The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1125
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 30 minutes
Words per Minute
181.8557
Summary
Josh and Harry discuss the news of Jeremy Boring stepping down as CEO of The Daily Wire and all the speculation around it, plus why you shouldn't buy the new Assassin's Creed game, and Harry's misadventures with Harry Sisson.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lode Seaters for the 20th of March 2025.
00:00:12.180
Are you ready to fill your mouths at the trough?
00:00:18.820
I ate loads and loads of pasta before coming on air.
00:00:21.940
Which is always a good idea before going on camera.
00:00:31.020
So when we get to comments, that's when I need to duck and cover.
00:00:35.480
So today we are discussing Jeremy Boring stepping down as CEO of the Daily Wire and all the speculation
00:00:43.060
I'm going to be talking about why you shouldn't buy the new Assassin's Creed game.
00:00:47.540
And then we're going to be talking about the misadventures of Harry Sisson.
00:00:54.320
Yeah, we used to think he was one of them gays.
00:01:12.720
Apparently, if the rumours are to be, well, if all of the controversy is to be believed,
00:01:24.820
Yeah, because it's miserable enough doing this podcast sometimes.
00:01:46.960
All right, then I guess we should probably get into it.
00:01:51.080
And by getting into it, I mean you should be buying Islander, which if you haven't done
00:01:56.920
Are you just sitting around doing nothing with your life?
00:02:07.260
Some say it comes with experience points that boost your cool ratings and your stats.
00:02:16.100
Some have said that it will automatically graft a pair of sunglasses onto you at all times,
00:02:21.340
especially when you're indoors, so you're extra cool.
00:02:27.940
But I do know that it's got great artwork, great articles.
00:02:51.600
So the news is broke the other day that Jeremy Boring, the co-CEO of The Daily Wire, has decided
00:03:00.540
There were some people reporting that he was leaving the company altogether.
00:03:03.980
That was incorrect, because what he's actually doing is he's stepping down from the role as
00:03:08.660
co-CEO purely to focus on creative projects for the company.
00:03:13.000
And he told this to his staff in a memo that Axios obtained.
00:03:20.920
Jeremy Boring himself reposted this on his Twitter account.
00:03:25.440
And as far as I'm aware, as of yet, the other presenters of Daily Wire, because Jeremy Boring
00:03:32.960
counts as a presenter, he's a very, very up and front CEO, because he hosts one of the
00:03:37.700
backstage shows where he interviews, I think, Matt Walsh, Andrew Clavin, and Ben Shapiro.
00:03:42.920
Similar to how Carl is the CEO of Lotus Eaters, and he's on camera all the time.
00:03:48.120
Yeah, but Carl was like a content producer, first and foremost, before Lotus Eaters, whereas
00:03:53.100
Jeremy Boring, as far as I'm aware, was attempting to start a career in Hollywood previously, and
00:03:58.500
then started financing The Daily Wire, and et cetera, et cetera.
00:04:02.020
But here, Caleb Robinson, the company's founding CEO, will become the company's full-time CEO
00:04:08.220
Robinson and Boring have been co-CEOs since 2019.
00:04:12.120
In the note to staff, Boring said he will remain with the company in an advisory role.
00:04:16.420
He'll continue to host Daily Wire backstage, and he'll focus full-time on creative projects,
00:04:22.260
including the completion of The Daily Wire's TV series, The Pendragon Cycle, in which he
00:04:28.780
And some information I got from another article was that last year, Boring said that The Daily
00:04:32.500
Wire was on track to hit $200 million in annual revenue, which, to be clear, is separate from
00:04:38.320
Revenue is the gross intake, profits is what you have after expenses.
00:04:41.660
They've been, they've taken on a lot of expenses, from what it sounds like, haven't
00:04:47.740
Yeah, I was very surprised when I started seeing films coming out of The Daily Wire,
00:04:51.040
because I was thinking to myself, how on earth are they able to finance this sort of thing?
00:04:54.940
Like, they have their own channel with their own programs.
00:04:57.000
Yeah, they've got their Daily Wire Plus, and they've also got, I think, a children's network
00:05:01.780
called Bent Key, which is apparently named after some old theatre company that he used
00:05:08.920
It's not the one that I would have gone to, but clearly very sentimental for him.
00:05:12.560
And apparently last year as well, the company was valued at more than $1 billion in its most
00:05:19.440
So, I have nothing against The Daily Wire, personally.
00:05:22.400
I don't really watch any of their stuff, if I'm honest.
