Assassin's Creed Shadows takes place in Japan – ironically, the game is now being censored on the Japanese market.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is the newest instalment of the famous historical action adventure series and is set to be released on March 20. This time, you alternate between two allied characters, a shinobi assassin and a samurai who live during the late Sengoku era. Consequently, the game takes place in Japan. However, it's exactly Japan that now plans to censor major game features.
Here's what Japan is censoring in Assassin's Creed Shadows and why.
Censorship Through CERO
It is common for Assassin's Creed to depict violence – you play an assassin, after all. Accordingly, the game commonly gets an 18+ age rating; in Japan, that's the label "CERO Z", CERO being the institution responsible for video game age ratings in Japan.
However, despite this already high age rating, CERO is now taking the censorship a step further. Dismemberment, such as cutting off limbs, is a feature that can be activated or deactivated in the settings in most countries where the game is published. CERO, however, plans to entirely remove dismemberment in their version of the game.
But the censorship doesn't stop there as other wounds are also supposed to be visually altered. Even more unusually, the game's audio will be modified as well in the Japanese version, though there are currently no details on what exactly will change – our guess? Some screams that sound more like a missing arm than a swift end.
More Changes In The Japanese Version
But censorship is not the only thing about Assassin's Creed Shadows that has been altered in Japan. In the Japanese version of the game's Steam page, Yasuke, one of the playable characters, is not titled as a "samurai" anymore. This was changed after a controversy started by "anti-woke" members of the gaming community.
Yasuke is a samurai of African descent. However, despite the fact that this character is inspired by real Japanese legends, Japanese right-wingers have taken issue with the title "samurai" for this character, claiming that the historical original was not truly a samurai.
Therefore, while he is still described with a prestigious title on the Japanese Steam page, the term "samurai" has been removed entirely. Instead, he is named "Ikki tousen", which means "a warrior who can face a thousand enemies", according to Japanese translators.
What is your opinion on Japan's changes to the game? Is it right to remove dismemberment or should it be enough to include the option to turn it off? Let us know in the comments!
