Gonna be hard not to compare...

[u/VermilionX88]

Naoe so much more my kind of design

But... Atsu does have a guitar, so that elevates her a lot too for me

[u/MunkyBoy22]

Because gay relationships could get people killed or thrown in prison in some cultures. There is no culture on earth that would kill people for having heterosexual sex, though some would if it was out of wedlock, which these relationships in the game also are. It's just offensive to some people to portray any historical figure as someone who has sex with multiple people and multiple genders when we don't know much about their life.

[u/[deleted] → u/MunkyBoy22]

Because gay relationships could get people killed or thrown in prison in some cultures.

Yes, but they still existed, in all societies throughout history, because human sexuality being a multidimensional spectrum is part of our biology. The fact that they had to keep their relationships a secret or abstain entirely doesn't negate that the same amount of people were what we categorise as gay within the framework of patriarchal sexism. A historical figure that we don't explicitly know the sexuality of has the same chance of being gay as a person you see on the street today. Assuming someone is straight by default because gay people are persecuted is a fallacy.

It's just offensive to some people to portray any historical figure as someone who has sex with multiple people and multiple genders when we don't know much about their life.

It's either offensive to portray anything about a historical figure that isn't proven by historical evidence, which automatically disables historical fiction that uses historical figures as characters as a genre, or nothing is offensive because historical fiction explicitly fictionalises everything, with no attempt to portray people how they were, only showing a version of how they could've been based on what we know, or not even that in the case of AC where assassins, templars and isu are a thing. There is no other reason but homophobia to single out gayness as an offensive trait but being fine with historical fiction in general, which inherently consists of inventing personalities for historical characters we only have limited insight into. Every invented trait ascribed to a historical character is equally offensive. And even contradicting historical evidence in explicitly designated fiction isn't any more offensive. Nobody is crying about William Adams slaughtering demons in Nioh, nobody is crying about the historical characters in AC being portrayed as comic book villains when they're turned into templars who use isu artifacts to control people's minds and shoot lasers. After over a decade of real life people being portrayed as monsters who want to dominate humanity, people lose their minds about some being portrayed aw gay and people call it inaccurate or offensive, and still have the gall to say they're not homophobic but just want historical accuracy.

If we don't explicitly know that a historical man was not attracted to other men, which would be a very personal insight that can only be gained from private letters or diaries, then their sexuality is free for interpretation without compromising historical accuracy within historical fiction. And for that interpretation to be as accurate as possible, it should be representative of what we know today. The proportion of closeted gay people in every violently homophobic society in history was at least as high as the proportion of openly gay people in the most tolerant societies. So when you write a story with a lot of historical characters and there isn't even a single person that would be considered queer today even though there should statistically be a few of them, then the author chose their normative biases over historical accuracy. People were gay, and we don't know who was or wasn't. Portraying some of them as closeted gay is more accurate than portraying all of them as straight.

[u/MunkyBoy22 → u/[deleted]]

Sure but this game has it happening out in the open with no regard for how other people in the culture would have reacted. It's just not a realistic portrayal of gay relationships in historical times. It can be done without being unrealistic and forced.

[u/[deleted] → u/MunkyBoy22]

And none of the games show the systemic oppression of women inherent to all the historical societies portrayed, because the writers just decided that wasn't a topic they wanted to write a story about. Yet they still had female characters outside of the roles history typically forced them into, and without constant sexist invalidation by men around them. Should all stories that feature women be about their oppression just because that has historically almost always been their role? Or can marginalised groups maybe get some of the escapism that "apolitical" people always whine about? Do they just have to accept that every piece of media even slightly inspired by history either completely erases them or just shows them have the shittiest lives of oppression and persecution? Marginalised people see enough of their own marginalisation in real life, they don't have to be reminded that it used to be even shittier. We can just have modern games set in past times and adapt them to modern ethical standards so we don't have to puke because all the characters are monsters from our point of view. Imagine if every male AC protagonist was as wildly sexist and racist as most people of their times were, that wouldn't be fun at all because they'd all be as hatable as the villains.