《刺客信条：影》中的黑武士是历史的胜利还是觉醒的过犹不及？
正文翻译
题图：《刺客信条：影》的男主角，弥助，一个黑人武士。
In November 2024, a new installment in a popular videogame franchise will be released – Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Set in Feudal Japan, the game will tell the story of two protagonists – Naoe, a Japanese female ninja, and Yasuke, an African samurai.
2024年11月时，一款广受欢迎的电子游戏系列将发售新作--《刺客信条：影》。游戏将以封建时代的日本为背景，讲述两位主角--日本女忍者奈绪江和非洲武士弥助的故事。
Finally, a game about stealth, cinematic assassinations and a centuries-long conflict between global shadow societies takes place in Japan – a land of unbreakable honor, invisible ninjas, and sharp katanas. The first leaks about this setting began surfacing in 2021, just as Ghost of Tsushima, another game about being a warrior in Japan, was released to high critical acclaim.
最后，一款关于潜行、电影级暗杀和全球影子社会之间长达数百年冲突的游戏将在日本舞台上演--一个拥有牢不可破的荣誉、无影忍者和锋利武士刀的国度。2021年，就在另一款以日本武士为题材的游戏《对马岛之魂》发布并广受好评时，有关这一背景的第一批泄密信息开始浮出水面。
This is not the first time when an Assassin’s Creed game has used two protagonists. In Syndicate, set in Victorian London, you played as the Frye twins - Jacob and Evie. The two characters embodied two different playstyles - Jacob specialized in open hand-to-hand combat, while Evie relied on stealth and ranged weapons. Another game, Origins, that told the story of the creation of the Assassins’ Brotherhood in Ancient Egypt, had several missions that let you control Aya, the wife of the main protagonist Bayek. So, if this is not the first time this has happened, what made the initial reaction to Shadows so different?
这已经不是《刺客信条》游戏第一次使用双主角了。在以维多利亚时代的伦敦为背景的《刺客信条：枭雄》中，你扮演的是弗莱双胞胎--雅各布和伊薇。这两个角色体现了两种不同的游戏风格--雅各布擅长空手格斗，而伊薇则依赖潜行和远程武器。另一款游戏《刺客信条：起源》讲述了在古埃及创建刺客兄弟会的故事，其中有几个任务让你控制主角巴耶克的妻子艾雅。那么，如果这不是第一次出现这种情况，是什么让《刺客信条：影》的最初反应如此不同呢？
At first, people were surprised by the inclusion of an African man as one of the playable characters. Sure, Yasuke was a real person, who lived in Japan during Oda Nabunaga’s reign in the 16th century. But even today, historians can not agree whether he was really a mercenary samurai, or just a slave in Nabunaga’s court.
起初，人们对可玩角色中包含一名非洲男子感到惊讶。当然，弥助是一个真实存在的人，他生活在16世纪织田信长统治时期的日本。但即使到了今天，历史学家们也无法就他究竟是一名雇佣武士，还是只是野信长宫廷中的一名奴隶达成一致。
Assassin’s Creed games have always included prominent historical figures as characters – Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, all to immerse the player in the time period and to make them feel the importance of their contribution to mankind’s history.
《刺客信条》游戏中总是有杰出的历史人物作为角色--达芬奇、拿破仑、埃及艳后、苏格拉底、本杰明-富兰克林，所有这些都是为了让玩家身临其境，感受他们对人类历史所做贡献的重要性。
Out of all the people that lived during that period and could be used as a protagonist – why choose Yasuke? He did not impact the history of Japan that much and is not symbolic of any events that happened. So why was a big black man chosen for a game seemingly about Japanese people, stealth and ninjas? Maybe the developers wanted to add the same “choose your playstyle” feature they already had in Syndicate. Or maybe they saw the opportunity to put another “underrepresented” person in a setting they probably have no place in, just to show the world how progressive they are. This move is sure to place them on a few liberal game awards organizations’ radars, but for now it has only made a lot of gamers upset. At this time, Shadows’ reveal trailer on Youtube is the most disliked in the series’ history, with people all over the world, including in Japan, sharing their disappointment with Ubisoft. Some are even calling out the hypocrisy by saying that adding a black character is seen as progressive (and you can be called racist for obxting), but if a white samurai was the main character, the uproar would be unimaginable.
