Poll of the Day > Do you think people simp too hard for Japan?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was watching a video about nuissance streamers from Paahtis

He talks about how noone cares when Assassin's creed makes historical inaccuracies in other games. But Shadows broke the internet.

The problem is, that's kind of a poor-faith argument.

For starters, people have complained about historical inaccuracies in the games before. And many people have complained that the original games started out extremely careful about historical accuracy, but more recent games have been getting more and more lax about it. The main problem was generally that a lot of the older games were set in places or time periods that the average person can't immediately call BS on off the top of their head, whereas in this case the Japanese themselves got pissed and pointed out all of the mistakes. And yes, weeaboos who obsess over Japan were also able to point out all of the problems.

It also doesn't help when you have multiple issues show up IN THE TRAILER ALONE. Because it implies the game is so riddled with problems you literally cannot slice out any part of the game to show off that doesn't reflect those problems. Almost NO prior Ass Creed game was that bad.

Second, in this specific case, the "inaccuracies" were pretty damned inaccurate. Time markers were radically off. Elements of design seemed to confuse Japanese elements with Chinese ones (which is pretty racist). Religious imagery is used, but in the wrong manner. In almost every frame of the trailer, something was wrong. That's bad.

As one YouTuber described it in a recent video, "It seems like this game is portraying the equivalent of a Wild West American cowboy who's walking through a tulip-filled pumpkin patch, with a newsie cap on his head, eating a croissant, heading towards his Tudor-style home armed with a spear on his back."

It kind of comes across like the game was designed by people who know literally nothing about Japan, and only have vague memories of "kind-of Asian" things they saw in other games or in anime, and just threw it all in to make the game look "Japanese-y".

(And all of that is before we get to things like the racist implications of having "stereotypical black music" playing in combat scenes because the main character is black. Which makes the "oh my god look how diverse we are" overtones just come across as performative and somewhat offensive.)

It doesn't help that Ubisoft as a studio and the Ass Creed franchise has always virtue signaled pretty hard about how respectful they were of other cultures and (every game starts with a disclaimer about how the games are made by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs), but they've made such elementary mistakes with Shadows that it's pretty blatant that their current team either doesn't give a single solitary shit about Japan (or outright hate the Japanese) or are incredibly inept, and either deserves to be called BS on.

There's also the fact that when a game is good and a company is doing well, people are more willing to cut them slack over perceived problems. But when a company has spent nearly a decade burning off every ounce of good will and killing any sympathy or mercy people might be willing to feel for them, you're going to get people calling out things they might have let slide 10+ years ago, regardless of where things were set. Once you've allowed yourself to become the Bad Guy, you can't really complain when people start treating you like the Bad Guy.

So yeah, I'm going to say that people are way more mad about Ass Creed Shadows than they were about, say, Ass Creed 2. But that's because one of those two games looks like it's going to be a shit game produced by a shit company (that is on the verge of bankruptcy or corporate takeover), that is mostly staffed at this point by shit people who do shit things and have shit opinions, whereas the other game was a very good game produced by a company riding high on its successes that was mostly staffed by talented devs who mostly kept their opinions to themselves. It's not entirely surprising that you're going to see different reactions to them.

Being set in Japan isn't the problem for Shadows. Being a Ubisoft game released in 2025 is.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The problem is, that's kind of a poor-faith argument.

For starters, people have complained about historical inaccuracies in the games before. And many people have complained that the original games started out extremely careful about historical accuracy, but more recent games have been getting more and more lax about it. The main problem was generally that a lot of the older games were set in places or time periods that the average person can't immediately call BS on off the top of their head, whereas in this case the Japanese themselves got pissed and pointed out all of the mistakes. And yes, weeaboos who obsess over Japan were also able to point out all of the problems.

It also doesn't help when you have multiple issues show up IN THE TRAILER ALONE. Because it implies the game is so riddled with problems you literally cannot slice out any part of the game to show off that doesn't reflect those problems. Almost NO prior Ass Creed game was that bad.

Second, in this specific case, the "inaccuracies" were pretty damned inaccurate. Time markers were radically off. Elements of design seemed to confuse Japanese elements with Chinese ones (which is pretty racist). Religious imagery is used, but in the wrong manner. In almost every frame of the trailer, something was wrong. That's bad.

As one YouTuber described it in a recent video, "It seems like this game is portraying the equivalent of a Wild West American cowboy who's walking through a tulip-filled pumpkin patch, with a newsie cap on his head, eating a croissant, heading towards his Tudor-style home armed with a spear on his back."

