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[Stafford]

Damn. I see all the reactions and I'm like...tough crowd. Now I haven't played Ghost, so maybe that's why but I think it's looks fine. Combat looks good, although I wish there was more gore and not only during that finisher.

The abilities of the female Shinobi looked great to me, the stuff you'd expect. Nah man, I'm liking what I'm seeing. I DO hope we get a option for Japanese voices though, but probably not, right?

 

[Games of Today]

Watch how fast someone mods a Japanese man over this character. I'll potentially be here for it. They could have added a black character in literally any other possible game/scenario.

They finally give people a setting they want and they decide to do this. Typical corporate shit.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Ubisoft has commitment to historical stories is how I’m reading this, and I would love a beta.

 

[KaiserBecks]

Last Assassins Creed I played was....Assassins Creed, so to me this looks pretty good. Really like the setting, maybe this game will finally scratch that Tenchu itch.

 

[Pharaoh 117]

my god what is that music lmaooo

That's hilarious, honestly. And man, that execution at the end looks so bad, almost like it's placeholder animation.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

This is way more interesting gameplay-wise than anything in Ghost of Tsushima. Looks like I'll be playing AC again, the last one I've played and finished was Origins.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Damn this looks great for a PSVITA game.

With remote play, all games are Vita games.

 

[GymWolf]

Just $200M?

Shadow’s budget might actually be smaller. Forbidden West took 5 years. I think this will have taken about 4.

212 mill and around 300 devs.

Odissey costed 500 mil and around 1000 people worked on it, i think it's safe to say that shadows has a much higher budget and manpower than horizon.

Valhalla was their most successful ac game ever and wd failed miserably, they are putting all the budget in the main ac games, you can bet on it.

If having long dev times can maintain budget relatively low, then maybe people should not ask for big ass games to be made in 2-3 years, insomniac can do that because they are using pre-existent world and characters in spiderman so they don't have to come up with characters and lore for their games, stealing both combat systems and stealth system from arkham games and making relatively small 15-20 hours open world as opposed to 40-50 hours open world like days gone and horizon (or hell even ragnarock), they are not using magic nor they are more talented, they just have all the right cards.

 

[Gaiff]

Odissey costed 500 mil and around 1000 people worked on it, i think it's safe to say that shadows has a much higher budget and manpower than horizon.

Where did you get that information from?

 

[Kilau]

With remote play, all games are Vita games.

I still use my Vita with Moonlight lol. Playing Rune Factory 4 from PC game pass that way now.

 

[DeepEnigma]

So just like ghost of tsushima

Watch a gameplay video of GoT. It is nothing like this. It gives the illusion of urgency, the enemies are not standing flat footed, and by the time you dispose of one, another is coming in for an attack. Not standing there waiting and waiting and waiting for them to get the attack trigger.

This looks like an alpha build of combat from the PS1 or PS2 era.

Only in standoffs.



Ghost will consistantly have 2 or 3 people attack you at the same time, which is why people find the stance switching mid combat so annoying (I remember the complaints) because certain stances where required to even damage higher tier enemies and you had to switch like every other swing on higher difficulties, sheild, spear, sheild, spear, sword, brute etc. It's why bombs and kunai where required to effectively control the flow of combat and keep enemies rooted dealing with that while you engaged the opponents you wanted.

Like it wouldn't be an issue if they only attack you one at a time, but they don't.

 

[GymWolf]

Where did you get that information from?

Google search, maybe not super precise but you can get a general idea.

 

[Sleepwalker]

Pro-tip if you want to play this game: subscribe to Ubi+ for a month, play through the game until you’re done and unsubscribe.

Will set you back only a couple of bucks.

The game will be so bloated it will take 2 months to beat.

Checkmate lifehackers

 

[DeepEnigma]

If I recall shinobis were never real (in the sense that media portrays), and samurais were mercenaries more than honor police. Also it's a fucking fantasy game saga

We literally just had Shogun come out that nailed accuracy down to every painstaking detail. Which makes something like this rear its ugly head following up.

Fantasy, but let us rip historical figures and bastardize it. Down to hip hop on an African who had nothing to do with America nor did anyone know it existed then. But "cultural sensibilities for modern audiences" and all that bigoted grift.