00:05:24.620
We've watched a few of the things that they've produced in the past, like the Matt Walsh,
00:05:30.020
But with their films and the things that they've been producing, like in this picture here,
00:05:34.300
you can see that he's got the lady, I think, what was it, lady ballers?
00:05:38.900
I saw the trailer for that pop up all over the place.
00:05:42.000
I would like to add as well that we can object to the things that the presenters say and
00:05:49.260
I quite like Matt Walsh sometimes, and then he'll make a completely stupid statement about
00:05:54.020
video games and how grown men shouldn't play video games.
00:05:57.940
And I just think to myself, man, you need to chill out, Matt.
00:06:03.140
Yeah, I don't think people should necessarily police people's hobbies in a way where it seems
00:06:10.320
If you're just relaxing and you're just like, you're not working, well, I think that actually
00:06:17.000
Obviously, we've engaged in that discussion before.
00:06:20.620
Just don't overindulge in them the same as that you can do with anything else.
00:06:23.900
But the thing is that this has begun a lot of rumors and a lot of speculation because
00:06:36.600
They decided to split with Candace Owens due to the fact that she was courting a lot of
00:06:46.000
She had other interviews with other rabbis that got her in a lot of trouble.
00:06:50.020
She was dubbed Candace Owens at one point, which is...
00:06:55.920
Not because, you know, I necessarily agree with the characterization.
00:07:00.280
Yeah, Rabbi Shmuley needs to have a Greatest Hits compilation out there because that man
00:07:05.400
I don't know what his politics are, but he's funny.
00:07:09.820
I think he might be Donald Trump's anti-Semitism international envoy.
00:07:18.160
I hope you will remember that one or this is going to sound like complete nonsense to you.
00:07:24.740
And to be fair, even if you do know what I'm talking about, it's still complete nonsense
00:07:28.340
because the man is a cartoon character ripped straight from a Goebbels propaganda film.
00:07:45.080
Anyway, so she got in a lot of trouble talking about that sort of stuff, and so the company
00:07:52.500
I think it was less than amicable because Jeremy Boring himself was quite unhappy with Candace
00:08:02.740
And then just a few months ago, Brett Cooper, who as far as I'm aware, outside of the big
00:08:08.060
names, was the company's fastest rising new star.
00:08:11.540
Her videos on YouTube, on the comments section, were getting like almost a million views, between
00:08:18.780
She announces that she's leaving the company as well.
00:08:23.540
I didn't really follow it because I try to keep...
00:08:27.460
A lot of this always ends up just being he said, she said, whispering behind the scenes
00:08:33.440
But it does have larger implications for the company and where the company is going.
00:08:37.140
Because at the same time as around that, December 10th, I believe, Brett Cooper announced that
00:08:43.440
There was sudden speculation that Fox News were eyeing up potential acquisitions of conservative
00:08:53.520
Boring addressed this himself and said the company isn't actively looking for a buyer,
00:09:01.500
So that was some strange news to come out at the same time as all of this.
00:09:05.400
And again, it has all led to a lot of speculation.
00:09:08.740
Now, Ian Carroll is a somewhat divisive figure.
00:09:11.960
He was actually a really good source of information for all of the Diddy stuff that was coming out
00:09:17.300
And I liked some of the stuff that he's put out.
00:09:18.920
The ADL did do a little warning on Joe Rogan after Joe Rogan had Ian Carroll on.
00:09:26.780
Because everyone knows that the ADL are the ultimate arbiters of what is allowed to be
00:09:35.620
And there's nothing suspicious at all about the circumstances in which they were set up
00:09:45.460
It was so great how they strong-armed Iceland into not banning circumcision.
00:09:52.000
That's still an absurd story to me that they managed to do that.
00:09:55.880
But either way, so just full disclosure, Ian Carroll, I don't watch all of his stuff.
00:10:04.480
A lot of the stuff that he gets is basically like allegations, rumors, hearsay.
00:10:15.580
From what I have seen of him, though, what he says is interesting.
00:10:18.720
And I can tell that he's trying to be impartial.
00:10:21.440
Whether he is or not, obviously, it's not up to me to say.
00:10:28.680
But the information that he gives in here is interesting because he's stating that he has
00:10:32.540
sources from inside the Daily Wire itself who are dissatisfied with how the company is
00:10:38.360
And in this video, Candace Owens did, just two days ago, where she was addressing the
00:10:45.400
news that Jeremy Boring was stepping down, she said that she had learned from Ian Carroll
00:10:51.240
himself information about the inner workings of the Daily Wire and why she was let go that
00:10:57.960
So it does seem that he has insider contacts on this kind of thing.