在所有生活在那个时期、可以作为主角的人中，为什么要选择弥助呢？他对日本历史的影响并不大，也不是任何事件的象征。那么，为什么一款看似以日本人、潜行和忍者为主题的游戏会选择一个大个子黑人呢？也许开发商想加入《刺客信条：枭雄》中已有的“选择你的玩法”功能。又或者，他们看到了将另一个“未被充分代表的”人放到一个他们可能不适合的环境中的机会，只是为了向世界展示他们是多么的前卫。此举肯定会让他们进入一些自由游戏评奖组织的视线，但目前这只会让很多玩家感到不满。目前，《刺客信条：影》在Youtube上的曝光预告片是该系列历史上最不受喜爱的预告片，包括日本在内的世界各地的人们都在分享他们对育碧的失望。有些人甚至大骂育碧虚伪，称加入黑人角色被视为进步（反对会被称为种族主义者），但如果主角是白人武士，骚动将难以想象。
The decision to make one of the protagonists non-Japanese is a brave one. Since the reveal, the community has split into two parts – the more vocal one expresses their displeasure with another example of meaningless diversity and inclusion, while the other one is seemingly happy with finally getting their Japanese Assassin’s Creed. Both groups have their reasons. Adding a diverse character for the sake of diversity and progressive optics is now commonplace, and people are tired of seeing it. The intentions could be genuine, but it’s hard for gamers to trust corporate boardrooms. The silent majority, meanwhile, is excited for the game, if sales are any indication. Shadows is the #1 best seller on Amazon Japan. But then again, if a gaming industry titan like Ubisoft, as part of an insanely popular franchise like Assassins Creed, were to make a game about India, Russia or Türkiye, there are good chances that the game would be an instant best seller in that country, African protagonists or not.
让主角之一成为非日本人是一个勇敢的决定。自游戏曝光以来，玩家分成了两方：一方对又一次毫无意义的多元化和包容性展示表示不满，而另一方则似乎对终于有了日语版的《刺客信条》感到高兴。两帮人都有自己的理由。为了多样化和进步的视觉效果而添加一个多样化的角色，现在已经司空见惯，人们已经看腻了。他们的意图可能是真诚的，但玩家很难相信公司董事会。与此同时，沉默的大多数却对这款游戏充满期待，如果销售情况能说明这一点的话。《刺客信条：影》是日本亚马逊上最畅销的游戏。不过，话又说回来，如果育碧这样的游戏业巨头，作为《刺客信条》这样大受欢迎的系列游戏的一部分，制作一款关于印度、俄罗斯或土耳其的游戏，那么无论主角是不是非洲人，这款游戏都很有可能在该国立即成为畅销货。
There is an opinion online that adding a black samurai is not a betrayal of Japanese culture or history. That the stories that can be told about Japan are not limited to stories about Japanese samurai; that it’s a harmful cliche. While it can be a stereotype, stories that are based on a stereotype resonate the most with people - a cowboy movie, a samurai game, a World War II series. It’s a hook that grabs the entire human population interested in that genre, and then it’s up to the story to prove itself and show that it is much more than just a stereotype. Red Dead Redemption 2 for example, is “just another cowboy game,” but its story and its characters attracted many people, even some that had no previous interest in gaming.
网上有一种观点认为，加入黑人武士并不是对日本文化或历史的背叛。可以讲述的日本故事并不局限于日本武士的故事；这是一种有害的陈词滥调。虽然它可能是一种陈词滥调，但基于陈词滥调的故事最能引起人们的共鸣--牛仔电影、武士游戏、二战系列。它是一个钩子，能钩住所有对该类型感兴趣的人，然后就看故事如何证明自己，并表明它不仅仅是一个刻板印象。例如，《荒野大镖客：救赎2》是“另一款牛仔游戏”，但它的故事和角色吸引了很多人，甚至是一些以前对游戏毫无兴趣的人。
But the main problem of Shadows might not be its questionable choice of characters. Ghost of Tsushima, a 2020 Sony game about the first Mongol invasion of Japan, whose success was probably the reason Shadows was made, is being compared to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed, six months before its release.
但是，《刺客信条：影》的主要问题可能并不在于它对角色的选择有问题。《对马岛之魂》是索尼于2020年推出的一款游戏，讲述的是蒙古人第一次入侵日本的故事，《刺客信条：影》的成功很可能就是该游戏成功的原因。
Journalists worry that we've come full circle – Ghost of Tsushima was created as an ‘Assassin’s Creed in Japan’, improving on its mechanics and storytelling. If Ubisoft learns nothing from their shortcomings in game design, it looks like Shadows will be their typical open-world game, and will pale in comparison to a Japanese game about Japan.
记者们担心，我们已经绕了一个大圈--《对马岛之魂》是作为“日本版《刺客信条》”而创作的，它在机制和故事上都有所改进。如果育碧没有从他们在游戏设计上的不足中吸取教训，那么《刺客信条：影》似乎将成为他们典型的开放世界游戏，与一款关于日本的日本游戏相比将显得苍白无力。
Come November, the dust will settle and the game will be released. As usual, fans will be hyped, and the game will be full of bugs and lacking in features. After a while, the bugs will be patched, downloadable content will inevitably be released, and the in-game store will bombard gamers with ads. In the end, some will remember the game fondly for years, some will leave it halfway through, but its success will be measured only by Ubisoft’s earnings report for that year. That is the only way that corporations see the right and wrong in their decisions – their bottom line.
到11月时尘埃落定，游戏即将发布。像往常一样，粉丝们会兴奋不已，而游戏则会充满Bug，功能匮乏。过一段时间，错误会得到修补，可下载内容不可避免地会发布，游戏内的商店也会用广告轰炸玩家。最后，有些人会对这款游戏念念不忘，有些人会半途而废，但游戏的成功与否只能通过育碧当年的盈利报告来衡量。这是企业看清其决策是非的唯一途径--也是他们的底线。
题图：《刺客信条：影》的男主角，弥助，一个黑人武士。
In November 2024, a new installment in a popular videogame franchise will be released – Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Set in Feudal Japan, the game will tell the story of two protagonists – Naoe, a Japanese female ninja, and Yasuke, an African samurai.
