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In a more formulaic and low stakes corner of the culture War Ubisoft has announced "assassin's creed Shadow". The series is known for offering open world exploration set in various historical locations and times from the Nordic to ancient Egypt. This installment is appearantly a popular fan request in being set in fuedal Japan.
The culture War angle is that the game has two main characters, a female assassin and a disputed historical black warrior named yasuke. Now I haven't played one of these games in over a decade and am not particularly invested in this title but the response has been a fairly clean case study in marketing by controversy and I think it might be worth dissecting.
In my corner of the web I first learned of the game's existence from the preemptive "man, racists right wingers are going to hate this" posts. And indeed if one looked it was not hard to soon after find right winger racists filling their niche in this tired dance. One can always find bad takes that isn't what is interesting about how this kind of thing develops.
A trap seemed to be set, I don't know which end first broached the topic of "historical accuracy" but because it took the form of what legitimate criticism might look like the culture War quickly fell into a groove of progressives defending the historical existence of yasuke being a real samurai and pointing to other popular media depictions of him as well as pointing out that the assassin's creed series includes other widely disputed historical claims like Benjamin Franklin's possession of a magical golden apple. The anti-progressive backlash is in a hard place because I think there is something legitimate there but the shape of the discussion is not condusive to making the argument.
I think most of the anti-progressive front probably doesn't have an issue with a black sumurai in a game made by people they trust to have making awesome games as their first master. There's something itching in the back of the head of the backlash crowd that the reason we have yasuke isn't because a black guy in Japan makes for interesting segments of blending into crowds but because the people making the game have an anti-majoritarian view. The same thing that gave us yasuke is what motivates someone to put on a "fuck white people" shirt.
This is a feature of the culture War I'm seeing more and more. Proxy battles that few people care deeply about but have features that make them better or worse to do battle on. This game seems like favorable terrain from the woke angle and it's tempting to just give them it but I understand the impulse to fight on the terrain anyways.
Um actually black samurai were totally a thing historically. But even if they weren't, why does it matter and why are you so bothered about an ahistoric depiction of a black man pairing up with a young Japanese woman to kill a bunch of Japanese men? It's only a video game.
its_all_so_tiresome.jpg
On the bright side, this should be a boom for jokes and memes beyond the obligatory "dass rite, we wuz samuraiz n shieett."
For example, the top appearing comment on the YouTube trailer says "The most heroic thing about this trailer is that they left the comments open." Another commenter remarks, "I cannot wait for Ubisoft to make an assassin's creed game set in Africa and make the main character a Chinese man." Assassin's Creed: Empire of Dust does indeed have some gravitas as a title. There are a bunch of Japanese comments and I'd like to imagine they're chudding out hardcore, but haven't plugged them into a translator lest my illusions get shattered.
Looking at Wikipedia, apparently there are something like 25 Assassin's Creed titles between the main and spinoff series? I would have guessed there were like five.
We need a general name for this two-step strategy of a claim + poisoning the well: P, and if you argue against P, then you are ungoodthinker.
Seems like a variant on merited impossibility. Perhaps merited possibility.
"It isn't happening and if it is, it's a good thing"
"It did happen, and if it didn't, why do you care?"
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