Need we forget when UbiSoft tried passing off Odyssey as some historical work down to having an in game "museum" complete with revisionism.

 

[Eiknarf]

Look OUT Ghost of Tsushima!! This will be the best game ever!!! You’re done!!

 

[Kurotri]

WALL OF TEXT COMING ! This is just a rant so feel free to ignore.

After sleeping on it and watching the gameplay again I can only say this: It's pretty much Ghost of Tsushima but it's made by Wish and is targeting zoomer broccoli heads. I've seen some people say the combat looks GoT inspired. I want to slap those people with my bear hands. GoT's combat felt and looked amazing, it was fun and fluid and it really elevated the already excellent atmosphere in the game for me. It had weight behind it and it was always a dance. ACS looks incredibly low quality in comparison, super janky at times and the hip hop-esque soundtrack really is the icing on the cake. Sucker Punch was so in love and so driven by their vision, so commited to the subject matter that Japan itself was flabbergasted and named them the official ambassadors of Tsushima, I'm not even making this up. That is what it means to have vision and skill. They had Shigeru Umebayashi compose the track alongside Ilan Eshkeri that both understood exactly what the dev team wanted to achieve. Did anyone here watch the show, Shogun? If you liked how serious GoT took itself I can only recommend it. Beautiful stuff. The reason I bring this up is because ACS seems to take an arcadey approach to all this and I really dislike that.

I know I'm comparing this to GoT a lot and some will say "but Kuro, everyone knew Ubi would never measure up to a Sony studio!" but Ubisoft will not get mercy from me. I already voiced my disappointment in the Ubi Forward thread but I cannot stress enough just how disappointed I am. This was a setting that they sat on for 17 years, it was essentially AC's Half Life 3. GoT itself is already 4 years old. They have current-gen tech now and it was said that they heavily updated the tech because starting with AC Shadows, the series would enter a new phase. And you don't have to re-invent the wheel. For all intents and purposes, Ghost of Tsushima has very outdated game design, it felt like I was playing AC2 again which came out in 2009(!!). However, that wasn't a problem because the execution was fantastic. So it's a non-issue. Atleast for me. Yet despite all this Ubisoft just doesn't want to properly invest into moving *anything* forward it seems. All I saw yesterday was AC Valhalla with a Feudal Japan coat of paint. There's 0 changes to the structure they built with Origins which was just a shittier Witcher 3 (a game from 2015) that everyone already got tired of by the time they started playing Valhalla.

There's no next-gen visual jump, there's no changes to the way they do UI (this one really triggered me), there's no changes to the gameplay and design, combat is still janky and animations outside a few leaps that Naoe does still look unimpressive. When I look back at the animation work they did for AC3 I get tears in my eyes. I'd say that the animations of that game still haven't been topped today outside of RDR2 and TLOU Part 2. They've been using AI for quest interactions like with the old lady shown in the gameplay trailer, ever since Odyssey. It sucked then because it came off as unnatural and stiff and it still looks like that 6 years(!!!) later. Why does she keep looking down when she talks to Yasuke? Even the way Yasuke's face changed for a second immediately threw me back to Odyssey. When you fought the Mongols they screamed at you and you ...you could see that. Like their mouths opened and stuff. Look at the 1v1 fight that Yasuke has, you can clearly hear the enemy samurai screaming but his face is deadpan as it gets, it's kinda hilarious. This is getting way too long and I have a million more things that I have a gripe with but there's one more thing I want to say.

Usually, when AC does these huge tech leaps, the visual language of the game changes drastically. It's hard to explain but look at the jump from AC2 to AC3:
.

Or the jump from AC3 to Unity which is a better comparison as that was a next-gen jump:


Now take a look at Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla and watch AC Shadows again. Instead of getting a similar jump we got...nothing? This is one of my biggest complaints and that's what I meant when I said it looked like Valhalla in Japan instead of being its own thing like AC3 or Unity. Maybe I sound crazy to you guys, but I see changes in those older games and nothing of the sort when I look at Shadows.

Fuck this shit. Mirage was a beautiful full circle moment all things considered and I'm thinking I'm done playing AC or Ubisoft's games in general. It seems I've hit my limit after 17 years.

/rant done.

 

[DeepEnigma]

It's an Ubisoft game, they've been doing the same thing for over 10 years now. This problem comes from AC1, released in 2007.

