Let’s understand why Ubisoft decided to ruin a series based on historical accuracy by putting a character like Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
This time the developers of Ubisoft have really done it big with the Assassin’s Creed series. After having proposed historically impeccable stories for dozens of chapters and having bent the gameplay to the most authoritative historiographical sources, they decided to bend to the oppression of political correctness and opted for a black protagonist , who just isn’t good in a chapter set in Japan as Assassin’s Creed Shadows .
Yes, the character Yasuke really existed. Yes, he really served under Oda Nobunaga. Yes, he went down in history as the “black samurai”. Whatever you want, but according to user X gentlenazi88, who consulted Wikipedia before writing his post, there is no certainty that he was really a samurai and not just any servant and I trust him. An unforgivable superficiality on the part of Ubisoft, which until now had only given us real historical treatises in the form of video games, so much so that some Assassin’s Creeds have also been cited as sources in prestigious school manuals such as the Giardinetta Sabbatella Viadotto, or the Spino Vargas .
Who doesn’t remember how Ezio Auditore ‘s races on the rooftops of Florence, Venice and Scandicci were justified by period chronicles in which a very widespread activity among the young nobles of Renaissance Florence, namely parkour, was mentioned for the first time? Michelangelo Buonarroti also spoke about it in one of his rhymes, in which we can read: “The hand that obeys the intellect took me in a hurry up to the roof.” Who at an exhibition dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, after recognizing the eccentric and slightly crazy funny guy from the video game series in his paintings and treatises, did not smile smugly?
History is the main path
To give another famous example, it is well known that Patrice Desilets, the original author of the series, resorted to studying the history of geography to invent the mechanics of towers . In particular, it seems that there was a geographer who, to draw his maps, climbed monuments with his bare hands and then got off by throwing himself into the cart full of straw dragged by his friend Federica (hence the leap of Faith). And Alexios and Kassandra? There the developers even went to study the pranks of that rascal Pythagoras to create two characters that were as historically reliable as possible.
But I could continue for hours extolling the countless historically impeccable figures we have been able to play with over the years thanks to Assassin’s Creed: from Altair to Eivor Varinsdottir, from Connor Kenway (and offspring) to Hope Jensen, through Arno Victor Dorian and Jacob and Evie Frye. In some cases, at the beginning of the adventure, the player was also given the opportunity to choose whether he wanted to play a male or female version of the main character, just as happens in real life.
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The story of the series itself is based on the scientific theory of the apple of Eden a day keeping the doctor away… So, why do this disrespect to real gamers and insert a black protagonist in Japan by calling him a samurai? Naturally it is not racism and the complaints do not arise from the color of his skin, never mind, but only from the impossibility of clarifying whether or not he was a full-fledged samurai. The legends say yes, some historical texts say yes, but there is not that certainty needed to allow the real player to immerse himself in the game. This makes me so sad that I’m going to climb a sphinx with Bayek of Siwa. Up there no one will see me cry while I look melancholy towards the desert, for the affront made to the history of humanity.