In the summer of 2020, during the heart of COVID lockdowns, two popular games made their debut on the Sony Playstation just a month apart. ‘The Last of Us Part 2’, and ‘Ghost of Tsushima.’ Right-wing gamers rallied against the sequel to The Last of Us for the change in protagonist from Joel to female Ellie. They also took issue with Abby’s appearance, arguing that because she was feminine and attractive to them, that she shouldn’t have been included in the game. They raised ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ as their gold standard. A game where you play a samurai in feudal Japan seeking revenge.
This month saw the release of the much-anticipated sequel, ‘Ghost of Yotei’(Yo-Tay). The new game is very similar to the original in gameplay, but with one change that has upset the conservative fans. The protagonist in ‘Yotei’(Yo-Tay) is a female samurai named Atsu. She is a young woman seeking revenge against the six men who slaughtered her family. In the story she represents a Japanese onryō, a vengeful female spirit said to be unstoppable in its quest for revenge on the living. Atsu is voiced by Erika Ishii, a Japanese-American nonbinary actor who uses all pronouns, and is an outspoken opponent to the current political leadership in the US. Grummz, a prominent ‘Gamergate’ activist and former video game executive wrote on X:
“We ignored the protagonist change to a woman for no good reason. We ignored that they made her ugly. … But then it turns out, it was a woke infested, assassination loving, Antifa supporting, lesbian ending woke piece of slop after all.”
Ishii and her girlfriend, who goes by AlexD online, seem unbothered by the backlash. In a recent TikTok by AlexD, she even taunts gamers by stating that the backside of Atsu seen in ‘Yotei’ is not nearly as good as the one that is actually on her girlfriend.