00:11:03.180
So what he has said, and these are all allegations, speculation.
00:11:09.640
I have no personal investment in whether they succeed or fail.
00:11:13.040
We also live in the political commentary sphere.
00:11:15.720
So I find I don't watch any other political content because I just go directly to the source
00:11:22.460
Because also, as a content creator, if I dare call myself that, you sort of don't want to
00:11:36.260
It's like reading the room and then trying to say the thing that is the most socially
00:11:44.160
You want to be original and you also want to have integrity.
00:11:52.780
I will occasionally watch Oron McIntyre or Dave Smith if they have a particularly interesting
00:12:00.900
Most of my content that I watch is like wrestling audiobooks.
00:12:15.460
No, and I also watch a lot of history stuff and read books, which is very nice.
00:12:20.320
But you should be reading Islander, not reading books.
00:12:24.380
But anyway, Ian's information that he gives is that he is saying that there is potentially
00:12:29.380
outside finance and investment companies, particularly a company called Silver Lake, who are going
00:12:41.460
This is all stuff that he's heard from his sources from within the Daily Wire.
00:12:45.300
People as well in the replies have been saying things like, you say allegedly a lot of
00:12:53.640
So I think that's important to say allegedly, because if you know something for certain and
00:12:59.360
it's been proved to you by a source and you know, you know, without a doubt that it's
00:13:06.780
But I think it is important if you're hearing things as accounts of other people that might
00:13:11.480
have an interest in feeding you false stories, potentially.
00:13:14.640
It is important to ring fence this and say, listen, this is what I've been told.
00:13:20.600
I mean, that's I don't think that's a criticism.
00:13:22.240
The other thing is that he did in December last year, December 2nd, managed to break the
00:13:29.160
He said that there was a scoop coming, which was that Brett Cooper would be leaving the
00:13:32.640
company and that they might be forcing her out and replacing her with her best friend.
00:13:36.860
Now, of course, since that has happened, she was replaced by her best friend who she doesn't
00:13:44.080
seem to be friends with anymore for the same show, which now its views are nowhere near
00:13:49.880
Again, they've gone from like half a million to a million per video to like 20,000 to 50,000
00:13:53.880
per video, which, you know, is still not awful, but nowhere near the figures that they
00:13:58.980
They don't seem to be friends anymore, but people who are involved have denied that they
00:14:03.120
forced her out or that there were they were intentionally replacing her with her best friend.
00:14:08.200
She was just offered a contract because she was friends with Brett, et cetera, et cetera.
00:14:11.600
But he did manage to say that it looks like she's leaving about a week before she announced
00:14:20.780
So, you know, he does seem to be on the money with some of this stuff.
00:14:24.260
And if it is coming from his inside sources, then he does seem to be able to get some accurate
00:14:28.880
information from it, even if some of it can be a little bit.
00:14:33.120
Not necessarily tainted, but not always accurate or at least not always completely accurate.
00:14:38.540
But then again, as well, we don't actually know what was going on behind the scenes.
00:14:42.780
I imagine that with a lot of these things, there's a lot of complicated things that were
00:14:47.440
you to know the full picture, it'd be very different than what goes on in the outside.
00:14:55.620
Yeah, and it's interesting because I think the suggestion that maybe the Daily Wire is
00:15:01.280
not doing too well, that I've heard Ian Carroll talk about, that is going to change the political
00:15:07.080
landscape of the so-called online rights in America and the world, isn't it?
00:15:13.740
They are a huge company with huge names attached to them.
00:15:17.060
Not to say that people like Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Clavin, Michael Knowles wouldn't
00:15:25.100
But having that one company that it's all focused around disappear, if what he's saying
00:15:30.620
is true, or at least fundamentally change its organizational structure, would be a big
00:15:36.140
Yeah, and I might say something a little bit controversial here, I think the Daily Wire
00:15:43.160
going away might be a good thing, if it does happen.
00:15:48.760
I think a lot of the time, it seems like it's almost...
00:15:55.980
It seems like they've become very commercial, and they're sort of becoming the mainstream
00:16:04.100
And it's not to criticize everyone blanketly, I'm just talking about my overall vibe, which
00:16:12.900
I mean, from what is being alleged here, the company has been incredibly centered around
00:16:18.140
Jeremy Boring himself, and his own aspirations of becoming a Hollywood star, Hollywood insider
00:16:26.560
Yeah, and he has said in different interviews that he's given character profiles of himself,
00:16:31.320
that he's always been very passionate about film, wanting to start things.
