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My thoughts on the whole AC Shadows controversy:
-The culture war between the two groups (SJW's and anti-SJW's is what I call them) has been brewing for some time, it initially came to a head during Gamergate a decade ago, a battle which the anti-SJW side largely lost, and now after a decade of brewing it seems to be coming to a head again now. Multiple recent games have become battlefields in this culture war, including another upcoming Ubisoft game, Star Wars Outlaws, which has seen some criticism over the design of it's main character. I suspected as soon as I read the leak about Yasuke being playable in AC Red a year ago that AC Red would become one of the battlefields in this greater culture war, and I was right.
-What few historical records we have of the time period (many of the records from the period were stored in a castle in Japan that burned down I believe) show that Yasuke was not a full-blown samurai like Ubisoft is portraying him as, but a form of retainer called a Kosho, equivalent to a page for a European knight. The duties of a Kosho include carrying the weapons and gear of their master during military campaigns, doing daily chores, and protecting their master with their life, so Yasuke would have received combat training to better protect Nobunaga. He did fight in at least one battle, records show that he was present at Nobunaga's side during the Honno-Ji incident, and fought to protect Nobunaga's son after Nobunaga's seppuku, but ultimately surrendered to Akechi's forces after being promised safety if he laid down his sword. He was then sent back to the Portuguese Jesuits who originally gave him to Nobunaga as a servant, and was mentioned as being alive in a Jesuit letter 5 months later, thanking God that Yasuke had survived.
-Ubisoft is portraying him as a full-blown Samurai, complete with an expensive armor set and a 2 sword set (daisho), which though not accurate compared to the records we have of that period, is far from the first time he has been portrayed as a samurai, he has been portrayed as a full blown samurai in multiple modern era forms of media, from mangas and animes, to the games Nioh 1 and Nioh 2 from Team Ninja (the Obsidian Samurai in those games is Yasuke). I do find it kind of odd that Ubisoft in particular is being singled out for portraying him as a samurai when multiple other creators in the modern era have portrayed him as such first.
-Ubisoft has never claimed the series to be 100% historically accurate, they have taken liberties with most of the real-world historical figures in the games, the only real difference here is that we are playing as a real historical figure for the first time in an AC game.
-I have seen both sides of this conflict posting insane takes on the situation. We have one side attempting to edit Wikipedia to claim Yasuke was a full-blown samurai, and trying to add him to the list of western born Samurai alongside people like William Adams (who John Blackthorne in Shogun is based on) all just to defend a video game of all things, and meanwhile on the other side I have seen people claiming that Yasuke was treated poorly by Nobunaga who considered him to be an ape/simian that he trotted out at parties so that his friends could laugh at him, which goes against historical record, Jesuit records claim that Nobunaga treated Yasuke with respect and made him one of his closest servants due to his immense physical strength, and claim that many Japanese citizens around Kyoto believed that Nobunaga would make Yasuke a lord one day once he finished uniting Japan.
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