobic culture bits were mostly brushed aside.
That being said I don’t think Team Ninja enjoyed the online controversies that happened from making a white guy the main character in Nioh. Nioh 2 went back to having a Japanese half yokai as the lead. I’d wait to see if Ubisoft is capable of making an interesting story out of the foreigner in old Japan premise.
Have you played AC Syndicate? This game is led by the same studio. Going by that game and the official videos on this one, he’s not stealthy at all. He’s a strong brawler, while the woman is a ninja and you’ll get to choose your approach from mission to mission.
Probably the same way every AC character has blended into the crowd while wearing radically different clothes from every other person in any given crowd, and those clothes also being extremely overt about the Assassin order membership of the wearer. I mean the assassins robes are color coordinated and adorned with they group logo for god sakes.