00:16:35.600
They started their own film company, they've done a few films here and there.
00:16:38.900
They announced a Snow White adaptation with Brett Cooper, which was discussed recently on
00:16:44.840
the Tim Pool show, where they were saying, don't think it's happening anymore.
00:16:49.000
The last update on it was back in 2023 when it was announced.
00:16:52.600
My completely worthless speculation is, with him stepping down, they're moving away from
00:17:00.020
the film side of things, which is very expensive and very risky, as are all films, not just Daily
00:17:05.160
Wire films, just filmmaking in general, as we well know.
00:17:11.180
It could be a great film, it could be well-received and just not make money.
00:17:15.480
And so it's one of those things where if you're being fiscally conservative and trying to build
00:17:20.860
a political commentary empire, you wouldn't necessarily look at it because it is a way
00:17:26.700
of potentially throwing everything you've built into a fire.
00:17:29.540
Well yeah, because as we've mentioned many times when covering films before, the budget
00:17:33.300
is not the only thing that you're spending on the television show, you're also spending
00:17:38.320
about the same amount as the budget, typically, for the marketing as well.
00:17:42.600
Yeah, the rule of thumb, whatever the budget is, double it for the marketing costs as well.
00:17:47.300
So for a television series like they were trying to produce with the Pendragon cycle,
00:17:52.120
which was supposed to be produced and released on their platform last year and is still nowhere
00:18:04.020
Television is ridiculously expensive to produce, especially if you're talking about high fantasy
00:18:10.720
And then you've got to go into all of the marketing as well.
00:18:14.020
And so you can say we've got a revenue, $200 million, that's fantastic, but where is that
00:18:20.560
I imagine the contracts for people like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro are expensive enough
00:18:25.400
by themselves, and then if you decide that you're going to go on and produce television
00:18:31.140
$200 million is not even the budget of a single high-budget Hollywood film these days.
00:18:43.040
Wasn't the budget for that like $250 million by itself with The Rock taking $50 million for
00:18:51.060
It's also worth mentioning, again, a bit more speculation.
00:18:53.680
But I could see something happening where a lot of money is going towards these long-term
00:18:58.400
multi-year commitments to make films, and say someone in The Daily Wire suddenly has a
00:19:05.780
sort of meteoric rise, and they don't have any wiggle room to renegotiate a contract that's
00:19:10.000
more appropriate with their newfound acclaim and viewership, because The Daily Wire has a
00:19:17.140
I could see it causing a lot of problems with people feeling like they're being undervalued
00:19:21.800
and perhaps being ripped off in a stronger sense, because The Daily Wire, even with the
00:19:28.560
best intentions, might not be able to give them what they deserve.
00:19:33.860
It can't be malicious, it can just be trying to overextend yourself as a company.
00:19:37.600
And from what I've heard, it seems to be the case that there have been lots of people that
00:19:42.460
are sour on contracts and things like that, which...
00:19:45.400
I mean, Stephen Crowder made his whole feelings known about the contract that was offered to
00:19:49.600
him two years ago, even though it was, what, a $50 million contract?
00:19:52.760
Yeah, when I heard that, I was like, wow, okay, that...
00:19:54.700
I think it was spread out over like five or ten years, I believe.
00:19:59.120
But I think his main complaint was the fact that he didn't want to have to stick so rigidly
00:20:03.560
to the terms of YouTube and platforms like that that are going to censor him.
00:20:09.760
It's annoying to have to deal with YouTube terms.
00:20:13.740
Yeah, but basically, Ian Carroll is alleging that what he has been told is that things like
00:20:19.440
the film company, the Pendragon cycle in particular, might be moved away from Daily Wire because
00:20:30.440
But he does say that the series is apparently over-budget by about $50 million.
00:20:37.300
Very, very easy thing to have happen, especially when its production cycle has gone well beyond
00:20:42.500
what they were originally planning for, if they were originally planning on releasing
00:20:46.680
Apparently, as a result of this, loads of the producers' company credit cards got frozen,
00:20:53.840
We'll see in the future if any of this comes out to be true, but it is very, very interesting.
00:20:58.620
And he said that the Fox News deal mentioning that was a way of Jeremy Boring and other people
00:21:04.100
trying to drum up interest in outside investment to the company to try and recoup some of those
00:21:10.600
Because whether or not they're in a great financial situation right now, we'll see if
00:21:15.260
that's true or not, that it is still a huge platform.
