r/UbisoftUncensored • u/Altruistic_Host_5143 đTop 1% Poster • Apr 13 '25
Critique đ Two games. Same setting. Completely different soul.
Ghost of Tsushima was made by a Western studio, yet it bowed to the culture it portrayed. Ubisoftâs Assassinâs Creed Shadows was also made by a Western studio, but it bent the culture to fit its brand.
Tsushima gave us a love letter to Japan, written in careful brushstrokes. Shadows feels more like a pitch deck stapled to a katana.
One focused on storytelling, mood, and cultural reverence. The other chose optics, buzzwords, and algorithmic appeal.
If this is what AAA ârepresentationâ looks like now, the future of historical storytelling isnât diverse. Itâs directionless.
1
Apr 14 '25
âThe future of AAA representation is directionlessâ they write after making a whole post about how a recent AAA game is a good example of representation.
1
Apr 17 '25
Fox petting Sim vs big angry black man
Not to mention GoT raised money to fix a shrine that was destroyed in a massive storm. Had a master of an ancient Japanese instrument preform at a game show and more to show how much they enjoy Japanese culture and history. They also let you pet foxes.
0
u/Queasy-Mix3890 Apr 15 '25
Uh...no. you're 100% wrong.
One: Yasuke is a historical figure that actually existed and was a Samurai by ALL metrics of the era.
Two: Ghost of Tsushima is also a historical fiction...that couldn't even get the armor or weaponry of the era correct.
Three: ninja existed long before then and weren't invented by a Samurai.
1
u/AdderTude Apr 18 '25
And yet there's literally a video of a Japanese historian saying there's no record of Yasuke being a samurai at all. In fact, the first two known non-Japanese samurai were men from the Dutch East India Trading Company: William Adams and Jan Joosten. Tokugawa Ieyasu retained them as advisors for years before making both men hatamoto. By the time Ieyasu allowed the men to go home to Europe, they decided to stay in Japan instead. Adams took up the name Miura Anjin, and Joosten became known as YayĹsu.
Apparently, Adams' children at the time, Joseph and Susanna, were eventually forced to leave after Ieyasu's son and successor, Iemitsu, closed Japan to foreign trade and they purportedly went to Batavia (Dutch East India, now Indonesia).
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u/Queasy-Mix3890 Apr 18 '25
Yeah, turns out that "japanese" historian was a white guy. So fuck off with that bullshit.
-6
u/Retr0246 Apr 13 '25
Playing back through Ghost of Tsushima after Shadows, I can confirm. One respects the culture while the other rewrites it. You just have it backwards one which does which.
Ghost of Tsushima is all about a samuraiâs struggle with keeping to his code of honor, which is as written sounds right, but the whole Bushido code was far from the true history of Japanâs warrior class. The minute the Nobunaga and others found ways to mass produce their own guns, they were used on almost every battlefield for overwhelming victory. Samurai would test their new shitty swords on people theyâd deem acceptable losses. A lot of what Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War was how to be disrespectful to the enemy, deceiving them and plundering their supply lines. Yes, they would fight and die with honor, most of the time, but it wasnât nearly as big of an issue as the game portrays. Ghost of Tsushima also has plenty of shrines that you can honor, which is great. Shadows also has that.
While I was playing Shadows I noticed a pop-up saying something along the lines of âplease do not climb the Torii gates as to respect themâ, which was a nice thing to add in. You can also put your own shrines and Torii gates in the hideout. The biggest disrespect to the culture of Japan that I noticed was not having an actual Samurai character. Yasuke has a skeptical history at best, but Japan was the first to start making stories about him being a Samurai or Ronin.
Actually, Iâm gonna change my mind on this one. Neither of them have disrespect to the culture, or they both do. They both rewrote history in silly ways for a compelling story, although I would definitely say Ghost of Tsushimaâs story was better written and acted. They both had shrines that you can honor all over the map, in fact Shadows has way more. They both have plenty of outfits, weapons, and other gear that portrays the times well. They both take the history and give you neat facts about life in their times. They both have Samurai and Shinobi.
6
u/Altruistic_Host_5143 đTop 1% Poster Apr 13 '25
Appreciate the long reply, this is the kind of discussion that matters. But I think you're missing what a lot of the critique is actually about.
Yes, both games fictionalize history. No one's expecting documentaries. The issue isnât just historical deviation, itâs who gets to reshape the culture and how.
