People have already accepted a black Samurai in Assassin’s Creed Shadows but there is no way they are going to count on a fat assassin.

Assassins’s Creed Shadows is slated to be released on March 20, 2025, after an initial delay in launch. The introductory path of this game, starting from announcement to release is looking quite turbulent. The game has already been facing huge criticisms regarding its characters.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is already facing huge backlash because of Yasuke. | Credit: Ubisoft.

Fans didn’t like the idea of making a black Samurai the major protagonist of the game along with a female Shinobi. As the game is set in feudal Japan, the community couldn’t accept an African character, that too, having a real historical significance. Now, there is another controversy surrounding the internet regarding a newly revealed character in the game.

There will be a “fat” character in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

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Recently, there has been a post surfacing around the internet, in which what seems like a female assassin is fighting with the enemy Japanese characters. Now, there is already a female character in the game, Naoe, who is one of the central protagonists of Shadows. And there hasn’t been any altercation regarding the character’s gender unlike Ghost of Yotei, where Atsu has been brutally criticized. So, the newly revealed character’s gender is not the problem.

The main problem is her weight. Yes, the character looks significantly fat which absolutely doesn’t align with the historical authenticity of feudal Japan during the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568-1603). Even the fans didn’t like this character at all.

Also, it looks pretty bizarre to see a fat assassin fighting because that’s not what we are accustomed to seeing. There’s no doubt this inclusion is also going to raise questions regarding the historical accuracies in the game, just like people questioned Yasuke’s authenticity. Because it’s quite obvious. The period where the game is set is one of the rough patches that Japan had gone through. Getting food at that time was pretty tough in itself, forget being fat.

As of now, Ubisoft hasn’t revealed any details yet about whether this character is going to play a significant part in the game, but if she does, then it is going to be a matter of concern for the company.

Now, a question is obvious to arise in your mind: if Ubisoft knows it is going to get thrashed for including this character, then why has it added this character in the first place? The simple answer is the baseless approach to make video games DEI heavy and it has become a norm nowadays in the industry.

New Assassin’s Creed Shadows artwork gives a look at the other characters

Yasuke and Naoe, the dual protagonists of the historical fiction action role-playing game, are featured in the upcoming chapter. The former is a real historical person who is best known for being the first black samurai to serve under Japan’s first “Great Unifier,” Oda Nobunaga.

Ubisoft has recently dropped new characters. | Credit: Ubisoft.

Naoe’s origins, on the other hand, are wholly made up, even though her in-game father, Fujibayashi Nagato, was a real-life shinobi leader in the Iga province who opposed the Oda clan.

Both of the main characters and the two rival clan leaders are featured in a new artwork that was posted on the official Assassin’s Creed Twitter account. Since the divisive historical figure has previously appeared in a number of video games, anime, and other media, there has been a lot of conjecture that Nobunaga will be the primary antagonist of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Given that Nobunaga’s image occupies the upper right corner of the group of characters and is by far the largest, occupying almost as much space as Yasuke and Naoe combined, the new artwork might lend further credence to this theory.

At the bottom right of the group, on the other side of the picture, is Naoe’s father from Assassin’s Creed Origins, poised to draw his blade. Nagato is portrayed as being the same size as the other seven characters in the artwork’s center, in contrast to Nobunaga’s enormous presence.

Although not much is known about the game’s supporting cast, the picture might give us a hint about some of its other main characters. The remaining cast members include a brave young boy standing in the bottom center, two armed shinobi, and an elderly woman wearing a headwrap.