AC Shadows’ rollout has been…plagued, to put it nicely. While we’re still a far cry from the catastrophe that was Cyberpunk 2077, for some time now it’s felt as if Ubisoft was lying prostrate on the mat during a round of Krav Maga (that is, dead). As financial difficulties and shareholder protests at the company mount, the last few months of Assassin’s Creed have generated a sort of hate hype. Seemingly all the internet is rooting for this game to fail, while others ask, understandably, if anything less than a blockbuster success is enough to keep Ubisoft and it’s controlling shareholders out of the corporate firing-line. Will the “next” Assassin’s Creed be the last? Who’s to say?
AC has always been a very successful but qualitatively mid-level franchise that married stunning visuals to by-the-numbers gameplay and C-level writing. Which is to say it’s entirely possible that Shadows will just come across as a prettier but flabbier version of Ghost of Tsushima, then be summarily decapitated by Ghost of Yotei when it leaps suddenly out of the shadows of a vague 2025 release schedule. But be that as it may, some features of Shadows look promising.
As a Shogun fan, I for one am thrilled at Ubisoft’s decision to include an “immersive” mode where every character speaks their native languages. However, since this is an optional feature, any actual bearing on the story is likely to be nonexistent, unlike in Shogun where translation and bilingualism are key plot devices that influence the politics. Likewise, the combat looks impressive enough, though that new trailer radiates typical PG Assassin’s Creed hokiness and leaves something to be desired.
To expect, despite a litany of cultural faux pas up to this point, that Japanese players will simply reject Shadows out of hand is not a given. Bad press has a way of snowballing, but in the end, as we saw in 2022 with the different responses to House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power, most people don’t give a shit about internet racism if the product is good, which is precisely why internet racists are so desperate to make a stink about everything.
After all, basically anything casted with a non-white male protagonist elicits charges of wokeness these days, and the “foreigner becomes one with Japan” concept is a tried and true trope at this point with everything from The Last Samurai to Tokyo Vice. That a black foreign protagonist should arouse so much fury when white characters like Blackthorne in Shogun typically don’t speaks in some respects to a weird convergence of interests in internet racists across cultural lines, but hey, they can go resurrect the Axis between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany in their basements for all I care while pretending their important enough for Sayeret Maktal to kill them. That’s a long list, bros. Better put up your feet and wait. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows drops on Thursday. We’ve got you covered with a full review, news, and analytical articles till June.
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