00:21:19.360
So if you've got outside investors to come in, they might be able to reformat things,
00:21:27.600
It remains to be seen whether that actually happens or not, or if any of this is true.
00:21:32.060
The other thing I wanted to mention was just, of course, Candace Owens talking about this.
00:21:36.040
She, fair play to her, was very, very down the line with all of this.
00:21:41.360
She did not go into any petty backstage rumor mill stuff.
00:21:45.620
But she did say that Jeremy Boring was a very, again, front and center CEO, which for
00:21:50.840
a person who, as far as I'm aware, was not a content creator like Carl was before he got
00:21:54.880
involved in the company, was very, very unusual.
00:21:58.020
We know that he wanted a career in Hollywood and he wanted to try to turn the Daily Wire
00:22:02.980
into his pet project for a big Hollywood film style production company.
00:22:07.580
And she also said it was always funny that whenever there was a product that they were
00:22:11.780
about to release, like the Razors after the Gillette controversy, and the chocolate bars
00:22:17.520
after Hershey's and everything, it was always somebody else's idea, according to Candace,
00:22:30.620
So, it does seem that him stepping back as the co-CEO might be a PR move.
00:22:38.440
It might also be to quell some of the issues that are developing within the Daily Wire.
00:22:43.140
Again, all we know is rumors and things that are coming from secondhand sources.
00:22:48.860
But with everything that's been said, the lineup, the personnel changes that have been happening
00:22:54.360
over the past year, I wouldn't be surprised if some of this turns out to be true.
00:22:58.300
He's obviously got a big personality, he obviously is a very, very ambitious person,
00:23:03.500
and that, in a company like this, can grind against people, and grind against the overall
00:23:09.080
ambitions of the company as it was originally started.
00:23:12.240
You start off as, we're going to be a conservative commentary channel where we do all of this
00:23:17.620
cultural stuff, and then he goes, I want to make movies.
00:23:22.880
That's a huge shift, especially when you're trying to stand up to, I think, the Snow White
00:23:27.120
announcement was in response to Disney's announcement.
00:23:30.580
You've also, as a political company, you've already disaffected, what, 50% of the American
00:23:39.120
So you've got a much harder job with a much narrower budget.
00:23:44.200
You've really got to thread a needle to make it work there.
00:23:47.040
Yeah, but to be fair to her, she said that whatever is happening behind the scenes, she thinks
00:23:52.740
Perhaps, again, also, there's also the fact that over the past 10 days or so, he has been
00:23:57.040
very aggressive towards people on Twitter, and I don't know if having the co-CEO of the
00:24:04.240
company, who's got such a public profile, getting into feuds with people constantly was maybe
00:24:14.340
It's not a good idea even if you're, you know, on your own, you're a solo act, you
00:24:18.640
Not that I would know about drumming up controversy on Twitter.
00:24:28.680
Most of the time, it's just people being annoyed at me.
00:24:33.200
Although my segment yesterday, I was having a go at someone.
00:24:35.200
I did manage to get into some trouble yesterday by just pointing out that most white Americans
00:24:49.140
Robert E. Lee's ancestors were from Shropshire.
00:25:04.940
Anyway, so, you know, everyone was being very even-handed.
00:25:15.820
I don't want people's careers to be destroyed if they do go under,
00:25:19.660
because there will be certainly a lot of really good people working in the company.
00:25:24.700
It remains to be seen if the rumors that are going around right now are true.
00:25:42.380
Harry, what is your opinion on John Cena's heel turn?
00:25:51.300
John Cena is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pull a heel turn like this,
00:25:55.900
because he's been a good guy, a very divisive good guy for over 20 years.
00:26:01.360
It's not even like Hogan in the NWO in 96, where Hogan had been a heel before.
00:26:07.300
John Cena was last a heel in like 2003, 2004, and it's his last year as a performer, even part-time in it.
00:26:16.640
So I think it presents a lot of really interesting opportunities for storytelling, especially with him lining up with The Rock against Cody Rhodes.
00:26:24.800
So I'm excited to see what they do with it, especially at WrestleMania.
00:26:43.320
The Lotus Eaters should enter the movie business and bring Conor back as Baldwin of Jerusalem.
00:26:48.300
I think that would be an incredibly risky investment and a complete waste of money.
00:26:53.080
It sounds like a great way for me to be unemployed.
00:26:56.400
Yeah, it sounds like a great way for me to be even poorer.
00:27:16.040
I'm going to talk about Assassin's Creed Shadows because it comes out today and I don't think you should buy it.
