Everyone's arguing about whether or not the main character should be black while forgetting the more important point: Ubisoft is trash, and we shouldn't be buying their uninspired shovelware anyway.
Technically, they're only "Samurai" if they're produced in Nippon within the duration of the Kamakura Period through the Meiji Restoration. Otherwise they're just sparkling warrior-nobles.
This is some of the worst discourse I’ve seen. I went to the latest Asmongold video about this topic and asked as many people as I could to explain how a black protagonist is pushing an agenda. Not replies. Guess it is hard to explain without claiming “not historically accurate” or just sounding like a white supremacist.
I genuinely do not get why people get so angry about the color of a character's skin in a work of historical FICTION. I dgaf about things being historical accurate in my video games. Does the guy look cool?
Yup he sure do.
Is the game gonna be good?
It's Ubisoft so probably not. But let's assume that it will be for arguments sake.
Why is it so important to you that the character not be black? Assassin's creed as a franchise has been around for like what? Almost two decades now? And in all that time we've basically played as only white characters (with some exceptions). I don't see anything wrong with increased representation in works of art or entertainment. The more representation we see in media for any minority group the less likely it will be for the kids that grow up playing these games to grow up as racist assholes. And if you belong to a minority group, seeing someone with your skin tone represented in media will make you less likely to grow up with internalized self loathing. Like you might if all you see in media is the white dude saving the day.
At the end of the day these are works of entertainment. Their purpose isn't historically accuracy. It's entertainment and escapism. If we can't escape racism in a fucking video game how tf are we supposed to prevent it in real life?
I gave up on Far Cry and Watchdogs not because the games were deteriorating with each iteration (they were / are) but because the sexual harrassment ring on which the upper management fed and HR silenced the victims made supporting the company untennable. At least for me.
Since then I've found alternative indie projects that have scratched some of those itches pretty well. I don't play Ubisoft, even those games I already own have licenses for.
I know you're not op but I don't really engage with public gamer forums since gamergate. I don't need the idiotic, racist/sexist/whateverist takes. I just want to forgot about the world for a bit and talk to my friends about how cool the pixels looked at that one point in time. I can get that with my friend on discord.
I thought it was common knowledge that "retainer" was literally the job description of all samurai... but I guess I should have known that the Weaboo Gamergate Brigade would conveniently ignore actual history.
Okay, here is what is going on and why people are getting mad. A lot of people are getting sick of the pandering to other cultures that seems way out of place. They just want their games to be games without some political message or propaganda being pushed to them.
This is not the case with this AC game. The person actually exists and Ubisoft loves putting notable historical people in the ACU.
When I see this outrage though I just think of the stink that was caused by Stellar Blade. It was super uncalled for and game media outlets have wild takes on the issue.
All I can say is stay informed and research the issue before seeing a post and getting upset about it. Don’t automatically assume malice or racism (though some people really are) and try to deduce where the anger is coming from.
I haven't played any AC games in a long time but why would a game series that's all about playing as stealth assassins have you play as samurai instead of ninjas? Seems like a really big missed opportunity for something like Tenchu
I don't think "well the game has magic so it's ok to discard any inconsistencies in plot, world building or historical accuracy" is a good argument. Instead, simply say that it's a relatively minor change that doesn't have that much impact. After all I'm sure there's other historical changes made throughout the franchise other than things required by the plot .
Heck, it would prove that people complaining are doing so because of racism even more since they're not complaining about those changes.