The “Assassin’s Creed” sequence of video video games is adored for painstaking historic accuracy, but additionally sparks controversy with heavy use of inventive license — most just lately with a black samurai within the newest installment, “Shadows”.
Released on Thursday, “Shadows” takes place in Sixteenth-century feudal Japan, replete with imposing fortified cities and tranquil temples crafted by builders.
“They’ve done a really fantastic job with very accurate recreations,” mentioned Pierre-Francois Souyri, a historian amongst a dozen French and Japanese specialists consulted for the sport in a bid to weed out cliches and anachronisms.
Since being tapped in late 2021, Souyri says he has answered “a hundred or more questions” from the event staff, starting from how salt was produced to how puppet reveals have been staged.
Souyri provides that throughout the rigorously crafted setting, “it’s not too hard to come up with characters who find themselves having adventures” in “a very eventful period” marked by intense conflicts.
But one foundational alternative by the inventive staff has provoked fierce debate on-line and past: casting a black samurai, Yasuke, as one of many two playable protagonists. The different is a younger feminine ninja, Fujibayashi Naoe.
Irritation that an African character was depicted with the rank of samurai prompted a Japanese petition in opposition to the transfer, receiving greater than 100,000 signatures.
The textual content blasted “lack of historical accuracy and cultural respect” by sport builders.
Souyri was unimpressed by the criticism.
“It’s the game’s conceit to call him a samurai, it’s not a doctoral thesis,” he mentioned.
Like different historians who’ve weighed in, he identified that Yasuke “is a person who really existed” — though the historic proof on his standing “can be difficult to interpret”.
Yuichi Gozai, assistant professor on the National Centre for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, disagreed.
“Nothing proves that Yasuke had such qualifications” making him a samurai, medieval historical past specialist Gozai mentioned.
In surviving paperwork, “Yasuke stood out above all for the color of his skin and his physical strength”.
His patron, warlord Oda Nobunaga, seemingly “kept Yasuke by his side to show him off”, Gozai believes.
Erupting even earlier than “Shadows” had been launched, the controversy over the black character’s inclusion has been the fiercest surrounding any “Assassin’s Creed” sport.
The sequence has been attacked up to now, together with by hard-left French politician Jean-Luc Melenchon for the way firebrand Robespierre was depicted in “Assassin’s Creed Unity”, set throughout the French Revolution.
In a February report, the European Video Game Observatory famous that Ubisoft’s announcement of Yasuke instantly “sparked a heated controversy amplified by social media”.
The outfit blamed many of the uproar on “an American conservative moral crusade” waged by a tough core of “at least 728 interconnected accounts”.
That group made up “only 0.8 percent of speakers on the topic of ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ in the US (but) account for 22.1 percent of all related coverage”, the Observatory added.
The researchers mentioned the habits “suggests an astroturfing campaign” that piggybacked on the broader culture-war battles occurring throughout the U.S. presidential election marketing campaign.
“Our use of Yasuke has been instrumentalised by certain people to get their own message across… but that’s not the message of the game,” mentioned Marc-Alexis Cote, govt producer of the “Assassin’s Creed” franchise.
Nevertheless, inside Japan depictions of the nation’s historical past stay a delicate problem — as proven by reactions to pictures exhibiting a “Shadows” participant damaging the inside of a temple.
“I understand France’s secularist principles, but it’s important to acknowledge that ill-considered insults about religion can spark strong reactions,” Gozai mentioned. “This risk should have been foreseen.”
Ubisoft itself had resisted for a while followers’ calls for to see an “Assassin’s Creed” sport set in Japan.
But latest profitable video games set within the feudal interval, reminiscent of 2019’s “Sekiro” or 2020’s “Ghost of Tsushima”, could have helped overcome the writer’s reticence.
“There’s a combined effect of exoticism and familiarity which fascinates Westerners,” historian Souyri mentioned.
Many younger folks, particularly in Western international locations reminiscent of France and the United States, devour Japanese mangas and anime sequence.
But Gozai argues that “these depictions become counterproductive if they reinforce discrimination and prejudice toward Japan”.
He calls “Shadows” a “clear example of these concerns being realised”.
© 2025 AFP