2024年11月时，一款广受欢迎的电子游戏系列将发售新作--《刺客信条：影》。游戏将以封建时代的日本为背景，讲述两位主角--日本女忍者奈绪江和非洲武士弥助的故事。
Finally, a game about stealth, cinematic assassinations and a centuries-long conflict between global shadow societies takes place in Japan – a land of unbreakable honor, invisible ninjas, and sharp katanas. The first leaks about this setting began surfacing in 2021, just as Ghost of Tsushima, another game about being a warrior in Japan, was released to high critical acclaim.
最后，一款关于潜行、电影级暗杀和全球影子社会之间长达数百年冲突的游戏将在日本舞台上演--一个拥有牢不可破的荣誉、无影忍者和锋利武士刀的国度。2021年，就在另一款以日本武士为题材的游戏《对马岛之魂》发布并广受好评时，有关这一背景的第一批泄密信息开始浮出水面。
This is not the first time when an Assassin’s Creed game has used two protagonists. In Syndicate, set in Victorian London, you played as the Frye twins - Jacob and Evie. The two characters embodied two different playstyles - Jacob specialized in open hand-to-hand combat, while Evie relied on stealth and ranged weapons. Another game, Origins, that told the story of the creation of the Assassins’ Brotherhood in Ancient Egypt, had several missions that let you control Aya, the wife of the main protagonist Bayek. So, if this is not the first time this has happened, what made the initial reaction to Shadows so different?
这已经不是《刺客信条》游戏第一次使用双主角了。在以维多利亚时代的伦敦为背景的《刺客信条：枭雄》中，你扮演的是弗莱双胞胎--雅各布和伊薇。这两个角色体现了两种不同的游戏风格--雅各布擅长空手格斗，而伊薇则依赖潜行和远程武器。另一款游戏《刺客信条：起源》讲述了在古埃及创建刺客兄弟会的故事，其中有几个任务让你控制主角巴耶克的妻子艾雅。那么，如果这不是第一次出现这种情况，是什么让《刺客信条：影》的最初反应如此不同呢？
At first, people were surprised by the inclusion of an African man as one of the playable characters. Sure, Yasuke was a real person, who lived in Japan during Oda Nabunaga’s reign in the 16th century. But even today, historians can not agree whether he was really a mercenary samurai, or just a slave in Nabunaga’s court.
起初，人们对可玩角色中包含一名非洲男子感到惊讶。当然，弥助是一个真实存在的人，他生活在16世纪织田信长统治时期的日本。但即使到了今天，历史学家们也无法就他究竟是一名雇佣武士，还是只是野信长宫廷中的一名奴隶达成一致。
Assassin’s Creed games have always included prominent historical figures as characters – Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, all to immerse the player in the time period and to make them feel the importance of their contribution to mankind’s history.
《刺客信条》游戏中总是有杰出的历史人物作为角色--达芬奇、拿破仑、埃及艳后、苏格拉底、本杰明-富兰克林，所有这些都是为了让玩家身临其境，感受他们对人类历史所做贡献的重要性。
Out of all the people that lived during that period and could be used as a protagonist – why choose Yasuke? He did not impact the history of Japan that much and is not symbolic of any events that happened. So why was a big black man chosen for a game seemingly about Japanese people, stealth and ninjas? Maybe the developers wanted to add the same “choose your playstyle” feature they already had in Syndicate. Or maybe they saw the opportunity to put another “underrepresented” person in a setting they probably have no place in, just to show the world how progressive they are. This move is sure to place them on a few liberal game awards organizations’ radars, but for now it has only made a lot of gamers upset. At this time, Shadows’ reveal trailer on Youtube is the most disliked in the series’ history, with people all over the world, including in Japan, sharing their disappointment with Ubisoft. Some are even calling out the hypocrisy by saying that adding a black character is seen as progressive (and you can be called racist for obxting), but if a white samurai was the main character, the uproar would be unimaginable.