Nothing has changed.

I still remember the E3 presentation for AC Brotherhood: “don't worry, we've made the enemies more aggressive this time, they'll attack in groups”. What a bunch of buffoons.

It's the UbiSoft way. From Far Cry literally reusing the same maps over and over with same and some altered assets, to AssCreed copy/paste combat with new paint. This is literally Valhalla with Samurai costumes.

 

[Gaiff]

Google search, maybe not super precise but you can get a general idea.

The information has literally no source at all. They just pulled a figure out of their ass.

It's not impossible given the size of Ubisoft Montreal but it's also entire possibly that the game cost something like $190-200M. Whatever the case, I wouldn't use Forbidden West as an example of doing more with less. Forbidden West's budget is still massive and could or could not be comparable. No way to know. All we know is Forbidden West took one extra year and that GG has 360 employees. Ubisoft Montreal has over 4000 employees but obviously, not all of them worked on Shadows at once.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Man I read the thread here before watching the gameplay myself and figured it was gonna be a trainwreck, but it actually looks pretty good? Looks fun, graphics are great, both styles of gameplay and combat seem really interesting. I'm into it. The only thing I didn't like was the PS3-era voice acting, but geez this place gets a negativity train going for a company / franchise and there's no stopping it.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

This is literally Valhalla with Samurai costumes.

Combat in Valhalla was complete POS with the same animations for both characters. In Shadows there's 2 distinct characters with unique movesets, combat and traversal, not to mention more focus on verticality with the female character.

I mean, it looks promising and much better than previous AC games gameplay-wise and there's an actual female character with femal-like animations and body type. I'm going to wait for reviews though.

 

[Arachnid]

Damn. I see all the reactions and I'm like...tough crowd. Now I haven't played Ghost, so maybe that's why but I think it's looks fine. Combat looks good, although I wish there was more gore and not only during that finisher.

The abilities of the female Shinobi looked great to me, the stuff you'd expect. Nah man, I'm liking what I'm seeing. I DO hope we get a option for Japanese voices though, but probably not, right?

Ghost has good (not great) combat, atmosphere, and graphics but that's about it. PS5 fanboys overhype it. Terrible copy pasted enemy outposts, map collectables, repeating side missions, and baby tier stealth. Basic Ubisoft game design. It's better than most AC games still, but AC at its best dominates it. The stealth and controls for that ninja chick dominates anything in that game.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Diversity quotas.

It's wokeness gone fucking nuts.

So gaming is a cishet white male hegemony and yet a game set in Japan with an exclusive Japanese cast is not diverse enough such that they need to shoehorn in a token black dude.

It's fucking offensive to Japanese people whose history they're bastardizing, and it's fucking offensive to black people because it says, "fuck all the historical black figures who actually achieved something meaningful. We're going promote a historical black figure whose only known quality or achievement is that he was a dude with black skin who found himself in a foreign country."

 

[recursive]

There are a ton of games which add hip hop music to trailers and showcases...I don't think is correlated with having a black samurai.
They just have shit taste on choosing music for the atmosphere of the game

It would be even more out of place without the black samurai.

 

[Eiknarf]

Ubisoft: "He's black so he's gotta have hip-hop music, right?"

For those who don’t know, hip-hop was invented in Japan in 1579

 

[GymWolf]

The information has literally no source at all. They just pulled a figure out of their ass.

It's not impossible given the size of Ubisoft Montreal but it's also entire possibly that the game cost something like $190-200M. Whatever the case, I wouldn't use Forbidden West as an example of doing more with less. Forbidden West's budget is still massive and could or could not be comparable. No way to know. All we know is Forbidden West took one extra year and that GG has 360 employees. Ubisoft Montreal has over 4000 employees but obviously, not all of them worked on Shadows at once.

Ok then, can we at least agree that budget and manpower are similar for both games but the ac probably had more man power since they have 4000 working people and i clearly remember people saying that around 1000 people from different studios work on the ac games?

It still doesn't explain how a 3 years old crossgen murder this game in some tech\graphic aspects...

And the ac games are the only golden goose the ubisoft has left, they are not treated like horizon that is just one of the bigs at sony, for ubisoft the ac games are THE only big thing

 

[Gaiff]

It's fucking offensive to Japanese people whose history they're bastardizing, and it's fucking offensive to black people because it says, "fuck all the historical black figures who actually achieved something meaningful. We're going promote a historical black figure whose only known quality or achievement is that he was a dude with black skin who found himself in a foreign country."

