The Fight Over a Black Samurai in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

In the first seconds of a trailer promoting the video game Assassin’s Creed Shadows, a ninja emerges from the woods. Suddenly the camera shifts toward a riverside village of thatched roofs hidden in the mountains, suggesting that the story will unfold in feudal Japan. Seconds later, another warrior appears in the flames of a destroyed settlement. It is the game’s other protagonist, a Black samurai named Yasuke.

Some gamers erupted over his appearance, convinced that the franchise, known for its immersive recreations of the past, had “gone woke” by including a Black character in its depiction of 16th-century Japan.

Elon Musk magnified the debate with a social media post saying it was an example of how “DEI kills art,” using an acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion. Game developers received personal attacks and death threats during an online harassment campaign.

The backlash over Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is scheduled to be released on Nov. 15 for the PC and the newest Xbox and PlayStation consoles, compelled the French company Ubisoft to remind players that its games were ultimately works of fiction.

Although grounded in history — experts say that Yasuke was possibly enslaved as a child before arriving in Japan and later ascended into the samurai class during the Sengoku period — Assassin’s Creed games also include fantastical elements like deft spies, godlike aliens and mythological weapons. A hooded assassin from the series recently appeared as a central figure in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, where the character parkoured through the city’s museums.

“If there is a hill that I am willing to die on, it is defending the creative freedom of our teams,” said Marc-Alexis Côté, an executive producer responsible for leading the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which has reached nearly 200 million players.

Côté said he had anticipated that fans would scrutinize the feudal Japanese setting more deeply than past entries in the franchise, which has allowed players to explore Athens during the Peloponnesian War, Florence at the height of the Italian Renaissance and London through the Industrial Revolution.

Knowing that players have requested an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan since the series began in 2007, Côté said that he tripled the budget for researchers, incorporated Japanese studios into the development team and took feedback from Japanese play-testers who suggested details like having characters take off their shoes when entering homes, a custom in many East Asian countries.

Côté said that during a recent review, employees realized a character was writing a poem on a tea table instead of a writing table. “Everyone was almost dying of a heart attack” because of the mistake, he explained. “I was amazed by how much they cared.”

Eagle-eyed fans of the franchise have identified historical inaccuracies before, like the wooden churches in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla that were actually from around 12th-century Norway but appeared in the game’s version of ninth-century Viking England.

But the outcry over Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been considerably louder. The inclusion of Yasuke was the primary complaint, but observers also pointed to the presence of Chinese architecture and period-inappropriate flags. The controversy became so heated that a small right-wing political party in Japan formally asked the government to comment on what it considered historical inaccuracies.

After the online blowback, the game’s development team attempted to assuage concerns about the game’s authenticity, apologizing in a lengthy statement for promotional materials that it said had bothered some Japanese audiences.

“We share your passion for history and deeply respect your care for the historical and cultural integrity of your rich heritage,” the statement read. It added: “From its inception, the series has taken creative license and incorporated fantasy elements to craft engaging and immersive experiences. The representation of Yasuke in our game is an illustration of this.”

Kazuma Hashimoto, a Japanese consultant and translator in the video game industry, said the reception of Assassin’s Creed Shadows was mostly positive in Japan. “It was people in the West who were upset with seeing Yasuke as a samurai,” he said, explaining that many of the negative online comments written in Japanese appeared to have been roughly translated from English.

Yu Hirayama, a historian at the Japan University of Health Sciences who specializes in the Sengoku period, said that Yasuke’s samurai status was not in question. “There are very few historical documents about him, but there’s no doubt that he was a ‘samurai’ who served Nobunaga,” Hirayama wrote on social media.

He was referring to Oda Nobunaga, a warrior and feudal lord who helped unify Japan and provided Yasuke with a house, stipend and sword. According to limited historical records, Yasuke arrived in Japan under the service of a Jesuit priest and was eventually summoned by Nobunaga. Nobunaga elevated Yasuke’s status for unknown reasons, and little is certain about what happened as his benefactor’s grip on power loosened. Some records indicate that Yasuke was eventually returned under the custody of Jesuits.

Historians contracted by Ubisoft, Côté said, work with translators on primary documents to create an experience that is as authentic as possible. “Our source material is not Wikipedia,” he said. But that authenticity also needs to blend into a fanciful game world where characters might leap off buildings into leaf piles unscathed or encounter mythological creatures in the woods.

Jonathan Dumont, the creative director of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, said Yasuke gave players a different perspective than the other protagonist, the ninja named Naoe, who comes from a secluded farmland between the Japanese mountains. Having two protagonists, he said, allowed players to switch between the more combat-focused play style of Yasuke and the classic assassin’s gameplay of Naoe.

“We come in as students every time for an Assassin’s Creed game,” said Dumont, who has been with the franchise for nearly a decade.

Unlike previous entries in the franchise that relied on archaeological research into ancient settlements in places like Egypt and Greece, Assassin’s Creed Shadows benefited from some Japanese architecture that remains in good condition.

The game’s art director, Thierry Dansereau, said developers visited historic settings like Himeji Castle and the Ichijodani Asakura clan ruins for inspiration. Other locations like Azuchi Castle no longer exist, but the team recreated the mountaintop fortress based on scholarly research and a little bit of video game magic.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will also include seasonal changes that change the dynamic of missions: Villages may become frozen in the winter and forest animals may appear only in springtime. The terrain and foliage will evolve.

“We have tried to make the most photorealistic game possible,” Dansereau said.

The setting and story was heavily inspired by “The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga,” a historical account compiled by one of the Japanese lord’s vassals, Ota Gyuichi. Brooke Davies, the game’s associate narrative director, said she revisited the book almost every day and also studied an account by Luís Fróis, a Portuguese missionary who lived in Japan during the Sengoku period and referred to Yasuke in letters.

These inspirations bleed into the game; Yasuke meets Gyuichi during his travels throughout Japan, and the missionary also makes an appearance.

Leadership at Ubisoft said it would not back away from creating games with surprising twists and diverse protagonists.

“We want people to be passionate about history,” said Côté, the executive producer. “What does that mean? Stay true to well-documented moments and historical figures, but not shying away from having a critical point of view and defying clichés to go beyond what is the accepted truth.”

He said that approach would inevitably open Assassin’s Creed to more criticism in the future but that the developers have decided it was a risk worth taking.

Davies, the associate narrative director, said that although the online threats against her colleagues made this game’s production cycle difficult, her team remained confident in its storytelling.

“The stories that we tell with our protagonists, a lot of these emotions are universal,” she said. “It makes these stories from almost 500 years ago feel relevant.”