在所有生活在那个时期、可以作为主角的人中，为什么要选择弥助呢？他对日本历史的影响并不大，也不是任何事件的象征。那么，为什么一款看似以日本人、潜行和忍者为主题的游戏会选择一个大个子黑人呢？也许开发商想加入《刺客信条：枭雄》中已有的“选择你的玩法”功能。又或者，他们看到了将另一个“未被充分代表的”人放到一个他们可能不适合的环境中的机会，只是为了向世界展示他们是多么的前卫。此举肯定会让他们进入一些自由游戏评奖组织的视线，但目前这只会让很多玩家感到不满。目前，《刺客信条：影》在Youtube上的曝光预告片是该系列历史上最不受喜爱的预告片，包括日本在内的世界各地的人们都在分享他们对育碧的失望。有些人甚至大骂育碧虚伪，称加入黑人角色被视为进步（反对会被称为种族主义者），但如果主角是白人武士，骚动将难以想象。
The decision to make one of the protagonists non-Japanese is a brave one. Since the reveal, the community has split into two parts – the more vocal one expresses their displeasure with another example of meaningless diversity and inclusion, while the other one is seemingly happy with finally getting their Japanese Assassin’s Creed. Both groups have their reasons. Adding a diverse character for the sake of diversity and progressive optics is now commonplace, and people are tired of seeing it. The intentions could be genuine, but it’s hard for gamers to trust corporate boardrooms. The silent majority, meanwhile, is excited for the game, if sales are any indication. Shadows is the #1 best seller on Amazon Japan. But then again, if a gaming industry titan like Ubisoft, as part of an insanely popular franchise like Assassins Creed, were to make a game about India, Russia or Türkiye, there are good chances that the game would be an instant best seller in that country, African protagonists or not.
让主角之一成为非日本人是一个勇敢的决定。自游戏曝光以来，玩家分成了两方：一方对又一次毫无意义的多元化和包容性展示表示不满，而另一方则似乎对终于有了日语版的《刺客信条》感到高兴。两帮人都有自己的理由。为了多样化和进步的视觉效果而添加一个多样化的角色，现在已经司空见惯，人们已经看腻了。他们的意图可能是真诚的，但玩家很难相信公司董事会。与此同时，沉默的大多数却对这款游戏充满期待，如果销售情况能说明这一点的话。《刺客信条：影》是日本亚马逊上最畅销的游戏。不过，话又说回来，如果育碧这样的游戏业巨头，作为《刺客信条》这样大受欢迎的系列游戏的一部分，制作一款关于印度、俄罗斯或土耳其的游戏，那么无论主角是不是非洲人，这款游戏都很有可能在该国立即成为畅销货。
There is an opinion online that adding a black samurai is not a betrayal of Japanese culture or history. That the stories that can be told about Japan are not limited to stories about Japanese samurai; that it’s a harmful cliche. While it can be a stereotype, stories that are based on a stereotype resonate the most with people - a cowboy movie, a samurai game, a World War II series. It’s a hook that grabs the entire human population interested in that genre, and then it’s up to the story to prove itself and show that it is much more than just a stereotype. Red Dead Redemption 2 for example, is “just another cowboy game,” but its story and its characters attracted many people, even some that had no previous interest in gaming.
网上有一种观点认为，加入黑人武士并不是对日本文化或历史的背叛。可以讲述的日本故事并不局限于日本武士的故事；这是一种有害的陈词滥调。虽然它可能是一种陈词滥调，但基于陈词滥调的故事最能引起人们的共鸣--牛仔电影、武士游戏、二战系列。它是一个钩子，能钩住所有对该类型感兴趣的人，然后就看故事如何证明自己，并表明它不仅仅是一个刻板印象。例如，《荒野大镖客：救赎2》是“另一款牛仔游戏”，但它的故事和角色吸引了很多人，甚至是一些以前对游戏毫无兴趣的人。
But the main problem of Shadows might not be its questionable choice of characters. Ghost of Tsushima, a 2020 Sony game about the first Mongol invasion of Japan, whose success was probably the reason Shadows was made, is being compared to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed, six months before its release.
但是，《刺客信条：影》的主要问题可能并不在于它对角色的选择有问题。《对马岛之魂》是索尼于2020年推出的一款游戏，讲述的是蒙古人第一次入侵日本的故事，《刺客信条：影》的成功很可能就是该游戏成功的原因。
Journalists worry that we've come full circle – Ghost of Tsushima was created as an ‘Assassin’s Creed in Japan’, improving on its mechanics and storytelling. If Ubisoft learns nothing from their shortcomings in game design, it looks like Shadows will be their typical open-world game, and will pale in comparison to a Japanese game about Japan.
记者们担心，我们已经绕了一个大圈--《对马岛之魂》是作为“日本版《刺客信条》”而创作的，它在机制和故事上都有所改进。如果育碧没有从他们在游戏设计上的不足中吸取教训，那么《刺客信条：影》似乎将成为他们典型的开放世界游戏，与一款关于日本的日本游戏相比将显得苍白无力。
Come November, the dust will settle and the game will be released. As usual, fans will be hyped, and the game will be full of bugs and lacking in features. After a while, the bugs will be patched, downloadable content will inevitably be released, and the in-game store will bombard gamers with ads. In the end, some will remember the game fondly for years, some will leave it halfway through, but its success will be measured only by Ubisoft’s earnings report for that year. That is the only way that corporations see the right and wrong in their decisions – their bottom line.
到11月时尘埃落定，游戏即将发布。像往常一样，粉丝们会兴奋不已，而游戏则会充满Bug，功能匮乏。过一段时间，错误会得到修补，可下载内容不可避免地会发布，游戏内的商店也会用广告轰炸玩家。最后，有些人会对这款游戏念念不忘，有些人会半途而废，但游戏的成功与否只能通过育碧当年的盈利报告来衡量。这是企业看清其决策是非的唯一途径--也是他们的底线。
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题图：《刺客信条：影》的男主角，弥助，一个黑人武士。
In November 2024, a new installment in a popular videogame franchise will be released – Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Set in Feudal Japan, the game will tell the story of two protagonists – Naoe, a Japanese female ninja, and Yasuke, an African samurai.