It kind of comes across like the game was designed by people who know literally nothing about Japan, and only have vague memories of "kind-of Asian" things they saw in other games or in anime, and just threw it all in to make the game look "Japanese-y".

(And all of that is before we get to things like the racist implications of having "stereotypical black music" playing in combat scenes because the main character is black. Which makes the "oh my god look how diverse we are" overtones just come across as performative and somewhat offensive.)

It doesn't help that Ubisoft as a studio and the Ass Creed franchise has always virtue signaled pretty hard about how respectful they were of other cultures and (every game starts with a disclaimer about how the games are made by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs), but they've made such elementary mistakes with Shadows that it's pretty blatant that their current team either doesn't give a single solitary shit about Japan (or outright hate the Japanese) or are incredibly inept, and either deserves to be called BS on.

There's also the fact that when a game is good and a company is doing well, people are more willing to cut them slack over perceived problems. But when a company has spent nearly a decade burning off every ounce of good will and killing any sympathy or mercy people might be willing to feel for them, you're going to get people calling out things they might have let slide 10+ years ago, regardless of where things were set. Once you've allowed yourself to become the Bad Guy, you can't really complain when people start treating you like the Bad Guy.

So yeah, I'm going to say that people are way more mad about Ass Creed Shadows than they were about, say, Ass Creed 2. But that's because one of those two games looks like it's going to be a shit game produced by a shit company (that is on the verge of bankruptcy or corporate takeover), that is mostly staffed at this point by shit people who do shit things and have shit opinions, whereas the other game was a very good game produced by a company riding high on its successes that was mostly staffed by talented devs who mostly kept their opinions to themselves. It's not entirely surprising that you're going to see different reactions to them.

Being set in Japan isn't the problem for Shadows. Being a Ubisoft game released in 2025 is.

An actually intelligent post directed at a miscreant like me?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/47f7e44d.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9C49qzcnBVE

They simp for Australia because of Bluey.

Devil_May_Cry posted...

I was watching a video about nuissance streamers from Paahtis

He talks about how noone cares when Assassin's creed makes historical inaccuracies in other games. But Shadows broke the internet.

What does Johnny Somali being a nuisance have to do with Assassin's Creed?

Devil_May_Cry posted...

An actually intelligent post directed at a miscreant like me?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/47f7e44d.jpg

https://youtu.be/4ojOXRrsUbY?t=10

People have been clamouring for an AC game set in feudal Japan for long enough that there was never any chance that the payoff would be worth the wait. Toss in the usual suspects losing their minds because a black guy and a girl exist, and the fact that, yes, gamers in particular are invested enough in Japanese history and culture to hold Shadows to a higher standard than most other historical games, and you've got a recipe for a whole lot of backlash.

I also fully expect that setting a game in Japan was more an executive pressure thing than anything else. If the teams actually making the game felt they could do something interesting and historically accurate with Japan, they would have done so a decade ago. That they haven't suggests that they lacked good ideas and/or weren't familiar enough with the history to do it justice. That they're doing it now suggests that higher-ups are panicking over waning interest in the series and are grasping at ideas they've seen people ask for, hoping to jump on that bandwagon instead of sticking to something the studio might be better equipped to handle. This is the nature of the AAA market, after all.

Of course, Ubisoft continues to actively cover up rampant issues of sexual abuse of its employees rather than holding those committing the abuse responsible, so I can't say I feel too sorry for them and it's a moot point because I have no intention of buying any of their games knowing that money I give them will be used to protect serial abusers.

adjl posted...

People have been clamouring for an AC game set in feudal Japan for long enough that there was never any chance that the payoff would be worth the wait.

As some people have also pointed out, it kind of doesn't help that we basically already got Assassin's Creed: Japan about five years ago. It was called Ghost of Tsushima.

No matter what Ubisoft puts out, it's inevitably going to be compared to a game that was one of the best-selling games of its release year, that won multiple end-of-year awards, and that was one of the highest-rated Western games ever by the Japanese critic community. Whose sequel is also being released in 2025.

Ubi didn't just push for a game they thought fans would eat up out of financial desperation, they did it years too late. And with a dev team that they themselves openly admit was mostly made up of amateur devs ("half the team have never made a game before" was a quote from the main project lead himself).

It's not surprising that Ubisoft is skirting bankruptcy/buyout. It feels like every single decision they've made for the last 5-10 years has been wrong. No wonder Tencent didn't want to accept the deal where they could buy Ubisoft but had to keep the Guillemots around still running things.



adjl posted...

