Yasuke is actually a fantastic choice as far as history/narrative goes.

A shame the game looks like more generic Assassin’s Creed Mapfucking+Crowd Supermurder.

Which is fine if that’s your thing, but I haven’t been thrilled by an AC game since… well, AC1.

  • Black History Month
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    215 months ago

    I’m willing to bet it’s a bad game. A little controversy to fool idiot’s into buying it without thinking usually works. It serves double duty as it keeps those who really want the best games out of the discussion.

    • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      95 months ago

      Ubisoft has done it a few times.

      Really ramp up the controversy through the marketing, and then release the most non-offensive milquetoast game ever.

      Imagine the reality where they actually commit to it like Rockstar, and Far Cry 4-6 aren’t just generic open worlds with simple window dressing.

    • @SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yeah Ubi💩 knows that a certain slice of the gaming population will defend this game to its grave no matter how shit it is. Simply because the right hates it so much for the diversity. Also saw it with that last Star Wars game.

    • @FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      65 months ago

      Ubisoft has pushed the game back multiple times.

      Ubisoft.

      Ubisoft.

      Look at all the shit they’ve sold. They wouldn’t have minded selling you dogshit in a bag - hell, they would have added MTX if you want them to set it on fire.

      And this game is still too shit for them.

  • @boonhet@lemm.ee
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    675 months ago

    Honestly the first time I’ve thought about buying a game just because all the racists and misogynists hate it lmao

    • @nesc@lemmy.cafe
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      175 months ago

      I too would buy a shitty game that will stop working due to drm in some short time to own the libs racists!

      • @boonhet@lemm.ee
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        65 months ago

        Relax, I’ve played the previous entries and found them interesting. The 8 year old Origins title hasn’t stopped working yet. Have any of the older ones?

        I haven’t bought the last few, but loved Odyssey and even found the dreary miserable deserts of Origins somewhat of a cool setting. Sengoku era Japan is also a great setting so I’m anticipating a game with many flaws that will be frustrating, but fun.

        • Yeather
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          25 months ago

          There’s a solid chance Ubisoft goes bankrupt and all the drm required games go down at the same time. They also have a terrible track record with opening games up to keep them alive past their service life.

          • @GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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            25 months ago

            There’s a conspiracy theory that the Guillemot family (with the help from Tencent) is looking to turn Ubisoft private and for that they need to tank the stock.

            I’m not saying it will happen but it’s something that also explains their business decisions.

    • @deus@lemmy.world
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      245 months ago

      This is actually the first time I find myself interested in this series in a long time. Sengoku period Japan feels like a great setting for an Assassin’s Creed game and the fact that bigots hate it is just the cherry on top.

      • @boonhet@lemm.ee
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        65 months ago

        As much as these AC RPGs get hate, I found Odyssey awesome. If they don’t go too hard into the “grind before continuing main story” thing, Shadows could be pretty good too.

  • TimmyDeanSausage
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    275 months ago

    As someone who has been an avid gamer since the 90’s; I see a choice between a tank or a rogue… What’s the problem?

    Also, I think the story of a black samurai is interesting and cool. Even if, like most history of that nature, it might be heavily embellished. “Conservatives”, can y’all, for the live of glob, stop politicized fukting everything. Geez.

    • @Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      105 months ago

      Yasuke is based on a real life, Black samurai, who unfortunately, did not have too much written in detail about him. This does mean that almost any depiction is going to be embellished or at the very least, unverifiable.

      I do hate the Netflix show about him though. When it was announced, I was hoping for a grounded samurai story. Something in the vein of Sword of the Stranger. Not something with magic and giant robots.

  • Lovable Sidekick
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    145 months ago

    I don’t even know this game but aren’t you choosing between a heavily armored warrior and a peasant?

    • @Worx@lemmynsfw.com
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      135 months ago

      I also haven’t played this game, but I think you can see a sword blade sticking up above the woman’s shoulder? I’d also guess that she is a more agile or stealthy character choice and the man is more heavily armoured or powerful. Just based off video game stereotypes.

      Or maybe it’s half fighting game and half farming simulator 🤷

      • fatalicus
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        65 months ago

        I also haven’t played this game

        It hasn’t been released yet so I’d be impressed if you had.

