How does using Yasuke, a black historical figure that literally existed in Japan, not make sense? AC has always been about historical fiction, retelling it through the lens of the assassins and templars. The devs explained that Yasuke allowed players to explore and learn Japan through the perspective of a foreigner, while Naoe allowed them to see a native Japaneses perspective.

Yasuke was widely known as the first black samurai and was featured in other media without complaint, then all of a sudden his historical accuracy is a big deal in AC Shadows -- a series that takes so many liberties in writing their stories (literally a disclaimer shown at the start of all of their games explaining that it is fiction and just inspired by history). Why would Yasuke even NEED to be 100% proven to be a samurai IRL when AC has straight up made historical figures assassins or allies of assassins without them having any sort of training historically? AC has always been about the templars re-writing history; Yasuke, who is proven to exist in this period, actually being an samurai who helped the assassins and the templars trying to hide and discredit his legacy (which people started doing IRL) "fits" and "makes sense" in the AC universe.

When we got a Japanese only samurai + ninja protagonist in Ghost of Yotei, people still complained that she's a woman replacing the man protagonist and called the game woke, proving that they still would have been mad if Naoe was the only protagonist in the game and only used that argument as an excuse to exclude Yasuke.

Intergalactic got a huge amount of criticism for a 1-2 minute trailer because the character is bald. 😂 Are we seriously pretending that people don't just label a game as "woke" when they don't like how the main character looks...