AC Shadows
This week will bring the launch of Ubisoft’s biggest game in half a decade, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, taking the series to feudal Japan in a big-budget release for the first time.
The game, since its premiere trailer almost a year ago, has been the subject of relentless criticism about its use of Yasuke, a black samurai pulled from history, as one of its two leads. Sometimes, historical accuracy is cited about whether he was really a samurai, other times it’s simply said that a black character shouldn’t be starring in a game like this, with a Japanese character like Ghost of Tsushima’s Jin preferred (the alternate lead of Shadows is a Japanese woman). It’s reflective of recent “anti-DEI” social trends online and now, normalized in the US…