        • @Worx@lemmynsfw.com
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          85 months ago

          Haha ok. Let me rephrase: I have so little interest in this game I don’t even know what it is

  • @RagingHungryPanda@lemm.ee
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    55 months ago

    Yasuke is dope AF. Who is Nade?

    But seriously, the story of Yasuke is badass. Unfortunately there just wasn’t written about him.

  • @RampageDon@lemmy.world
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    255 months ago

    I read the first tweet and was like yea it’s not fare the dude is in full body armor and the woman is not. Totally wooshed that this person was mad about their choice of both characters until I looked over the post a second time.

  • Stern
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    975 months ago

    I’d argue Yasuke was kind of a poor choice. AC’s have traditionally been about stealth, blending in to crowds, and being famous person adjacent (e.g. You meet Da Vinci, but you aren’t him.). Yasuke being known for being the only black dude in Japan at the time kinda screws the pooch on all three. Of course more recent AC’s have leaned more into arpg stuff but still.

    Had Yasuke been a key supporting character I think those guys still would have bitched about woke dei whatever, but it would have held a lot less sway.

    • @flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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      235 months ago

      I have 2 kinda conflicting opinions about the whole thing

      1. Annoying the anti-dei crowd is always a big plus
      2. Is including Yasuke (who looks like a modern American in the game) racist in of itself because the publisher thought Americans will be unable to identify with a Japanese character.

      The last AC game I’ve played is Brotherhood so it might all perfectly fit into the current AC universe idk.

      • @EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        145 months ago

        I mean, I have trouble with the racism angle just because Yasuke is a famous historical figure who has shown up in media going back decades, if not centuries, who has very little known about him but was a part of some the biggest events to shape Japan. Nobunaga, his boss, is both one of the most famous and infamous people of Japanese history and constantly appears in Japanese media as either a hero or a villain. This makes Yasuke a perfect character for media set in the period, as he’s largely a blank slate outside of where he shows up in events around Nobunaga’s conquest of Japan.

        I think around the time that they announced this game, there was also a movie being filmed about Yasuke, as well as a Netflix anime. I think the movie got canceled and the Netflix series turned into some Afro Samurai style thing, but that’s beside the point.

        I haven’t played an AC game since the 5 hours I spent with Odyssey, but my understanding is that they threw away the larger narrative about the present day and now basically just use the tech from that plot as an excuse to let you play as historical or famous-adjacent figures in whatever time period setpiece that they want to use. One of my favorite Souls-like series, Nioh and Nioh 2, did something similar in the same time period, where in the first game you play as the British/Dutch sailor turned samurai, Anjin-san (literally Mr Pilot) in the first game, and a bastardized version of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, another famous samurai. Yasuke also shows up as a side character in both games.

        • @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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          95 months ago

          Yasuke wasnt a samurai, and he was only documented in Japan for 3 years. Most of the myth behind him is unfounded. He was a kosho which is a servant. It is notable he was allowed to carry a short sword if he needed to defend his master, but he held no privileges that samurai did.

          Its not known if he died in Japan or left, as his master was forced to commit seppeku and he then was captured. Its noted that he was not killed because he was deemed to be a “beast”, and in Japanese society back then it was considered shameful to kill a weaker enemy after capturing them.

          I’m not sure where you got all of that stuff you wrote.

      • @lobut@lemmy.ca
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        75 months ago

        Yeah, I have the exact conflict about it.

        I hate the pandering too but when I hear a breakdown from it and I hear “woke” and “DEI” and it makes me want to strangle that YT personality.

          • @lobut@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            oh I thought you said I specifically downvoted you and I was so confused.

            It blows my mind that they had diversity consultants? Japan is like a huge part of the gaming industry the fact they really messed things up so bad is confusing. I figured they’d have a huge Japan division which would have been able to be like: “you know that’s wrong, right?” I like how he said the issue wasn’t diversity and that it was incompetency.

            The end message is really important, I really needed to hear it.

            • @rtxn@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I don’t know who the downvote came from, it just appeared suspiciously quickly. Apparently some people are trawling this thread for dissenting ideas that do not conform to the herd’s opinion.

              I’m sure Ubisoft had some sort of consultants about cultural and historical matters, but their involvement in production of the game and marketing is dubious at best. It still fucks me up that anyone thought it was okay to use a destroyed cultural/religious object as marketing material, even without knowing its connection to the Allied bombings. I maintain my position that Ubisoft is exploiting these ideas callously and arrogantly and should not be given the benefit of doubt.