2024年11月时，一款广受欢迎的电子游戏系列将发售新作--《刺客信条：影》。游戏将以封建时代的日本为背景，讲述两位主角--日本女忍者奈绪江和非洲武士弥助的故事。
Finally, a game about stealth, cinematic assassinations and a centuries-long conflict between global shadow societies takes place in Japan – a land of unbreakable honor, invisible ninjas, and sharp katanas. The first leaks about this setting began surfacing in 2021, just as Ghost of Tsushima, another game about being a warrior in Japan, was released to high critical acclaim.
最后，一款关于潜行、电影级暗杀和全球影子社会之间长达数百年冲突的游戏将在日本舞台上演--一个拥有牢不可破的荣誉、无影忍者和锋利武士刀的国度。2021年，就在另一款以日本武士为题材的游戏《对马岛之魂》发布并广受好评时，有关这一背景的第一批泄密信息开始浮出水面。
This is not the first time when an Assassin’s Creed game has used two protagonists. In Syndicate, set in Victorian London, you played as the Frye twins - Jacob and Evie. The two characters embodied two different playstyles - Jacob specialized in open hand-to-hand combat, while Evie relied on stealth and ranged weapons. Another game, Origins, that told the story of the creation of the Assassins’ Brotherhood in Ancient Egypt, had several missions that let you control Aya, the wife of the main protagonist Bayek. So, if this is not the first time this has happened, what made the initial reaction to Shadows so different?
这已经不是《刺客信条》游戏第一次使用双主角了。在以维多利亚时代的伦敦为背景的《刺客信条：枭雄》中，你扮演的是弗莱双胞胎--雅各布和伊薇。这两个角色体现了两种不同的游戏风格--雅各布擅长空手格斗，而伊薇则依赖潜行和远程武器。另一款游戏《刺客信条：起源》讲述了在古埃及创建刺客兄弟会的故事，其中有几个任务让你控制主角巴耶克的妻子艾雅。那么，如果这不是第一次出现这种情况，是什么让《刺客信条：影》的最初反应如此不同呢？
At first, people were surprised by the inclusion of an African man as one of the playable characters. Sure, Yasuke was a real person, who lived in Japan during Oda Nabunaga’s reign in the 16th century. But even today, historians can not agree whether he was really a mercenary samurai, or just a slave in Nabunaga’s court.
起初，人们对可玩角色中包含一名非洲男子感到惊讶。当然，弥助是一个真实存在的人，他生活在16世纪织田信长统治时期的日本。但即使到了今天，历史学家们也无法就他究竟是一名雇佣武士，还是只是野信长宫廷中的一名奴隶达成一致。
Assassin’s Creed games have always included prominent historical figures as characters – Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, all to immerse the player in the time period and to make them feel the importance of their contribution to mankind’s history.
《刺客信条》游戏中总是有杰出的历史人物作为角色--达芬奇、拿破仑、埃及艳后、苏格拉底、本杰明-富兰克林，所有这些都是为了让玩家身临其境，感受他们对人类历史所做贡献的重要性。
Out of all the people that lived during that period and could be used as a protagonist – why choose Yasuke? He did not impact the history of Japan that much and is not symbolic of any events that happened. So why was a big black man chosen for a game seemingly about Japanese people, stealth and ninjas? Maybe the developers wanted to add the same “choose your playstyle” feature they already had in Syndicate. Or maybe they saw the opportunity to put another “underrepresented” person in a setting they probably have no place in, just to show the world how progressive they are. This move is sure to place them on a few liberal game awards organizations’ radars, but for now it has only made a lot of gamers upset. At this time, Shadows’ reveal trailer on Youtube is the most disliked in the series’ history, with people all over the world, including in Japan, sharing their disappointment with Ubisoft. Some are even calling out the hypocrisy by saying that adding a black character is seen as progressive (and you can be called racist for obxting), but if a white samurai was the main character, the uproar would be unimaginable.
