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Chapter 1: Why are gamers upset about Assassin's Creed Shadows?
Have you ever wanted to play a video game where the protagonist is a black Japanese samurai who has gay love affairs with non-binary characters? Well, if you have, then Assassin's Creed Shadows might just be the game for you. So one of the most anticipated games of the year just came out and gamers of the world simply are not happy. Apparently, Assassin's Creed Shadows is just not good.
And it kind of ties into what we were talking about in regards to Snow White just at the beginning of the week, because it seems like there are two huge issues here. Number one, the quality is supposedly just lackluster with a half-baked story and half-baked characters. And two, the DEI initiatives that Ubisoft shoved into this game are very much on display.
So all of that means that there are two issues here, and people that are simply just criticizing the quality of the game are getting lumped in with the anti-woke culture war fighters, it's this whole mess of people being upset. But this does beg a broader question of where is the gaming industry actually going, and is it too far gone for most gamers?
Now, before we dive into this story, I want to remind you all that I am going on tour this spring. It is my first tour ever. I am so excited to come to cities near you and hopefully meet some of your beautiful faces. The links to buy tickets in all of the different cities are in the description below. I hope you guys can make it out. I am just super excited. I think it'll be a ton of fun.
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All right, so just a couple of weeks ago, the new Assassin's Creed game called Shadows came out. It hit the market, obviously, to an uproar of criticism, but also publicity. And basically, if you guys have not heard about this game, it is the new Assassin's Creed game, and it is set in feudal Japan. And when the trailer of this came out last year, I had just finished watching Shogun.
So I was actually like in them. I was like the perfect demographic for this game. I don't even play video games. I was like, oh my God, this would be so sick. I'm like in the Shogun mindset. And then I watched the trailer and I was like, what the actual heck is going on?
Now, the game was said to follow two protagonists, a black Japanese samurai, Yasuke, and a female shinobi or a Japanese spy named Naoe. And like I said, the trailer came out last May, and even last May in 2024, it made an insane splash because people were obviously confused about a black samurai leading a video game that is set in feudal Japan.
However, at the time, Ubisoft confirmed that Yasuke was a real historical figure, so they weren't just pulling this out of their ass, although though, when you actually look at his history, the time that this man spent in Japan as a samurai and his actual history is very, very murky. There is a book written about him, but again, we just don't really know a lot about him.
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Chapter 2: What are the main criticisms of Assassin's Creed Shadows?
And so to then see that trailer and it just be a black guy, obviously for social justice warrior reasons, it was like a slap in the face to so many people who had wanted this for so long. And Keita, the gamer that you just saw in that video, had some incredibly important context to add. Because guess when? Assassin's Creed Shadows went into development. Take a listen.
That decision was made in 2020, you know, 2020, 2021. What was going on around that timeframe? You had the height of the George Floyd stuff, the DEI initiatives. During that timeframe, a lot of things were racially charged. So of course they were like, yeah, let's put Yasuke in it.
And it's like, when you do that, you make people think, oh, whether you're doing it or not, you make people think, oh, you're just trying to virtue out somebody's skin color. They wanted him to be that focal point, that virtue, But they knew that it's not that kind of time anymore. It probably would have got by like, you know, 2020, 2021. Now people are not with that shit. They see it.
They're like, no, I'm out. I'm not doing it.
So there you have it. This game went into development in 2020. Here is the prime example of what BLM did. They saved the world. Thank you, Patrice Cullors, or whatever the heck your name is. I'm trying to, you know, eliminate you from my brain.
But guys, amidst George Floyd and the race riots and, you know, white people crying in the streets because they hated the color of their skin, all of us being told that black Americans were the most oppressed individuals in the entire world, this game was created.
So, of course, at that time in history, Ubisoft was going to be clamoring for some kind of way to capture the moment and show that they were an ally. But, you know, video games, they take a long time to create. And five years later, the culture has radically changed. The moment is long gone. BLM has lost its power and Ubisoft is now suffering the consequences.
But this whole situation is about so much more than just the grifting. Because when I asked Keita, who is now my new resident Assassin's Creed expert, about the game and how he's feeling after playing it for the last week, the first thing he said was not the DEI or I can't believe I'm playing as a black samurai. It was actually about the quality of the game itself. This is what he said.
It is not a very good game. There's bugs out of the ass on it. There's glitches in it where it's not working properly. Textures aren't loading in properly. Facial animations, they just look so stiff. The dialogue and voice acting is the worst I've ever experienced in a video game. Like, not even just the hate, it's very bad.
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