Assassin's Creed Shadows executive producer says Elon Musk is just 'feeding hatred' with his reaction to the game's Black protagonist
Assassin's Creed Shadows has returned to the dual protagonist system that we last saw in Syndicate, letting us play as two characters—rather than having us just pick either a male or female protagonist as in Odyssey and Valhalla—with different playstyles. This immediately prompted a backlash, not because people don't want to have two protagonists, but because one of them happened to be a Black man.
Yasuke is an enigmatic historical figure who lived in Japan in the 16th century and is the first African to be officially recorded in the country. He arrived in Japan with Christian missionaries, after which he became an attendant of Oda Nobunaga. We don't know a lot about Yasuke, but as an outsider who went on to serve one of the most powerful men in Japan, his story is naturally intriguing, and perfect for Assassin's Creed, which uses history as a springboard to tell its own stories.
When Ubisoft was researching its latest game, «Yasuke kept surfacing,» executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté told Stephen Totilo in a Game File interview. «We've got a super-mysterious historical character from which not much is known about. And for us, it was what we want in AC.»
The moment Yasuke was shown off, though, his inclusion faced criticism from certain angry corners of the internet where he was perceived to be an example of the mythical left-wing agenda to destroy videogames with «wokeness».
Some couched their criticisms in concerns about historical accuracy, despite Yasuke being a real person and Assassin's Creed being a videogame series where an ancient species of non-humans ruled Earth more than 70,000 years ago. Others were more overt and openly racist, offended by the idea of a Black man starring in a game set in Japan.
On May 24, Elon Musk decided to throw his opinion into the mess, replying to a tweet about the game with «DEI kills art». DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, and is a policy that organisations can use to promote equal treatment and involvement
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