00:27:23.300
But what you should buy that there's no controversy around is Island Magazine because it's almost about to sell out.
00:27:29.600
So it's actually not got long left until you can buy it.
00:27:34.400
Once they're off of sale, you can't buy them again.
00:27:42.480
And there are lots of interesting articles from lots of prominent and interesting people.
00:27:49.060
And it also is getting to you very quickly, I hear.
00:27:52.160
I think even in the States, it's taking about a week.
00:28:01.180
And you can support us because we're all very poor.
00:28:12.680
We also have some t-shirts and mugs as well on there if you're not into reading, like me.
00:28:20.980
That's why I struggle when I'm reading the comments all the time.
00:28:53.620
The most heroic thing about this trailer is that they left the comments open.
00:28:57.020
Always remember the best part about a Ubisoft game is usually the trailers.
00:29:01.400
If you want Assassin's Creed in Japan, play Ghost of Tsushima.
00:29:11.800
I mean, fair play to them for not deleting them.
00:29:19.020
And of course, the main controversy at first is that the assassins are a black man and a woman,
00:29:31.720
And maybe there's historic precedent for women, but it's unusual.
00:29:36.540
And it seems to be that they're just pandering.
00:29:57.580
Again, this is the second time we've done that.
00:30:05.960
This is, of course, Tariq Nasheed turned into a samurai.
00:30:13.400
His conversion to a samurai was relatively recent.
00:30:21.920
So, this is African Hub, which posts loads of revisionist history.
00:30:29.060
Because there is no notion that this is AI generated.
00:30:37.060
But they're just like, the media will never tell you about this.
00:30:42.920
In the office yesterday, we had a genius idea, which is once we're in charge, we're going
00:30:48.960
to set up an enormous fund that will auto-generate this kind of propaganda and disseminate it
00:30:58.360
And we just have fun with it and see what happens.
00:31:01.700
Do you know that the first people on the moon were actually black?
00:31:10.060
The real Neil Armstrong is actually kept secret.
00:31:19.660
Why do you think he was able to take those big jumps on the moon, Josh?
00:31:29.420
If you disagree, you can do that somewhere else.
00:31:31.920
This was the Assassin's Creed moderators posting this.
00:31:34.760
Of course, the actual historic evidence is that he was a page boy or something like that.
00:31:40.920
You can find all of the written evidence that we have of his existence on his Wikipedia page.
00:31:47.020
And it's about five lines from people's diaries.
00:31:50.420
But from what I was able to gather, Oda Nobunaga kept him as a curiosity.
00:31:56.040
Similar to how Henry VIII had a black trumpeter.
00:31:59.100
How it's just like, look at me, I've got this interesting far-flung person.
00:32:06.720
But yes, this all seems to originate from this sort of thing.
00:32:15.860
Where he writes the true story of the legendary African samurai,
00:32:21.820
Let me just scroll down, because I just want to see.
00:32:34.940
Did he mix this up with the anime Afro Samurai?
00:32:40.980
But, he actually denied that he was a consultant for Ubisoft,
00:32:55.620
Lots of people are all of a sudden interested in the protagonist.
00:32:58.460
Yeah, I think he was also caught writing the Britannica,
00:33:11.460
And he was very clearly doing it just in time for his book to come out,
00:33:27.700
Citing his own book that hadn't even been published yet for the sources.
00:33:34.100
Companies like IGN that are known for being insufferable and pandering to wokeness said,
00:33:41.660
Yasuke, a real historical figure known as the legendary African samurai.
00:33:50.760
I think what people get mixed up on is Japan knows that there was basically a black guy
00:34:01.880
And they have incorporated the idea of a black samurai into a lot of their fiction.
00:34:07.480
Like in Sekiro, you can come across a black samurai.
00:34:23.100
An actual Brit who did actually end up becoming a samurai in Japan.
00:34:33.480
Oh, I guess he really must have been real then.
00:34:35.180
I guess he must have really been a samurai then.
00:34:47.720
Senior writer for Assassin's Creed Shadows declared,
00:34:50.560
There's more than enough games out there with white men as the only playable character.
00:35:04.960
Pretty sure Team Ninja are the ones who made it.
00:35:19.580
I think Ubisoft might have panicked because there was a paid shill here.
00:35:29.420
And he's also a former Ubisoft consultant and freelancer.
00:35:33.760
And he writes Polygon and IGN, which says it all.
00:35:36.500
He went and spoke to the New York Times saying that actually this was well received in Japan
00:35:41.780
and that criticism in Japanese was translated from English.
