Assassin’s Creed Shadows devs address blowback over game’s ‘historical accuracy’
polygon.comDevelopers behind Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the upcoming Assassin’s Creed set in Feudal Japan, released a statement on Tuesday that addressed blowback to the game, which seems to be largely driven by the inclusion of Yasuke, a Black samurai, as one of two playable characters.
In its statement, Ubisoft developers specifically addressed “our Japanese players,” who have criticized the game for claimed historical inaccuracies and a flub that included Chinese subtitles in a video for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. “We acknowledge that some elements in our promotional materials have caused concern within the Japanese community,” developers said in a statement. “For this, we sincerely apologize.”
But developers at Ubisoft also stressed that while they have “put significant effort into ensuring an immersive and respectful representation of Feudal Japan,” the developers’ “intention has never been to present any of our Assassin’s Creed games, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, as factual representations of history, or historical characters.”
“Assassin’s Creed Shadows is first and foremost designed to be an entertaining video game that tells a compelling, historical fiction set in Feudal Japan,” Ubisoft explained. “Our team extensively collaborated with external consultants, historians, researchers, and internal teams at Ubisoft Japan to inform our creative choices.”
At the heart of the minor controversy around Assassin’s Creed Shadows are its playable characters: Yasuke, a Black samurai, and Naoe, a Japanese shinobi. Yasuke’s position as samurai has been a source of some debate, and given an apparent lack of historical documentation on the man, a servant of Oda Nobunaga, some have taken issue with Ubisoft’s game naming him a samurai.
However, a recent, widely shared post from Japanese historian Yu Hirayama argues that Yasuke was indeed granted samurai status by Nobunaga. Hirayama cites Yasuke’s stipend, housing, and sword afforded him by Nobunaga, but acknowledges that
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