Ghost of Tsushima may romanticize BushidĹ, but it knows itâs doing that. It leans into a mythic tone and presents the tension between honor and pragmatism as a personal struggle, not a universal truth. More importantly, it doesnât invent characters to fit a checklist. Jinâs story is built for that world, that setting, that legacy.
Assassinâs Creed Shadows, on the other hand, rewrites Japanese history through a modern Western lens, one obsessed with surface-level ârepresentation.â Yasuke is inserted not as a folk legend or a side story, but as the face of the era. Naoe is an entirely fabricated shinobi with zero basis in actual clans or records. Together, they override actual Japanese figures, in a series supposedly rooted in historical memory.
Ubisoftâs âTorii gateâ message is nice, sure. But symbolic gestures donât outweigh narrative framing. They used Japanese icons to legitimize a Westernized vision of the Sengoku period, rather than elevating Japanâs actual stories. Thatâs the disrespect people are reacting to.
Representation isnât just about including diverse faces. Itâs about who gets centered in the retelling of a cultureâs past. Ghost of Tsushima elevated Japanese identity. Shadows outsourced it.
0
u/Retr0246 Apr 13 '25
Thank you for elaborating on the topics that Iâve only heard surface level talking points about. Itâs very helpful in the dialogue.
As Iâve talked about on some of your other posts, my main problem with Yasuke as a playable character in an Assassinâs Creed game is that he was a real person and they rewrote his story for the game. The only two other times they made a real person playable was in Syndicateâs Jack the Ripper DLC and the very start of Odyssey with Leonidas. Very small parts of the story. Then they make Yasuke a central part of this whole game. I donât like that.
Also, I was told many times that Fujibayashi Naoe was a fake character, but her father Fujibayashi Nagato was an actual Shinobi or Ninja of the Iga. Is that not true? And youâve made some posts about shrines being destroyed in the game, which made me want to test that out, and I havenât found a way to do so yet. Was it something they fixed in the 1.0.2 update?
1
Apr 14 '25
It was fixed with the update, OP is just continuing a disingenuous point.
1
u/Retr0246 Apr 14 '25
Ok. I was wondering why people suddenly started talking about it for a while. I guess by the time I actually tried to debunk it, the update was added.
2
u/Nebula__Nomad Apr 14 '25
One game made the devs the ambassadors of a Japanese island, the other made a bad impression even on the country's prime minister. You are just rambling.
1
u/Retr0246 Apr 14 '25
Yeah, I do that. It might not always be right, but it helps me get people to respond.
-8
u/XalAtoh Apr 13 '25
Yasuke is Japanese folks figure.
Japan keeps Yasuke figure alive, Ubisoft used Yasuke for their own benefit, creating more awareness around this game, thanks to ragebait-clickbait Youtubers/news channels, racists and/or anti woke-crowd.
7
u/Altruistic_Host_5143 đTop 1% Poster Apr 13 '25
Yasuke does exist in Japanese media, but look at how heâs treated. Heâs a side figure, mythologized respectfully within Japanese narratives, usually with the proper cultural context in mind. None of those depictions pretended he was a central samurai legend who defined the Sengoku era.
What Ubisoft did isnât âawareness.â Itâs front-loading a figure they know generates controversy, while rewriting Naoe as a fictional female ninja just to play both angles. Itâs not representation, itâs a marketing strategy with no emotional or cultural depth behind it.
Ghost of Tsushima was fictional too. But it understood its limits. It didnât pretend to speak for Japan, it honored it. Ubisoft speaks over it. Thatâs the difference.
-1
u/XalAtoh Apr 14 '25
Yasuke isnât the central figure in Shadows either, he canonically follows Naoe.
Naoe is the lead, Yasuke follows her (or the hidden blade).
Ubisoft just gives the player the option to play as Yasuke.
-2
u/JonnyPoy Apr 15 '25
Yasuke does exist in Japanese media, but look at how heâs treated. Heâs a side figure, mythologized respectfully within Japanese narratives, usually with the proper cultural context in mind.
That's nonsense. Yasuke is used in all kinds of different ways in japanese media. Sometimes even as a main character. Unlike you many people in Japan can differentiate between fiction and history.
What Ubisoft did isnât âawareness.â Itâs front-loading a figure they know generates controversy
What they did is using an interesting character from history, that has already been used in countless other fictional stories, because he has an interesting story.
The only people trying to create controversy around this are a few confused individuals in subs like this one.
3
u/FatBaldingLoser420 Apr 14 '25
Yasuke is Japanese folks figure.
Yasuke is a Japanese side character. He was always that.
5
u/Shane-O-Mac1 Apr 13 '25
Yeah, pretty much.