Assassin’s Creed Shadows Features “Non-binary” Character

Video Games

Now, we know why Assassin’s Creed Shadows was delayed for so long: it was taking storytelling lessons from Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The new game from Ubisoft (one which is causing them much consternation) is the latest entry in the Assassin’s Creed series, and it’s been plagued with controversy since the first trailer was released, starting with making one of the two main characters in a game that takes place in feudal Japan a black man who was historically a vassal and turning him into a samurai based on an extremely biased historian’s account. (Apparently, gamers are racist for wanting a game that takes place in Japan in the 1500s to star a Japanese character.) Since then, it was revealed that the creative team stole the flag of a modern Japanese battle reenactment group and used Chinese architecture instead of Japanese. (Again, gamers were racist for disliking this, not the people who decided that all Eastern cultures are interchangeable.) There were also rumors of gay romances, which have now been confirmed by people who’ve played the game. But it doesn’t stop there: there’s also a “non-binary” character named Ibuki who flirts with Yasuke, the male lead, and Yasuke seems to be agreeable to it. You have to see this to believe it (thanks to ClubChick for the video):

I guess this explains the consultant Ubisoft hired when developing Assassin’s Creed Shadows. If you don’t remember, she was an associate professor at Dartmouth who wrote a book called Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives and is described in her Dartmouth bio as being interesting in “interested in investigating how gender, sexuality, corporeality, and power are represented and negotiated in pre-seventeenth-century Japanese narratives and illustrations.” There was also a consultant who was a former Sweet Baby Inc. employee who was quoted as defending Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ reception in Japan; this trans person may or may not have consulted on the game, but he’s representative of the kind of thinking Ubisoft was looking for, particularly as he wrote an article about Japanese colonialism as it relates to… Animal Crossing. When you have wackos like this consulting on your games, you come up with things like gay romances and “non-binary” characters in feudal Japan.

Right now, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the 36th spot for games being played right now on Steam. pic.twitter.com/LgqKnb3zFw

— Grummz (@Grummz) March 20, 2025

And Ibuki is clearly “non-binary,” which you can see because Assassin’s Creed Shadows uses “they/them” pronouns when referring to him in the text. This puts their insistence that Yasuke was a historical samurai into perspective, doesn’t it? The “non-binary” phenomenon – identity, label, whatever you want to call it – has existed for all of five minutes. It’s not something that was a thing in the 1500s. Homosexuality existed, but not the cornucopia of gender identities that demand recognition now. And the idea that someone who was gay (even leaving out the then-non-existent “non-binary” stuff) wouldn’t care if anyone saw him embracing his homosexuality in public is hard to believe, too. Again, this is what happens when you prioritize activism over storytelling; you get phony, virtue-signaling nonsense that kills your immersion into the game. When this stuff pops up, it brings the narrative to a halt because everyone knows exactly why it’s there, even its biggest proponents, and that’s the very definition of “woke.” Already, the anti-anti-woke harridans are wagging their fingers at anyone who would complain, like Pink News, which has a rundown of all the gay and gay-adjacent stuff in the game. (They also say there were gay sex options in previous Assassin’s Creed games; I have no idea because the first game bored me to tears, and I never picked up another one.) I’m glad they’re happy, but if its current Steam numbers (above, courtesy of Grummz) are any indication, I don’t think Yasuke’s “non-binary” romance is going to do wonders for the game’s sales.

Let us know what you think of the Assassin’s Creed Shadows “non-binary” character in the comments!

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