That's honestly the part that bothers me the most with all these games promoting black characters. They're either placed in modern settings or in ancient times where black people were incredibly uncommon (GOWR, AC Shadows). That's why I don't believe most of it comes from a good place because they would do their due diligence and research black history (not just African-American history) to come up with interesting settings where black people were the majority.

I love ancient Egypt but it's one of the most commonly used ones in fiction. I wanted Ubisoft to do an Assassin's Creed game set in the Songhai (Mali) Empire during the reign of Mansa Musa or perhaps a game in Nubia. Hell, I would have even taken something like Haiti following the revolution or Jamaica too, but we already had Black Flag for a game set in and around the Caribbean sea.

I don't mind Yasuke and think he's a fascinating historical figure, but having him doesn't do much for "representation" when you make up almost all of the details regarding his life and he was also an individual living through exceptional times, so not at all representative or informative of what black people experienced during his time period. It teaches nothing about black history like an Assassin's Creed game set in Africa or the Caribbean otherwise would.

 

[Js562]

Combat and graphics looks good to me but to each their own. I haven't finished any of the recent Assassins Creed. Last one was probably ac2. I'll get this one because I need something similar to tenchu on the ninja side

 

[Ristifer]

Looks uninspired and bland, even though I enjoy the setting itself. This and Outlaws both have that annoying "perk" where you can just see through walls all the time, making stealth a total breeze. You don't have to use any brain cells at all to move around. This mechanic was old a decade ago. Freshen this shit up a bit, please.

 

[Edellus]

Many people are comparing it to Ghost of Tsushima. I haven't played it yet, so I can't do that. But still, it looks good to me. I specially liked the shinobi section of the gameplay.

I've played the last 2 AC games and enjoyed them thoroughly. So far it looks like I'll enjoy this one too. I will probably play GoT soonish too, so I'll see then if my impression changes.

 

[captainnapalm]

It still looks like it has that floaty animation from the last few games. If you go back and play the old AC games, the characters feel very grounded and real in the way the move, run and jump and climb. Now it feels like the character just glides over everything and the movement feels janky.

 

[Audiophile]

Ima just perch on a ledge in AC2 for half an hour instead:

 

[SJRB]

Ima just perch on a ledge in AC2 for half an hour instead:

Jesper Kyd was fucking COOKING when he made that ACII soundtrack.

It's so dreamlike and ethereal, that entire game feels like you're playing a fairytale.

 

[Masterofchapter]

Where looks one vs one others waiting for their turn

Watch a gameplay video of GoT. It is nothing like this. It gives the illusion of urgency, the enemies are not standing flat footed, and by the time you dispose of one, another is coming in for an attack. Not standing there waiting and waiting and waiting for them to get the attack trigger.

This looks like an alpha build of combat from the PS1 or PS2 era.

 

[Hayabusabruh]

Wait. They added hip-hop music?!
BLM fist taunt can be used as an attack.
Stealth doesn't work behind baskets of watermelon. (Character completely looses all composure)
Convince skeptical npcs of your sincerity by ending each sentence with 'On my momma'.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Where looks one vs one others waiting for their turn

Ok. They look the same.

 

[Audiophile]

Jesper Kyd was fucking COOKING when he made that ACII soundtrack.

It's so dreamlike and ethereal, that entire game feels like you're playing a fairytale.

I remember playing ACII in 2009 on my PS3, the camera panning back with Kyd's music after Ezio and his brother climbed the tower is a moment yet to be matched for me.

I also recall being stood on top of a rooftop in Venice at night, the canal and the moon in view and some fireworks off in the distance with that heavy bloom and distinct blue-ish hue, the ambient music was humming along while I could also hear some of the Carnival celebrations. I put the controller down, turned it up and just sat there for about 20 minutes taking it in. Even with all the jank, the rough visuals by today's standards and ultimately very little density or dynamism on screen, it somehow felt more alive and immersive than anything I've experienced since.

Ultimately for me, AC's main pillar was atmosphere and charm. I had such high hopes for it going forward.

