TLDR:
- Ubisoft shared an official statement to address the concerns originating from the Japanese community about Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
- The French publisher will not back off from its stance on Yasuke as a black samurai.
- Ubisoft believes Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a work of fiction and the developers are allowed to go creative with some aspects.
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows will still try to remain authentic to the history and culture of Feudal Japan overall.
Over a month after announcing Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft finally reacted to the significant backlash over the game’s approach to Feudal Japan, especially the representation of an African character as a samurai.
If you don’t want to hear all those polite and formal words, Ubisoft will not back off from its stance on any of the things that were showcased during the announcement trailer. Yasuke is here to stay, and so is his mysterious story that led him to become a samurai.
Ubisoft says that their teams have spent enough time with historians and researchers to solidify their knowledge of Feudal Japan and to deliver authenticity when depicting the people’s culture and historical events.
However, when it comes to the story, Ubisoft describes Assassin’s Creed Shadows as a work of fiction, which gives them the right to go creative with their narrative and the characters they define as heroes, without affecting the authenticity of the game’s setting.
Ubisoft claims that bringing the Assassin’s Creed series to Feudal Japan has been a long-cherished dream. As a result, the developer will try to depict Naoe, the Japanese protagonist of the game, as important as Yasuke.
While this can be true story-wise, we do know that Yasuke is a swordsman in Assassin’s Creed Shadows while Naoe leans more on stealth mechanics. So, even if the story tries to represent them in a similar level of importance, you can’t get the true experience of a Samurai without Yasuke. So, there will be differences here.
Nevertheless, the statement from Ubisoft doesn’t show any retreatment from the developer’s approach, which is a polite way of ignoring the criticism from the Japanese community. And we didn’t really expect any other reaction from Ubisoft when the game is less than 4 months away from its worldwide release.
All Ubisoft has to say to its Japanese community is to trust their work and avoid judging the game by a few trailers. So, no matter how strongly the Japanese boycott Assassin’s Creed Shadows, nothing will change about Yasuke or the other aspects of the game.
You can read the full statement below on Assassin’s Creed’s official X account:
