The renowned Assassin’s Creed video game has returned with its fourteenth major installment, the Assassin’s Creed Shadows which features a dual protagonist system involving shinobi Naoe and samurai Yasuke, a historic figure who lived in Japan in the 16th century. Yasuke is also the first African to be officially recorded in the country.
According to PC Gamer, Yasuke arrived in Japan with Christian missionaries. He became an attendant of Oda Nobunaga, a minister of the Right in Japan at that time.
As executive producer of Ubisoft, Marc-Alexis Côté told Stephen Totilo in an interview with Game File, when the Ubisoft team was researching the storyline of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the character of Yasuke kept triggering.
“Yasuke kept surfacing,” said Marc-Alexis Côté, “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.” he added
The character of Yasuke has remained in controversy ever since it was revealed by Ubisoft. The discussions ignited when Elon Musk joined the conversation as he replied to a post on X by a user named @stillgray who questioned the genuinity of the character – a black guy depicted as a real historic samurai in Japan.
DEI kills art
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2024
Elon Musk replied “DEI kills art”. DEI stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Refuting to Elon’s attack Côté said,
“That tweet generated emotions, that…the first thing I wanted to do was go back on X – that I had deleted – and just tweet back,”
“For me, Elon, it’s sad, he’s just feeding hatred. I had a lot of three word replies that came to mind,”
“By attacking someone like Elon… I will not convince people about our point of view as a team,”
Speaking of the story of Yasuke, Côté said,
“Yasuke is very, very grounded in the history of the franchise and how we make our choices,”
“What Elon says is not the game that we’re building. People will have to play the game for themselves. And if, within the first 11 minutes and 47 seconds, they are not convinced of what we’re doing, we can have the discussion,”
“the answer is there,”
“I just hope and wish that people can keep an open mind about this and see the game for what it is. It’s an Assassin’s Creed game, and I believe the best one we’ve ever built.”