00:35:45.940
He was basically trying to say that it's all made up, which is not true.
00:35:53.660
And then there was this scandal where one of the promotional toys they made for the game
00:35:57.920
is a destroyed Tori Gate, which is only seen at Nagasaki as a war memorial for the atomic bomb being dropped.
00:36:04.820
And so having them like climbing over it and making light of it is a bit disrespectful.
00:36:14.080
It'd be a lot worse if it were an American company, but it's French.
00:36:17.120
So, you know, they got away a little bit with that one.
00:36:19.980
Also, some of the, I think it's one of the promotional books, an art book, has Qing dynasty patterns,
00:36:30.740
which if you're not an Eastern historian, the Qing dynasty was a Chinese dynasty.
00:36:37.080
And the female protagonist is meant to be written to be from Iger.
00:36:46.260
And they have their own famous style of pottery.
00:36:49.160
So they could have just included that and they could have built upon the world in an interesting way.
00:36:54.040
But instead, they covered their art book with non-Japanese patterns.
00:37:02.540
So Assassin's Creed, which used to be like, obviously there's sci-fi elements and everything,
00:37:06.420
but we try and make the historical setting as accurate as possible
00:37:09.240
to the point where in the first one they took out the crossbow
00:37:11.600
because it wasn't accurate to the time period in the Middle East at the time.
00:37:30.280
So you play a black man killing lots of Japanese people
00:37:39.600
If they made it Assassin's Creed New York, it would be very believable, wouldn't it?
00:37:43.380
Are we sure that Ubisoft aren't playing the biggest prank ever on all of us right now?
00:37:52.900
So there's also this fact that they delayed the game to work on it more
00:38:02.860
which is the anniversary of the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack.
00:38:12.320
And then whilst all of this controversy was going on,
00:38:15.540
Ubisoft declared that their leading advisors have been hired
00:38:20.060
to look at transformational strategies and capitalistic options
00:38:26.700
Scramble. Scramble for cash because this is going to be a disaster.
00:38:29.700
Yes. Also, they're obviously going to integrate horrendous monetization into it
00:38:36.740
I'm sorry, but Ubisoft just make empty games that are lifeless
00:38:40.680
but look good to someone who doesn't play video games very much.
00:38:45.180
The actual gameplay is for someone who's never played video games
00:38:51.220
I think the last Ubisoft game that I played that I really enjoyed was Far Cry 3
00:38:56.060
and that was the game that really set the template
00:38:59.680
for all of that open worlds going forward with the towers.
00:39:04.420
It was novel at the time and yet it is of a much higher quality
00:39:07.960
than a lot of the games that came out afterwards.
00:39:09.840
Although I heard some people say Far Cry 5 was all right.
00:39:15.700
but there was just so much boring stuff before you even get to the ships.
00:39:19.300
Pirate ship stuff was a lot of fun, but the game was easy.
00:39:23.040
I remember one of my housemates reminiscing about a moment
00:39:28.500
and I drank a bottle of rum and I was sat there taking on...
00:39:42.960
or a pretty big ship with about 30 crew members
00:39:55.300
I'm saying it's too easy, by the way, just to be clear.
00:39:58.660
I know there'll be people like, I don't believe you.
00:40:14.340
It's just that I'm taking my time and enjoying it.
00:40:17.760
He's trying out his play styles until he gets...
00:40:25.140
So I am not some sort of noob to FromSoftware's games.
00:40:35.880
saying we're not actually about historical accuracy.
00:40:41.000
that makes people interested in the time period.
00:40:45.960
the Japanese language version got community noted
00:40:59.580
And let's have a look at some of the comparisons.
00:41:18.980
the actual facial animations and things like that
00:41:43.480
Yeah, I still read the video game magazines back then
00:41:59.940
And now you can romance supposedly non-binary people.
00:42:59.560
This is the same thing that they were celebrating
00:43:13.860
Well, supposedly from people whose opinions I trust,
00:43:23.060
where there's a little bit of woke stuff inserted,
00:43:27.960
Yeah, I've seen a lot of discussion of that as well,
00:43:38.460
Yeah, because it's better to listen to something like that
00:43:47.800
It's better than those WWE audiobooks you listen to.
00:43:54.760
And yeah, just to put the final nail in the coffin,
00:43:58.420
here is their diversity, inclusion, and accessibility.
00:44:04.440
But what I found the most interesting about this
00:44:32.580
They've got an Asian and Pacific Islander group.
00:44:35.940
They've got a Latin American and Hispanic group.