 

[Revolutionary]

For those who don’t know, hip-hop was invented in Japan in 1579

Turns out "Nobunaga's personal retainer" was a mistranslation - Yasuke was Nobunaga's personal rapper.

Kinda like the boombox guy in Kung Pow:

 

[genesisblock]

Damn. I see all the reactions and I'm like...tough crowd. Now I haven't played Ghost, so maybe that's why but I think it's looks fine. Combat looks good, although I wish there was more gore and not only during that finisher.

The abilities of the female Shinobi looked great to me, the stuff you'd expect. Nah man, I'm liking what I'm seeing. I DO hope we get a option for Japanese voices though, but probably not, right?

Go play Ghost, if you can on PC because that would really change your perspective on this

 

[Stafford]

Go play Ghost, if you can on PC because that would really change your perspective on this

PC gaming ain't for me anymore and I am waiting for that rumored PS5 Pro to finally add that PS5 to my consoles.

But even then, I don't always want to compare games to each other. I'm sure Shadows will do some stuff really good, but other stuff Ghost does better.

 

[genesisblock]

PC gaming ain't for me anymore and I am waiting for that rumored PS5 Pro to finally add that PS5 to my consoles.

But even then, I don't always want to compare games to each other. I'm sure Shadows will do some stuff really good, but other stuff Ghost does better.

I see. In Ps5, you get that 4k/60fps upgrade for the remastered edition. As for AC Shadows, the only thing that's going to be better.....

Actually I don't see anything better in that trailer.

 

[Stafford]

I see. In Ps5, you get that 4k/60fps upgrade for the remastered edition. As for AC Shadows, the only thing that's going to be better.....

Actually I don't see anything better in that trailer.

Some stuff with the female reminded me of Tenchu, like the hiding behind cover for example. Does Ghost have that too?

 

[genesisblock]

Some stuff with the female reminded me of Tenchu, like the hiding behind cover for example. Does Ghost have that too?

I don't quite recall but there a lot of stealth systems, you can hide behind grass and high places and crawl under some spaces. You can do stealth kills like what you saw through the door .

 

[DragoonWalker]

Ubisoft has commitment to historical stories is how I’m reading this, and I would love a beta.

Don't worry, when you play an Ubisoft game, you are the beta. In more ways than one.

That's honestly the part that bothers me the most with all these games promoting black characters. They're either placed in modern settings or in ancient times where black people where incredibly uncommon (GOWR, AC Shadows). That's why I don't believe most of it comes from a good place because they would do their due diligence and research black history (not just African-American history) to come up with interesting settings where black people were the majority.

I love ancient Egypt but it's one of the most commonly used ones in fiction. I wanted Ubisoft to do an Assassin's Creed game set in the Songhai (Mali) Empire during the reign of Mansa Musa or perhaps a game in Nubia. Hell, I would have even taken something like Haiti following the revolution or Jamaica too, but we already had Black Flag for a game set in and around the Caribbean sea.

I don't mind Yasuke and think he's a fascinating historical figure, but having him doesn't do much for "representation" when you make up almost all of the details regarding his life and he was also an individual living through exceptional times, so not at all representative or informative of what black people experienced during his time period. It teaches nothing about black history like an Assassin's Creed game set in Africa or the Caribbean otherwise would.

It's such a scum move, Ubi doesn't have the confidence a game set in Africa would sell so instead they shoehorn a black protag into the setting that's guaranteed to sell gangbusters, history be damned in a series that prides itself on experiencing history through the eyes of locals.

 

[Gaiff]

Don't worry, when you play an Ubisoft game, you are the beta. In more ways than one.

It's such a scum move, Ubi doesn't have the confidence a game set in Africa would sell so instead they shoehorn a black protag into the setting that's guaranteed to sell gangbusters, history be damned in a series that prides itself on experiencing history through the eyes of locals.

Yeah, pretty much. This is reminiscent of The Witcher or The Rings of Power TV shows. There are black authors such as NK Jemisin who write fantasy books with black leads that could be adapted into TV series. They instead shoehorned black characters into established franchises because they don’t actually care about them, they simply want to use them as props. It’s still about the money no matter how morally superior they pretend to be.

 

[Negotiator101]

Yeah I've seen this game before about a billion fucking times.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Jesper Kyd was fucking COOKING when he made that ACII soundtrack.

