Assassin’s Creed franchise boss Marc-Alexis Coté has addressed the online backlash which has swirled around the main characters of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the subsequent impact it has had on the game’s development staff, and the attempts by bad faith commenters to disrupt and dissuade creative teams from telling stories featuring diverse and inclusive characters in general…
The game would have been a lot better received if a male Japanese protagonist wasn’t erased to slot in a black man into a Japanese story. Im not even Japanese and it makes me upset that they did that, I can’t imagine how disappointed Japanese men are going to feel playing a game about the history of their own country and they can only play as a Japanese woman or a foreigner.
AC has historically never had playable main characters that are based on real world people. Except this one. Makes it feel really not genuine.
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The sister was undoubtedly the better protagonist, but given the backlash to women and non-white people in leading roles even now in 2024, imagine what it would have been like back then. Ubisoft was playing it safe, and even now with Shadows they are trying to play both sides both in the rhetoric and probably in the choice of having two protagonists.
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There’s no backlash when they are sexualized and exist for the male gaze. Them being complex, independent and strong is seen as a threat.
Guess Samus Aran and Ellen Ripley don’t exist.
Everyone is pissed because they took huge historical liberties when it isn’t needed.
Diversity doesn’t mean black samurais. This seems very two faced, it’s as if they are trying to imply the anti-woke brigade is after them when the choices they made were just dumb.
All they had to do was not white wash everything and aim for historical accuracy. Instead they made insane choices and dumped a bunch of other cultures into it (mainly china).