在所有生活在那个时期、可以作为主角的人中，为什么要选择弥助呢？他对日本历史的影响并不大，也不是任何事件的象征。那么，为什么一款看似以日本人、潜行和忍者为主题的游戏会选择一个大个子黑人呢？也许开发商想加入《刺客信条：枭雄》中已有的“选择你的玩法”功能。又或者，他们看到了将另一个“未被充分代表的”人放到一个他们可能不适合的环境中的机会，只是为了向世界展示他们是多么的前卫。此举肯定会让他们进入一些自由游戏评奖组织的视线，但目前这只会让很多玩家感到不满。目前，《刺客信条：影》在Youtube上的曝光预告片是该系列历史上最不受喜爱的预告片，包括日本在内的世界各地的人们都在分享他们对育碧的失望。有些人甚至大骂育碧虚伪，称加入黑人角色被视为进步（反对会被称为种族主义者），但如果主角是白人武士，骚动将难以想象。
The decision to make one of the protagonists non-Japanese is a brave one. Since the reveal, the community has split into two parts – the more vocal one expresses their displeasure with another example of meaningless diversity and inclusion, while the other one is seemingly happy with finally getting their Japanese Assassin’s Creed. Both groups have their reasons. Adding a diverse character for the sake of diversity and progressive optics is now commonplace, and people are tired of seeing it. The intentions could be genuine, but it’s hard for gamers to trust corporate boardrooms. The silent majority, meanwhile, is excited for the game, if sales are any indication. Shadows is the #1 best seller on Amazon Japan. But then again, if a gaming industry titan like Ubisoft, as part of an insanely popular franchise like Assassins Creed, were to make a game about India, Russia or Türkiye, there are good chances that the game would be an instant best seller in that country, African protagonists or not.
让主角之一成为非日本人是一个勇敢的决定。自游戏曝光以来，玩家分成了两方：一方对又一次毫无意义的多元化和包容性展示表示不满，而另一方则似乎对终于有了日语版的《刺客信条》感到高兴。两帮人都有自己的理由。为了多样化和进步的视觉效果而添加一个多样化的角色，现在已经司空见惯，人们已经看腻了。他们的意图可能是真诚的，但玩家很难相信公司董事会。与此同时，沉默的大多数却对这款游戏充满期待，如果销售情况能说明这一点的话。《刺客信条：影》是日本亚马逊上最畅销的游戏。不过，话又说回来，如果育碧这样的游戏业巨头，作为《刺客信条》这样大受欢迎的系列游戏的一部分，制作一款关于印度、俄罗斯或土耳其的游戏，那么无论主角是不是非洲人，这款游戏都很有可能在该国立即成为畅销货。
There is an opinion online that adding a black samurai is not a betrayal of Japanese culture or history. That the stories that can be told about Japan are not limited to stories about Japanese samurai; that it’s a harmful cliche. While it can be a stereotype, stories that are based on a stereotype resonate the most with people - a cowboy movie, a samurai game, a World War II series. It’s a hook that grabs the entire human population interested in that genre, and then it’s up to the story to prove itself and show that it is much more than just a stereotype. Red Dead Redemption 2 for example, is “just another cowboy game,” but its story and its characters attracted many people, even some that had no previous interest in gaming.
网上有一种观点认为，加入黑人武士并不是对日本文化或历史的背叛。可以讲述的日本故事并不局限于日本武士的故事；这是一种有害的陈词滥调。虽然它可能是一种陈词滥调，但基于陈词滥调的故事最能引起人们的共鸣--牛仔电影、武士游戏、二战系列。它是一个钩子，能钩住所有对该类型感兴趣的人，然后就看故事如何证明自己，并表明它不仅仅是一个刻板印象。例如，《荒野大镖客：救赎2》是“另一款牛仔游戏”，但它的故事和角色吸引了很多人，甚至是一些以前对游戏毫无兴趣的人。
But the main problem of Shadows might not be its questionable choice of characters. Ghost of Tsushima, a 2020 Sony game about the first Mongol invasion of Japan, whose success was probably the reason Shadows was made, is being compared to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed, six months before its release.
但是，《刺客信条：影》的主要问题可能并不在于它对角色的选择有问题。《对马岛之魂》是索尼于2020年推出的一款游戏，讲述的是蒙古人第一次入侵日本的故事，《刺客信条：影》的成功很可能就是该游戏成功的原因。
Journalists worry that we've come full circle – Ghost of Tsushima was created as an ‘Assassin’s Creed in Japan’, improving on its mechanics and storytelling. If Ubisoft learns nothing from their shortcomings in game design, it looks like Shadows will be their typical open-world game, and will pale in comparison to a Japanese game about Japan.
记者们担心，我们已经绕了一个大圈--《对马岛之魂》是作为“日本版《刺客信条》”而创作的，它在机制和故事上都有所改进。如果育碧没有从他们在游戏设计上的不足中吸取教训，那么《刺客信条：影》似乎将成为他们典型的开放世界游戏，与一款关于日本的日本游戏相比将显得苍白无力。
Come November, the dust will settle and the game will be released. As usual, fans will be hyped, and the game will be full of bugs and lacking in features. After a while, the bugs will be patched, downloadable content will inevitably be released, and the in-game store will bombard gamers with ads. In the end, some will remember the game fondly for years, some will leave it halfway through, but its success will be measured only by Ubisoft’s earnings report for that year. That is the only way that corporations see the right and wrong in their decisions – their bottom line.
到11月时尘埃落定，游戏即将发布。像往常一样，粉丝们会兴奋不已，而游戏则会充满Bug，功能匮乏。过一段时间，错误会得到修补，可下载内容不可避免地会发布，游戏内的商店也会用广告轰炸玩家。最后，有些人会对这款游戏念念不忘，有些人会半途而废，但游戏的成功与否只能通过育碧当年的盈利报告来衡量。这是企业看清其决策是非的唯一途径--也是他们的底线。
题图：《刺客信条：影》的男主角，弥助，一个黑人武士。
In November 2024, a new installment in a popular videogame franchise will be released – Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Set in Feudal Japan, the game will tell the story of two protagonists – Naoe, a Japanese female ninja, and Yasuke, an African samurai.
