One day a drama. And this time, it concerns Assassin’s Creed Shadows which is currently at the heart of a new controversy, it doesn’t stop. Two days ago, Ubisoft revealed the final name of the game, its first CGI trailer, details on its gameplay, its characters, their story, the open world, the collector’s editions, their price too. Several things are mentioned, but here, it is about Yasuke, the famous black samurai, the one who would not be in his place according to certain people, who also question his existence. With all this fuss, a person came out of the woodwork, revealing that they worked for Ubisoft on this Assassin’s Creed in Japan, particularly on the story. According to his statements and his message posted on Twitter, initially, no black samurai was planned in this episode in the Land of the Rising Sun, it was a completely different story. We also learn that the first drafts on this Assassin’s Creed in Japan date back to 2013-2014, which means that the publisher has been thinking about transporting its favorite series to this country so iconic in popular culture for more than 10 years. , especially in video games. Here is the translation of his tweet:
“I worked on some narrative elements from Japan’s Sengoku era for Assassin’s Creed in 2013-2014, when I was working under contract in San Jose/Tokyo. I guess they ditched all that for this dark samurai.
I’m so glad I’m no longer a part of this industry. I guess it’s only fitting that my contributions to these studios disappear like everything else I’ve worked on (all the MMO shooters I’ve worked on have been abandoned). Here’s a brief summary of the original story (from what I remember – it’s been a decade):
The plot focused on the young monk “Yamauchi Taka” as a playable ancestor. “Taka” means “Hawk” to coincide with the nomenclature of the time that each playable hero was named after a bird of prey (I don’t know if this has changed with all these newer, disjointed games that don’t no longer have Desmond as the main hero who binds). The main conflict involved “The Sword of Eden” (aka “Excalibur”, “Honjō Masamune”, “The Sword of Genghis Khan”, etc.). and how it had given its last bearer, Oda Nobunaga, an unfair advantage in his conquest of Japan. After Nobunaga’s assassination by Hattori Hanzo, Taka becomes a member of the Brotherhood and, under Hanzo, he is trained as an assassin, a Shinobi. The Brotherhood attempts to transport the recovered sword out of Japan but the country is besieged by Jesuit ships (who are the Templars in the game) and the sword is lost.
To make matters worse, Hattori Hanzo is murdered while planning to retire as a monk. Its lord, Tokugawa Ieyasu, tasks Taka with finding the killer (and recovering the sword). Despite Nobunaga’s successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi acquiring the sword and a rampage that extends to Korea, Taka steals the sword and the mad Daimyo loses his power, weakening his campaign in Korea. Angered by the theft, Toyotomi believed he had been betrayed by the Templars and virtually exterminated all of the Jesuits (Templars) in Japan. Taka infiltrates Toyotomi’s castle and faces him in a final battle, resulting in Toyotomi’s death. The ambitious daimyo dies as Taka walks away before his servants can intercept him. The now seasoned assassin spares Toyotomi’s young heir, knowing that the clan has lost its teeth and will eventually wither away without Hideyoshi. Then begins his ambitious takeover, demanding that Taka and the Brotherhood give him the sword and help him eliminate all of his enemies from Japan to fully unite it under the banners of his clan. Taka and the Brotherhood decline and disappear into the shadows with the sword.”
An interesting scenario to say the least, and which will undoubtedly serve as soup for anti-wokists who have difficulty supporting the presence of Yasuke, despite his legitimacy. Because no, choosing to angle the next Assassin’s Creed through Yasuke’s eyes also means offering a different, atypical and almost unprecedented story. The opportunity for the French publisher to stand out from other already existing samurai games. Moreover, from what we know, Yasuke was born on the island of Mozambique in the 1530s or 1540s. He belonged to the makua community, a clan renowned for hunting and fishing. It was while searching for the trace of a lion wounded by its assegai that he was captured by slave traffickers. The young man is then torn from his island. He will be taken by force into a boat where a pile of black men are gathered, chained to each other, prostrate, overwhelmed, discouraged. The places are disgusting with a particularly strong odor, due to the mixture of urine, stools and sweat. The air is unbreathable, but Yasuke will spend several months on this boat, until arriving in Goa, India, which was under the supervision of the Portuguese at the time.
This is where Yasuke will be bought by a Jesuit who will ask him to carry out daily tasks such as fetching water from a spring and bringing it back in large jugs. He’s going to do this all day. The task is not exhausting, but it is repetitive and in his community the Makua, this task is normally reserved for women, which Yasuke feels is a humiliation. But on September 6, 1574, his destiny changed when a certan Alessandro Valignano, who was a priest responsible for inspecting the Jesuit missions in his jurisdiction, looked for a powerful and strong man to serve him and ensure his protection. He chooses Yasuke. On September 20, 1577, the two men embarked on a journey that would last nearly two years. After stopovers in Malacca, which is today’s Malaysia, and Macao (this is in China), they arrived in Japan on July 25, 1579. Upon arriving there, he created a sort of hysteria among the population, who has never seen a black man and there are even soldiers who have traveled hundreds of kilometers just to see him and approach him. Moreover, at the time, displaying an African slave to earn money was commonplace among Jesuit priests. It was in 1581 that Yasuke crossed paths with Oda Nobunaga, the powerful warlord, who was captivated by his size (he was over 1.90m), his power but also his intelligence. Because according to the stories, Yasuka learned to speak Japanese and this is how Nobunaga will make him his bodyguard, give him a spear, in addition to the two swords that he has the right to carry.
So of course, Ubisoft has certainly reshaped Yasuke’s story to suit itself, as was already the case with other historical characters in previous Assassin’s Creed, to the point that these historical rearrangements had taken Jean-Luc Mélanchon out of his hinges when Unity was released in 2014, 10 years ago, in part because Robespierre had been transformed into a vile villainous antagonist. And then, remember, in the Ezio Auditore trilogy, the latter was helped by Leonardo Da Vinci, improvised as a brilliant inventor. Not to mention that in Assassin’s Origins, we kill Julius Caesar himself. So Ubisoft twists historical facts in its own way to tell its own story, and that’s good! And then, to come back to Yasuke, we must also remember that it is he who inspired a lot of works of pop culture. The manga and the animated Afro Samurai for example, or even in Nioh, where this black samurai makes an appearance and is even one of the bosses to take down, facing William, the white samurai, who was not the subject of a lynching at the time of the game’s release.