    • @Katana314@lemmy.world
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      135 months ago

      That makes me wonder if the gameplay is more segmented, so Yasuke gets the upfront battles that became popular in AC Oranges, while the other lady gets the covert social stealth.

      • @Uruanna@lemmy.world
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        75 months ago

        They showed some gameplay that had one character collect information, and then you get a checkpoint of sorts before the actual mission where you choose which character to use. Yasuke can bust up the front door and whack everyone, or Naoe can climb the walls and crawl underwater. It’s suggested that this is most of the game, but it’s safe to presume there will be some missions here and there that require a specific character.

      • Stern
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        75 months ago

        Odyssey and Valhalla were both more on the RPG side, Mirage went somewhat back to form, though not fully. Could be they split between the two types, but based on Valhalla and Odyssey it’s more likely to me that Yasuke and Naoe’s gameplay loops aren’t super different, maybe some techniques (e.g. he throws a knife that does x damage, she throws a kunai that does x-5 damage + poison, or something like that.) and a couple story elements relevant to them.

      • @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        45 months ago

        I dont understand why ubisoft won’t just go back to the style of game AC 1-3 was. Or even just stop doing AC altogether and do a whole spinoff series like black flag.

        They keep trying to reinvent things, and all anyone wants is the same old assassins creed but in a new locale.

        • @Katana314@lemmy.world
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          25 months ago

          The answer is simple even if it isn’t a good answer. With so much money involved in the development of AAA games now, a committee has to agree on what ventures are “safe”. These games won’t commit to new ideas or challenge players with a particular expected flow. They’ll basically let you do everything and play however you want.

          I have wanted to parody that if I ever find myself running an E3 demo. “This game lets you play however you’d like. You can sneak in, with nobody ever seeing you, or you can run in guns blazing - and die instantly.”

          • @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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            15 months ago

            Isn’t your last sentence a perfect description of Shadows? People are saying you can choose the big smashy guy or the small sneaky lady on each mission I think.

    • @Uruanna@lemmy.world
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      95 months ago

      There is a second playable character that does all the stealth, an actual ninja. It looks like most of the missions will allow you to choose which character you’ll play. So no, Yasuke is still a great choice - for those who don’t want to play that way.

    • @PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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      575 months ago

      I mean, you were a super flamboyant Renaissance guy with dual wrist blades murdering dozens of mooks per encounter as early as AC2, and by Brotherhood and 3 it only got more overt.

      • @Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        615 months ago

        I mean, you were a super flamboyant Renaissance guy

        Well you just described half of Italy there!

      • FartsWithAnAccent
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        55 months ago

        They piss away all that potential trying to make more money, the irony is if they just focused solely on making great games, the money would follow.

        They could be doing so much better, but they choose to fuck it up every time.

        • @BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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          65 months ago

          Not in their minds. Making something good would cost more this quarter. Might make more profit when the game comes out, but that probably takes years and requires hiring talented game designers, so instead they choose to make a cheap game now and release it to the same type of people who buy Madden every year.

          I mean, look at Halo Infinite. Guarantee the execs are wishing they’d released some garbage like a year after Halo 5 instead of spending all that time just to make it passably okay. I doubt that quarter’s sales numbers would be significantly lower.

            • @BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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              35 months ago

              I’m not so sure. Briefly perusing the AC Wikipedia page, it doesn’t seem like they’re losing money even on their worst performers. Hell, it says Valhalla, which came out in 2020, had the best release week of any AC game they’ve ever made.

              Even if the games suck, they’re not aimed at the sort of person who can recognize that.

  • @CluckN@lemmy.world
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    55 months ago

    Did they actually release new gameplay footage? The delays and Ubisoft trying to sell had me worried.

  • @Toribor@corndog.social
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    335 months ago

    I’ve found it best to stay 3-4 Assassin’s Creed’s behind, pick them up for $5 on a Steam Sale. I explore the world, do the story and just completely ignore the low-effort side quest spam. Then they tend to be a pretty okay experience still.

    • @jdeath@lemm.ee
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      45 months ago

      i had a gaming pc with three monitors set up to play across all of them and assassin’s creed was wild

      • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        25 months ago

        That sounds incredible. I can’t imagine my graphics card can do that without smoking up the house.