It's so dreamlike and ethereal, that entire game feels like you're playing a fairytale.

Nowadays you try doing that for 10 seconds:
- Your outpost is under attack!
- Your allies need your help!
- New side activity available!

 

[TGO]

"Don't worry, we'll just stand here stiff as a board, one at a time as you dispose of each one of us."

Is this Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams on PS2?

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

That's honestly the part that bothers me the most with all these games promoting black characters. They're either placed in modern settings or in ancient times where black people were incredibly uncommon (GOWR, AC Shadows). That's why I don't believe most of it comes from a good place because they would do their due diligence and research black history (not just African-American history) to come up with interesting settings where black people were the majority.

I love ancient Egypt but it's one of the most commonly used ones in fiction. I wanted Ubisoft to do an Assassin's Creed game set in the Songhai (Mali) Empire during the reign of Mansa Musa or perhaps a game in Nubia. Hell, I would have even taken something like Haiti following the revolution or Jamaica too, but we already had Black Flag for a game set in and around the Caribbean sea.

Couldn't agree more. It's why the arguments that these woke creators are vapid and lazy continues to hold. They're creatively bankrupt and care more about scoring fictional diversity points that make themselves feel good than any actual, real, meaningful representation of minorities.

I don't mind Yasuke and think he's a fascinating historical figure,

But he's not... Our interest in him stands only so far as him being a black man in the wrong place and the mystery that surrounds the circumstances. He was a pet of Oda Nobunaga. A literal trophy that was paraded around in a land that was foreign to him. The fixation on him by white Western creators of popular media is gross. As a black person, I do not find anything interesting about him or see him as a meaningful representation of black personhood or black culture, nor even just someone to identify with.

He's merely a token, whose claim to fame is being black in a land full of non-black people. It's neither notable nor interesting to anyone other than those obsessed with race.

 

[Gaiff]

But he's not... Our interest in him stands only so far as him being a black man in the wrong place and the mystery that surrounds the circumstances. He was a pet of Oda Nobunaga. A literal trophy that was paraded around in a land that was foreign to him. The fixation on him by white Western creators of popular media is gross. As a black person, I do not find anything interesting about him or see him as a meaningful representation of black personhood or black culture, nor even just someone to identify with.

He's merely a token, whose claim to fame is being black in a land full of non-black people. It's neither notable nor interesting to anyone other than those obsessed with race.

This is all incredibly incorrect. He was given a house and had a salary and the local population even believed he would have been made a lord, but Nobunaga died before it could happen.

In addition, he enjoyed quite a privileged status being given a sword and carried Nobunaga’s weapons for comparison. Hideyoshi, Nobunaga’s successor was of a peasant background and carried Nobunaga’s sandals. It’s also said by sources that Nobunaga enjoyed conversation with Yasuke and there’s also a painting of a black man wrestling a sumo in front of a daimyo who is believed to be Nobunaga. This means the black man was Yasuke. It’s also believed by scholars that he was a bodyguard of Nobunaga due to his possible military background.

He wasn’t a pet. He was a dude in Nobunaga’s circle that the guy liked. That certainly makes him far more interesting than you claim.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

This is all incredibly incorrect. He was given a house and had a salary and the local population even believed he would have been made a lord, but Nobunaga died before it could happen.

In addition, he enjoyed quite a privileged status being given a sword and carried Nobunaga’s weapons for comparison. Hideyoshi, Nobunaga’s successor was of a peasant background and carried Nobunaga’s sandals. It’s also said by sources that Nobunaga enjoyed conversation with Yasuke and there’s also a painting of a black man wrestling a sumo in front of a daimyo who is believed to be Nobunaga. This means the black man was Yasuke. It’s also believed by scholars that he was a bodyguard of Nobunaga due to his possible military background.

He wasn’t a pet. He was a dude in Nobunaga’s circle that the guy liked. That certainly makes him far more interesting than you claim.

Lol, nothing you said contradicts my claim of Yasuke being Nobunaga's pet. If anything it reinforces it.

You need to ask yourself, critically, why did Nobunaga take interest in him and position him such as he did?

It wasn't his intellect, his studious manner, his martial abilities or charisma. It's simply because he was black.

Ergo... he was a pet of a rich and powerful ruler. Him getting special treatment only further proves this.