2024年11月时，一款广受欢迎的电子游戏系列将发售新作--《刺客信条：影》。游戏将以封建时代的日本为背景，讲述两位主角--日本女忍者奈绪江和非洲武士弥助的故事。
Finally, a game about stealth, cinematic assassinations and a centuries-long conflict between global shadow societies takes place in Japan – a land of unbreakable honor, invisible ninjas, and sharp katanas. The first leaks about this setting began surfacing in 2021, just as Ghost of Tsushima, another game about being a warrior in Japan, was released to high critical acclaim.
最后，一款关于潜行、电影级暗杀和全球影子社会之间长达数百年冲突的游戏将在日本舞台上演--一个拥有牢不可破的荣誉、无影忍者和锋利武士刀的国度。2021年，就在另一款以日本武士为题材的游戏《对马岛之魂》发布并广受好评时，有关这一背景的第一批泄密信息开始浮出水面。
This is not the first time when an Assassin’s Creed game has used two protagonists. In Syndicate, set in Victorian London, you played as the Frye twins - Jacob and Evie. The two characters embodied two different playstyles - Jacob specialized in open hand-to-hand combat, while Evie relied on stealth and ranged weapons. Another game, Origins, that told the story of the creation of the Assassins’ Brotherhood in Ancient Egypt, had several missions that let you control Aya, the wife of the main protagonist Bayek. So, if this is not the first time this has happened, what made the initial reaction to Shadows so different?
这已经不是《刺客信条》游戏第一次使用双主角了。在以维多利亚时代的伦敦为背景的《刺客信条：枭雄》中，你扮演的是弗莱双胞胎--雅各布和伊薇。这两个角色体现了两种不同的游戏风格--雅各布擅长空手格斗，而伊薇则依赖潜行和远程武器。另一款游戏《刺客信条：起源》讲述了在古埃及创建刺客兄弟会的故事，其中有几个任务让你控制主角巴耶克的妻子艾雅。那么，如果这不是第一次出现这种情况，是什么让《刺客信条：影》的最初反应如此不同呢？
At first, people were surprised by the inclusion of an African man as one of the playable characters. Sure, Yasuke was a real person, who lived in Japan during Oda Nabunaga’s reign in the 16th century. But even today, historians can not agree whether he was really a mercenary samurai, or just a slave in Nabunaga’s court.
起初，人们对可玩角色中包含一名非洲男子感到惊讶。当然，弥助是一个真实存在的人，他生活在16世纪织田信长统治时期的日本。但即使到了今天，历史学家们也无法就他究竟是一名雇佣武士，还是只是野信长宫廷中的一名奴隶达成一致。
Assassin’s Creed games have always included prominent historical figures as characters – Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, all to immerse the player in the time period and to make them feel the importance of their contribution to mankind’s history.
《刺客信条》游戏中总是有杰出的历史人物作为角色--达芬奇、拿破仑、埃及艳后、苏格拉底、本杰明-富兰克林，所有这些都是为了让玩家身临其境，感受他们对人类历史所做贡献的重要性。
Out of all the people that lived during that period and could be used as a protagonist – why choose Yasuke? He did not impact the history of Japan that much and is not symbolic of any events that happened. So why was a big black man chosen for a game seemingly about Japanese people, stealth and ninjas? Maybe the developers wanted to add the same “choose your playstyle” feature they already had in Syndicate. Or maybe they saw the opportunity to put another “underrepresented” person in a setting they probably have no place in, just to show the world how progressive they are. This move is sure to place them on a few liberal game awards organizations’ radars, but for now it has only made a lot of gamers upset. At this time, Shadows’ reveal trailer on Youtube is the most disliked in the series’ history, with people all over the world, including in Japan, sharing their disappointment with Ubisoft. Some are even calling out the hypocrisy by saying that adding a black character is seen as progressive (and you can be called racist for obxting), but if a white samurai was the main character, the uproar would be unimaginable.