        2030 goals

    • @Kruulos@sopuli.xyz
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      75 months ago

      I’ve done exactly as you said. I’m doing them one in every two years and I’m having fun. I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than 5 euros for one game. They are the kind of low effort easy fun but that’s exactly what I want. I have my hard games and series for when I want that type of experience

  • @lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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    155 months ago

    Asscreed: Mirage just … disappeared?

    I haven’t heard anything about it since it was released, was it that boring?

    • Yeather
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      25 months ago

      Mirage was self contained, sold well, and was well liked by most. Shadows has a millioj controversies and the gameplay loop looks bad. Controcersy gets clicks so Mirage was ignored for more Shadows spam.

      • @PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        There’s also the whole “Ubi refused to allow it on Steam because they didn’t want Valve to eat their cake” side of things. Ubi believed that Mirage would have enough market pull for them to only release it on their internal Ubi store. It also has Denuvo, which many PC players despise. So nobody on PC bothered to play it, and it was only noteworthy for console players. Mirage only recently released on Steam, (I think around Halloween of last year?) but by that point any marketing that was done for it is old news and players have moved on. Ubi seems to have learned their lesson, because Shadows is releasing on Steam at the same time as the rest of the platforms.

    • VindictiveJudge
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      35 months ago

      It was a stand alone expansion for Valhalla and didn’t get as much marketing as Shadows. Beyond that, I don’t know.

      • @lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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        25 months ago

        “Originally envisioned as an expansion for Valhalla, the game was reworked into a standalone title to expand its scope.”

        It really disappeared from the public consciousness 😀

  • @ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    85 months ago

    I’m more thinking that the black dude would look so “pretend” doing all of the acrobatics that AC is known for. Why is he 300 pounds?

      • @ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        65 months ago

        And goku could destroy a universe with less effort than you put into a sneeze.

        I expect certain amounts of realism within certain fantasies, and AC has generally been a bit grounded in realism with the protagonists strengths and abilities being kind of close to humanly possible. AC is like a history lesson with a free runner who can fight. This guy here gonna jump to a rooftop and fall through.

  • @rtxn@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Yasuke is a questionable choice for a protagonist. It breaks with the pattern of inserting a fictional character into the world, you’ll never convince me that his race was not a calculated factor in choosing him, and his status as a samurai (and portrayal in western media) is largely based on a single historian’s work with questionable credibility. Ubisoft has used the Oda family crest without permission (the family still exists today), used imagery of the Buddha without permission (retracted, may have been the Budai), used a destroyed torii gate as advertising material; and for how much they bleat about historical accuracy, their trailers are chock full of inaccuracies.

    I do not believe that a character is enhanced or ruined based on their race, but Ubisoft is definitely exploiting it.

    • @glimse@lemmy.world
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      295 months ago

      I’m not touching the rest of your comment but the Buddhism thing really shows you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You don’t need “permission” to use imagery of the Buddha, that’s not how it works.

      Who do you think can even “give permission” to use imagery of the Buddha anyway, the Siddhartha family? The Dalai Lama? Does he need to phone up the leaders of the other schools for consensus?

      • Yeather
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        25 months ago

        The rest of the comment is also barely touching on the subjects. Yasuke was not a samurai, more than likely just a retainer that Oda kept as a sort of trophy or show of wealth. The main issue Japanese people have is the portrayal of Samurai themselves, saying the way Yasuke fights is not right. They also gave Yasuke the family seal, which is a major legal issue even today since the design is copyrighted. The Buddha issue is not the yse itself, but the fact Ubisoft used Chinese depictions of Buddha and not Japanese depictions. They also showed the destroyed torri gate in artwork, based on the Nagasaki gate destroyed by the atom bomb and is also a protected piece. They also showed supposedly Japanese farmworkers in Thai and Myanmar clothing, and others in clothing not seen until the 17th century.

    • @Katana314@lemmy.world
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      225 months ago

      Still can’t believe they put Socrates in AC Odyssey just because he was a popular figure from history. They didn’t even portray him realistically in their video game about solo killing hundreds of enemies.

      /s

      • @Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        35 months ago

        Oh, right, so all criticisms are invalid because its a game. Just a shitty lowly game, that shitty lowly gamers play. Can’t stand those losers, taking all their childish bullshit seriously. Caring is for pussies.