Vice President of the Assassin's Creed series, Marc-Alexis Cote, commented on the criticism of the black samurai Yasuke, who will be one of the main characters in Shadows. Many players met this decision with hostility, accusing Ubisoft of disrespecting Japanese culture, and later they were supported by Elon Musk, who stated that «DEI kills art.“ Here, DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Marc-Alexis Cote is well aware of Musk's tweet. In an interview with Game File, he said he wanted to respond to the businessman but realized that it would achieve nothing.
That tweet generated emotions, that… the first thing I wanted to do was go back on X — that I had deleted — and just tweet back. And I just took a step back. I have a mindfulness app on my phone. And I did a bit of mindfulness to try to explore the emotions that this tweet created.
For me, Elon, it's sad, he's just feeding hatred. I had a lot of three word replies that came to mind. [...] By attacking someone like Elon… I will not convince people about our point of view as a team.
Cote added that players will understand the importance of Yasuke as the main character if they try Shadows. ”And if, within the first 11 minutes and 47 seconds, they are not convinced of what we're doing, we can have the discussion,» the developer promised.
Assassin's Creed: Shadows will be released on November 15. Earlier, Ubisoft announced that gamers will be able to play almost the entire game as a single character.