在所有生活在那个时期、可以作为主角的人中，为什么要选择弥助呢？他对日本历史的影响并不大，也不是任何事件的象征。那么，为什么一款看似以日本人、潜行和忍者为主题的游戏会选择一个大个子黑人呢？也许开发商想加入《刺客信条：枭雄》中已有的“选择你的玩法”功能。又或者，他们看到了将另一个“未被充分代表的”人放到一个他们可能不适合的环境中的机会，只是为了向世界展示他们是多么的前卫。此举肯定会让他们进入一些自由游戏评奖组织的视线，但目前这只会让很多玩家感到不满。目前，《刺客信条：影》在Youtube上的曝光预告片是该系列历史上最不受喜爱的预告片，包括日本在内的世界各地的人们都在分享他们对育碧的失望。有些人甚至大骂育碧虚伪，称加入黑人角色被视为进步（反对会被称为种族主义者），但如果主角是白人武士，骚动将难以想象。
The decision to make one of the protagonists non-Japanese is a brave one. Since the reveal, the community has split into two parts – the more vocal one expresses their displeasure with another example of meaningless diversity and inclusion, while the other one is seemingly happy with finally getting their Japanese Assassin’s Creed. Both groups have their reasons. Adding a diverse character for the sake of diversity and progressive optics is now commonplace, and people are tired of seeing it. The intentions could be genuine, but it’s hard for gamers to trust corporate boardrooms. The silent majority, meanwhile, is excited for the game, if sales are any indication. Shadows is the #1 best seller on Amazon Japan. But then again, if a gaming industry titan like Ubisoft, as part of an insanely popular franchise like Assassins Creed, were to make a game about India, Russia or Türkiye, there are good chances that the game would be an instant best seller in that country, African protagonists or not.
让主角之一成为非日本人是一个勇敢的决定。自游戏曝光以来，玩家分成了两方：一方对又一次毫无意义的多元化和包容性展示表示不满，而另一方则似乎对终于有了日语版的《刺客信条》感到高兴。两帮人都有自己的理由。为了多样化和进步的视觉效果而添加一个多样化的角色，现在已经司空见惯，人们已经看腻了。他们的意图可能是真诚的，但玩家很难相信公司董事会。与此同时，沉默的大多数却对这款游戏充满期待，如果销售情况能说明这一点的话。《刺客信条：影》是日本亚马逊上最畅销的游戏。不过，话又说回来，如果育碧这样的游戏业巨头，作为《刺客信条》这样大受欢迎的系列游戏的一部分，制作一款关于印度、俄罗斯或土耳其的游戏，那么无论主角是不是非洲人，这款游戏都很有可能在该国立即成为畅销货。
There is an opinion online that adding a black samurai is not a betrayal of Japanese culture or history. That the stories that can be told about Japan are not limited to stories about Japanese samurai; that it’s a harmful cliche. While it can be a stereotype, stories that are based on a stereotype resonate the most with people - a cowboy movie, a samurai game, a World War II series. It’s a hook that grabs the entire human population interested in that genre, and then it’s up to the story to prove itself and show that it is much more than just a stereotype. Red Dead Redemption 2 for example, is “just another cowboy game,” but its story and its characters attracted many people, even some that had no previous interest in gaming.
网上有一种观点认为，加入黑人武士并不是对日本文化或历史的背叛。可以讲述的日本故事并不局限于日本武士的故事；这是一种有害的陈词滥调。虽然它可能是一种陈词滥调，但基于陈词滥调的故事最能引起人们的共鸣--牛仔电影、武士游戏、二战系列。它是一个钩子，能钩住所有对该类型感兴趣的人，然后就看故事如何证明自己，并表明它不仅仅是一个刻板印象。例如，《荒野大镖客：救赎2》是“另一款牛仔游戏”，但它的故事和角色吸引了很多人，甚至是一些以前对游戏毫无兴趣的人。
But the main problem of Shadows might not be its questionable choice of characters. Ghost of Tsushima, a 2020 Sony game about the first Mongol invasion of Japan, whose success was probably the reason Shadows was made, is being compared to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed, six months before its release.
但是，《刺客信条：影》的主要问题可能并不在于它对角色的选择有问题。《对马岛之魂》是索尼于2020年推出的一款游戏，讲述的是蒙古人第一次入侵日本的故事，《刺客信条：影》的成功很可能就是该游戏成功的原因。
Journalists worry that we've come full circle – Ghost of Tsushima was created as an ‘Assassin’s Creed in Japan’, improving on its mechanics and storytelling. If Ubisoft learns nothing from their shortcomings in game design, it looks like Shadows will be their typical open-world game, and will pale in comparison to a Japanese game about Japan.
记者们担心，我们已经绕了一个大圈--《对马岛之魂》是作为“日本版《刺客信条》”而创作的，它在机制和故事上都有所改进。如果育碧没有从他们在游戏设计上的不足中吸取教训，那么《刺客信条：影》似乎将成为他们典型的开放世界游戏，与一款关于日本的日本游戏相比将显得苍白无力。
Come November, the dust will settle and the game will be released. As usual, fans will be hyped, and the game will be full of bugs and lacking in features. After a while, the bugs will be patched, downloadable content will inevitably be released, and the in-game store will bombard gamers with ads. In the end, some will remember the game fondly for years, some will leave it halfway through, but its success will be measured only by Ubisoft’s earnings report for that year. That is the only way that corporations see the right and wrong in their decisions – their bottom line.
到11月时尘埃落定，游戏即将发布。像往常一样，粉丝们会兴奋不已，而游戏则会充满Bug，功能匮乏。过一段时间，错误会得到修补，可下载内容不可避免地会发布，游戏内的商店也会用广告轰炸玩家。最后，有些人会对这款游戏念念不忘，有些人会半途而废，但游戏的成功与否只能通过育碧当年的盈利报告来衡量。这是企业看清其决策是非的唯一途径--也是他们的底线。
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