00:44:42.080
They've got a Middle East and North Africa group.
00:44:46.560
And then they've got Women for Equity group as well.
00:45:03.960
the Japanese parliament actually discussed this.
00:45:10.960
they looked at some of the early gameplay footage
00:45:13.660
and raised concerns, particularly about the shrines.
00:45:18.320
And then a shrine from the guy who was talking,
00:45:29.300
the vice minister of economy, trade and industry
00:45:31.860
stated that unauthorized use of real world locations
00:45:36.980
And he got to the point where the prime minister himself
00:45:43.580
because they'd seen some vandalism on some shrines
00:45:51.620
And they're saying they're not going to remain silent
00:45:55.280
And people have to show respect for local cultures.
00:46:18.580
I don't know what the options are available to them.
00:46:28.120
It'd be a different place than they normally try to invade.
00:46:36.680
Two island nations joining together to bully France.
00:46:40.860
There's nothing better to bring nations together, is there?
00:46:48.700
And that's always been one of the Assassin's Creed game's
00:47:20.840
where it was limited enough that you had to have
00:47:27.080
And I think sometimes people are a little bit lazy these days,
00:47:30.600
I found this review because I'm going to go through some of the reviews
00:47:42.640
There are problems with Assassin's Creed Shadows, for sure,
00:47:53.020
If something's perfect, it doesn't have problems.
00:48:00.700
And then they also gave Dragon Age of the Veil Guard 9 out of 10.
00:48:07.020
They had a trans person to cover Dragon Age Veil Guard
00:48:11.640
because there's lots of gender ideology in there.
00:48:23.820
Remember, IGN, a games company that in 2007 gave God Hand
00:48:34.180
because they couldn't understand how to play it properly.
00:48:37.020
Yeah, they're not really worth listening to most of the time.
00:48:47.140
You're not going to get a breakdown of game mechanics.
00:48:49.520
You're not going to get a proper breakdown of the narrative
00:49:07.020
I think the best people are the independent YouTubers out there
00:49:12.900
There are quite a few of them that have got a lot of backlash
00:49:16.220
I know lots of you like it, but I personally don't.
00:49:27.640
You can just see here, they're all very positive.
00:49:30.420
It's almost like they've recognised the political...
00:49:38.960
but the political character that the game has now taken on.
00:49:42.660
And it's basically like you either defend this game
00:49:50.580
if it weren't obvious that these are all just people
00:49:58.380
they've not fixed any of the fundamental mechanics of the game
00:50:11.040
These are benefits for gaming journalists, though.
00:50:18.940
They don't have as much time to invest in them.
00:50:22.300
that they can breeze through the main story in a few hours,
00:50:27.620
and they will make their entire impressions from that alone.
00:50:57.620
Sekiro, obviously one of our favourites, Harry.
00:51:30.400
because it goes against my Dark Souls programming.
00:51:32.420
Is it more like along the lines of Assassin's Creed?
00:51:36.280
It is very much more like Assassin's Creed than Sekiro.
00:51:51.160
I've given you the reasons not to buy the game.
00:52:36.000
I am just a walking, talking packet of problems, me.
00:53:00.260
It's almost like we settled the continent or something.
00:53:14.140
and we're probably descended from the same people.
00:53:15.880
It's like you're trying to shake hands with them,
00:53:32.620
One of the more English areas of it, absolutely.
00:53:43.120
The rats are going to be kept away for one more night.
01:12:18.240
it's nowhere near the scummiest thing that anybody's ever done
01:12:22.220
call me in 20 years when he has an actual sex scandal where he's like
01:12:28.440
yeah then there might be a story here you want to see something that's actually terrible
01:12:34.540
I just wanted to remind everybody of this again again I needed to just pop it up again
01:12:40.840
because that is my favorite image to come from this whole thing it's amazing
01:12:47.220
so something that's actually terrible that actually does seem to be a crime that is going that has been going to be litigated soon which is destiny
01:13:21.180
he was in that open relationship with his ex-wife
01:13:25.160
he's known to have slept about a lot with girls who were basically trying to sleep with him to see if they could get a hold of his audience
01:13:33.440
well it's not for his body or his physique or intelligence
01:13:40.520
and women have actually been screenshot on discord talking about this saying that that's the exact reason that they did sleep with him
01:13:47.060
I remember seeing a picture of destiny at the beach
01:13:49.580
now I didn't look this up it came up on twitter
01:13:54.700
it actually led me to google whether he had any sort of heritable diseases or something
01:14:09.080
that is the sort of peak body type you would get