If you opened your social networks this weekend and your algorithm tends to show you video games, you probably came across a controversial excerpt from Assassin's Creed Shadows. The new installment of the cult franchise is preparing (slowly but surely) its launch for March 20, 2025 and is therefore starting to accelerate its promotion. Ubisoft therefore took care to share some unpublished gameplay recordings without knowing that the title would still suffer from a bad controversy. Among all the sequences that Assassin's Creed Shadows has to offer, the studio decided to present a secondary quest: certainly to avoid spoiling the main narrative. Unfortunately, the choice fell on a mission with a voice cast that was, to say the least... daring.
A weekend to change everything
When the excerpt in question was broadcast, French-speaking viewers were quickly disillusioned. We discover the main character, Naoe, chatting with Tokubei, the secondary character of a side quest. Nothing too serious so far. But To everyone's surprise, the conversation turned into a parody at the first word Tokubei said. The difference in tone between the two speakers is so improbable that it is even comical.
However, Internet users quickly understood where this dissonance came from. Rather than hiring a voice actor to take care of this secondary voice, Ubisoft called on the Youtuber specializing in Japan: Louis-San. It didn't take much for the fans' anger to spill over onto the networks throughout the weekend. Since Assassin’s Creed: Shadows has been pushed back multiple times to be perfected, how can we explain how such a casting error could have slipped into the game two months before its release? Faced with the scale of the scandal, the content creator was quick to: post an explanatory video.
He explains having been debauched by the studio to try his hand at dubbing a “tertiary and unimportant character“. But the experience turned out to be more tedious than expected. In the absence of images of the game or real directions on his script, Louis-San had no choice but to improvise. He explains that he sent a message to the teams to ask them to remove his passage, but it ended up in a full-fledged teaser. Let players rest assured: this whole story ended up pushing Ubisoft to reverse its decision. The character of Tokubei will be re-dubbed and no star talent will be included in the final game.
We can only hope that this unexpected story will teach a good lesson to game and film studios. It is time to honor the French dubbing industry at its true value rather than offering positions to celebrities.
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