Let’s Not Pretend We’re Mad the New Assassins Creed Shadows Samurai Isn’t Asian

ign.com:

Ubisoft has finally announced its long-awaited Assassin’s Creed game set in feudal Japan. Subtitled Shadows, it follows dual protagonists – a ninja named Naoe and a samurai based on the historical Black samurai Yasuke.

While it’s a known issue that Asian representation in Western games is severely lacking, I find it hypocritical and laughable that we’re only talking about the need for an Asian protagonist now that it’s been revealed Assassin’s Creed Shadows will star a Black samurai. This misses the forest for the trees. While I am always advocating for more Asian men in AAA games, I’ll be the first to say that better representation isn’t going to be found in yet another samurai hero.

Ubisoft deciding to focus on Yasuke — a known historical figure — is a smart move. An Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan that otherwise would have been, frankly, hard to distinguish from some other recent open-world samurai games. And if I wanted to see an Asian samurai protagonist I don’t have to look very hard.

Asian samurai protagonists are a path already well-trodden. There’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Katana Zero, Like A Dragon: Ishin!, Samurai Warriors, Rise of the Ronin, Onimusha, Way of the Samurai, Way of the Samurai 2, Ghost of Tsushima… There’s also my personal favorite, Muramasa: The Demon Blade. I can go on and on. So it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the limited imagination of AAA game development can only envision Asian heroes when they wield katanas or ninja stars.

Worse still, the complex characters that were so wonderfully brought to life in shows like Shogun are often distilled into their simplest forms in games, especially those created by Western studios. While Japanese developer-led titles like Sekiro and Like a Dragon: Ishin utilize their samurai protagonists to tell nuanced stories about overcoming fantastical challenges, or provide a glimpse of street-level heroics in Edo Japan, the Western-developed games fail to hit a similar level of