Of course, Ubisoft continues to actively cover up rampant issues of sexual abuse of its employees rather than holding those committing the abuse responsible, so I can't say I feel too sorry for them and it's a moot point because I have no intention of buying any of their games knowing that money I give them will be used to protect serial abusers.

Even if you completely ignore that (like Ubisoft did, ba-bum-tish), it's also worth remembering that a few months back their employees went on strike to complain about multiple contractual and working condition issues, and Ubisoft did absolutely nothing to address any of them. Ubisoft is basically just a terrible company in nearly every way a company can be terrible.

Though most gamers probably don't care about any of that, and are more just put off by their anti-consumer policies like pushing NFTs and "live-service" gaming, and the "get used to not owning your own games" mentality. Because Ubisoft is a company that hates its customers just as much as it seems to hate its employees.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Even if you completely ignore that (like Ubisoft did, ba-bum-tish), it's also worth remembering that a few months back their employees went on strike to complain about multiple contractual and working condition issues, and Ubisoft did absolutely nothing to address any of them. Ubisoft is basically just a terrible company in nearly every way a company can be terrible.

Yep. I made the choice years ago to stop buying their games, and they've done nothing to dissuade me of that choice. I'm not about to pretend that their mistreatment of their employees is directly responsible for their current struggles (though it's almost certainly played a role, mostly by driving talented, experienced developers out and forcing their replacements/the remaining people to work on projects that don't line up with their talents for the sake of chasing a bandwagon), since gamers are pretty notorious for deliberately ignoring bad things studios do so they can consume their media in peace, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel that this was well-deserved.

Or rather, I'd feel that this was well-deserved if those responsible for the company's struggles actually faced meaningful consequences for their failures. If Ubisoft goes under, the ones getting hurt will be a very large number of bottom-rung employees who did everything within their power right, screwed over by inept management that will just be grabbing their golden parachutes and moving on to a new multi-million dollar salary somewhere else.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As some people have also pointed out, it kind of doesn't help that we basically already got Assassin's Creed: Japan about five years ago. It was called Ghost of Tsushima.

Yep. It also doesn't help that - in no small part thanks to Ubisoft - the market's kind of flooded with open-world games like Assassin's Creed, so demand for any given new one is inevitably going to be pretty lukewarm unless it does a whole lot more than "hey you guys like samurai, right?". Even if GoT hadn't already filled that niche very recently and very well, not many people are getting excited for a new AC game just because of the setting.

Hah. Ironically, it appears this site's mods are simping too hard for Ubisoft. The truth hurt their fee-fees.

What was wrong with that post?

josh posted...

What was wrong with that post?

Probably calling it "Ass Creed", although that pretty much does describe how well this game passes the sniff test.

Add on to the culturally-insensitive list of rakes UbiSoft has stepped on: They moved the new release date to the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. For a company that had even a scrap of customer goodwill left that probably would have been overlooked, but after the absolute shit storm UbiSoft continually stirs up it's gone over rather worse than the proverbial lead balloon. About the only date they could have chosen to be even more offensive would have been August 9th to really capitalize on that broken torii gate in their art work.

To those who are clueless, August 9th would have been the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which destroyed the other half of the broken torii gate UbiSoft featured in their art work.

willythemailboy posted...

Probably calling it "Ass Creed", although that pretty much does describe how well this game passes the sniff test.

Add on to the culturally-insensitive list of rakes UbiSoft has stepped on: They moved the new release date to the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. For a company that had even a scrap of customer goodwill left that probably would have been overlooked, but after the absolute shit storm UbiSoft continually stirs up it's gone over rather worse than the proverbial lead balloon. About the only date they could have chosen to be even more offensive would have been August 9th to really capitalize on that broken torii gate in their art work.

To those who are clueless, August 9th would have been the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which destroyed the other half of the broken torii gate UbiSoft featured in their art work.

Is it a bunch of non Japanese complaining again?

Revelation34 posted...

Is it a bunch of non Japanese complaining again?

It's very much the Japanese audience complaining too.

Assassins Creed is the ultimate game/series to play if you want to stop yourself from feeling obligated to 100% every game you play

I have no horse in the assassins creed race, but yes, people do simp too hard for Japan. Seems to be mostly Americans whove never been there who think its some sort of promised land.

Dont get me wrong. I like Japan. Its a cool country with lots to like, but its one of many.