It is hard to remember a more exhausting set of controversies than the ones that have surrounded Assassin’s Creed Shadows since it was announced, focused on culture war-centric issues that have only become more inflamed in recent months.
Much of that focus is on the inclusion of Yasuke, a black samurai pulled from history. The accusations have ranged from the claim he wasn’t a real samurai to the idea that the game just should have starred a Japanese man instead. Now at launch, they range from the fact that he can seduce a royal ancestor or a non-binary character.
All of this is nonsense. Yasuke is a great character in the story and a net benefit to the narrative. But there are certainly criticisms to be had about him from a gameplay perspective specifically.
Throw all that other stuff in the trash and you have the real problem: Ubisoft has done it once again with a dual-character setup in a game that doesn’t need one. This time, they split it not just by gender, but by an entire playstyle, with the second creating some awkward design moments, frequently.
Yasuke is a sledgehammer. He runs into bandit camps and castles and just starts swinging giant katanas or maces around. He has close to zero stealth capabilities, even his one assassination move has him yelling at an enemy to get them to turn around before he drives a blade completely through their chest cavity.
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This can be fun! If you temporarily forget what kind of game this is supposed to be, it turns encounters into sort of an action brawler. Yasuke ragdoll kicking enemies into walls will never get old.
AC Shadows
Ubisoft
But the world is not built for Yasuke. He’s incredibly slow in traversal, huffing and puffing down paths, unable to skip across rooftops or grapple hook his way to high perches. He can’t even fit through cracks in walls. This creates so many uncomfortable moments. For instance, I cleared out an entire hostile temple with Yasuke’s brawling, but then tasked with getting high-up lost pages in the arena, I simply couldn’t climb to get them. I had to change to Naoe, but because it was a restricted zone, I had to literally run outside, change to Naoe, then come back in and start climbing around for pages. Then leave and go back to Yasuke to keep playing with him. This happens with a lot of vision towers as well.
It’s true that Assassin’s Creed, in recent entries, has gotten more and more friendly with open combat with characters like Kassandra or Eivor. But the point is, they could do both. No character switch for quests or even within the same literal encounter. Here, while Yasuke can be fun, he feels like he’s pulled from an entirely different game, and they had to design like 20% of Shadows specifically for him, while the rest seems far more suited to Naoe. It’s a really weird dynamic.
Yasuke is a great character in the story. Combat with him can be fun in a vacuum. But in the larger context of the game’s design, he’s an puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit.
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