Assassin's Creed Shadows Controversy Explained

After many years of fans being extremely vocal in their desire for the history-hopping series to visit Feudal Japan, is finally set to visit this setting later this year. While the announcement of — then called — was initially well-received with its short stylized teaser depicting a ninja jumping across rooftops, the game has been the subject of plenty of backlash and controversy since its first story trailer, which introduced its dual protagonists, Yasuke and Naoe.

Naoe's shinobi gameplay has more of a focus on 's classic stealth-based approach, while Yasuke's samurai gameplay is more in line with the combat-heavy tactics of the more recent RPG-esque titles.

While Naoe appears to be primarily fictional — despite being depicted as the daughter of the real shinobi Fujibayashi Nagato and coming from the real shinobi province of Iga — Yasuke has been marketed as being the series' first playable character based on a real historical figure. A " featurette stated that Yasuke arrived in Japan in 1579 when ' story begins, and went on to develop a relationship with the powerful Oda Nobunaga, which has been documented historically. However, it also noted that much of Yasuke's life was still shrouded in mystery.

The first trailer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows reveals its release date, dual protagonists, and the first inklings of a story. Here’s what to expect.

As a response to ' trailer and gameplay footage, a petition was launched to cancel the game in June 2024. This soon picked up traction and has nearly reached 100,000 signatures at the time of writing, just over a month later. The petition mentions the depiction of Yasuke as an African samurai and states that Japanese samurai were "" noting that the first European to receive the title of samurai, William Adams (Miura Anjin), served Tokugawa Ieyasu as a 250 koku hatamoto, and accused Ubisoft of "" and not having done thorough research.

A hatamoto was a high ranking samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa shogunate