Assassin’s Creed Shadows developer Ubisoft appeared to confirm that the game’s two main protagonists Yasuke and Naeo are LGBTQ+ characters.
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
In a blog post on the company’s website published on May 15th, the company declared, “Naoe and Yasuke’s disparate personalities also lead them to have different relationships and rapports with other characters, and they don’t always feel the same way about people, nor do people always feel the same way about them.”
Next, they discussed romance options, “Romantically, they will also attract and be attracted to different types of people. Through the pair, players will get to experience a multitude of relationships.”
Key art for Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
This revelation comes amid Ubisoft contracting with Dartmouth Associate Professor Sachi Schmidt-Hori. Sachi Schmidt-Hori is an LGBTQ activist with her biography on Dartmouth’s website reading, “I am interested in investigating how gender, sexuality, corporeality, and power are represented and negotiated in pre-seventeenth-century Japanese narratives and illustrations. My first book, Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives (University of Hawai`i Press, 2021) is on medieval chigo monogatari (Buddhist acolyte tales), which often depict romantic relationships between Buddhist priests and adolescent boys. These tales challenge a host of normative and moral standards we (academics, especially) internalize, including such ideas as ‘sexual orientation,’ ‘transgenerational sex,’ and ‘sexual agency.'”
It continues, “My current project is on the literary representations of “milk kinships” in pre-seventeenth Japanese tales, including the Tale of Ochikubo, the Tale of Genji, the Tales of the Heike.”
The website also reveals the classes she teaches: Introduction to Japanese Culture; Languages and Scripts of Gender, Class, and Nation; Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Premodern Japan; Classical Japanese Language Grammar and Translation Workshop; and ASCL 60.26: Thinking of Contemporary Issues in Japan through Graphic Novels (Manga).
A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft
Of note, the official description from the publisher of Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives, University of Hawaii Press, reveals Schmidt-Hori “calls for a shift in the hermeneutic strategies applied to chigo and chigo monogatari and puts forth both a nuanced historicization of social constructs such as gender, sexuality, age, and agency, and a mode of reading propelled by curiosity and introspection.”
Earlier in the description it states, “Sachi Schmidt-Hori begins by delineating various dimensions of chigo (the chigo “title,” personal names, gender, sexuality, class, politics, and religiosity) to show the complexity of this cultural construct—the chigo as a triply liminal figure who is neither male nor female, child nor adult, human nor deity. A modern reception history of chigo monogatari follows, revealing, not surprisingly, that the tales have often been interpreted through cultural paradigms rooted in historical moments and worldviews far removed from the original. From the 1950s to 1980s, research on chigo was hindered by widespread homophobic prejudice. More recently, aversion to the age gap in historical master-acolyte relations has prevented scholars from analyzing the religious and political messages underlying the genre.”
Along with Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives, Schmidt-Hori’s other published works include: “Yoshitsune and the Gendered Transformations of Japan’s Self-Image;” “The Erotic Family: Structures and Narratives of Milk Kinship in Premodern Japanese Tales;” and “The Boy Who Lived: The Transfigurations of Chigo in the Medieval Japanese Short Story Ashibiki.”
Screenshot of Sachi Schmidt-Hori and Ubisoft’s Brooke Davies discussing Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Not only has the company contracted with this radical LGBTQ+ activist who appears to be promoting “transgenerational sex,” an alleged internal document shared to social media by Jeremy Hambly, aka TheQuartering in April detailed, “We are proud to represent the diversity and inclusion that exists in society as part of our everyday work. Representation is part of our DNA and will remain that way regardless of external pressure or influences.”
It concluded, “Ubisoft firmly stands for diversity and inclusion in our workplace and our games, and we believe there is no room for hate in gaming.”
As noted by Catholic Answers, homosexual behavior is sinful, “Every human being is called to receive a gift of divine sonship, to become a child of God by grace. However, to receive this gift, we must reject sin, including homosexual behavior—that is, acts intended to arouse or stimulate a sexual response regarding a person of the same sex. The Catholic Church teaches that such acts are always violations of divine and natural law.”
Sodom and Gomorrah afire by Jacob de Wet II, 1680. Photo Credit: Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
What do you make of Assassin’s Creed Shadows appearing to make the main characters LGBTQ+?
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What a very cleverly worded dog whistle they’ve created. We can’t prove what they mean, so we can’t attack them on it. Of course, now their own side will be asking them point blank to declare Yasuke and Naoe as alphabet folk, so they’ll end up hanged with their own rope soon enough.
I think she needs her hard drive checked