‘It's been a challenge': Assassin's Creed Shadows and the quest to bring feudal Japan to life

The Guardian

17-03-2025

More than four years after its announcement and after two last-minute delays, the latest title in Ubisoft's historical fiction series Assassin's Creed will finally be released on Thursday. Set in Japan in 1579, a time of intense civil war dominated by the feudal lord Oda Nobunaga, it follows two characters navigating their way through the bloody chaos: a female shinobi named Fujibayashi Naoe, and Yasuke, an African slave turned samurai. Japan has been the series' most-requested setting for years, Ubisoft says.
"I've been on [this] franchise for 16 years and I think every time we start a new game, Japan comes up and we ask, is this the time?' says executive producer Marc-Alexis Coté. 'We've never pushed beyond the conception phase with Japan until this one."
The game comes at a crucial time for Ubisoft after the disappointing performance of last year's titles Star Wars Outlaws, Skull and Bones and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and the expensive closure of live service shooter XDefiant. There has also been a furore over the game's Black and female protagonists, with the usual rightwing YouTubers criticising them as 'woke' and historically inaccurate, despite the fact that female warriors fought throughout the feudal period, and that Yasuke, the game's Black samurai, is a historical figure.
It is something the team is keen to address. 'In-house historians were some of the first people to get staffed on the production team,' says creative director Jonathan Dumont. 'A huge data bank is continually fed. As we get a sense of the era, the research effort then requires the help of specialists from around the world, including Japan, to narrow down details or understand finer cultural points.'
There were also field trips to the game's key locations of Kyoto and Osaka, which revealed elements the team hadn't thought of. Coté recalls travelling to Japan to show local colleagues some technological breakthroughs the development team had made with lighting on landscapes. But they all shook their heads and said it wasn't working. 'I was like, 'Why?!'' he says. 'And they just replied: 'That's not how light falls on the mountains in Japan.' So when our art director was there I asked him specifically to go look at the mountains. He went, took reference photos, and now we've captured it.'
The team also had to render individual characters' socks, because they are always depicted removing their footwear when entering a building. 'The expectations have been this high throughout. It's been a challenge.'
Like all the previous Assassin's Creed titles before it, Shadows uses authentic locations and historical figures to seat the game's time-hopping narrative. Takeda, Fukuchiyama and Himeji castles are all replicated along with the villages, ports and rural landscapes of Central Japan. But as ever, this is first and foremost a game about sneaking over rooftops and skilfully taking down enemies. In a demo we played just before release, the lead characters are assaulting Himeji castle, and you can choose to play either as Naoe, skulking in the shadows using smoke bombs and silent attacks to escape detection, or Yasuke, running in with his sword and lopping off limbs. While Ubisoft has put immense effort into capturing the Azuchi-Momoyama period and the nature of the Iga peasant class (the possible origin of the modern ninja archetype), what matters equally is how good it feels to leap off a rooftop and decapitate a passing enemy.
In many ways, it seems the game draws as much from modern cultural depictions of the period and its warriors as from history. 'Japanese storytelling has been very influential to the development of the game and to all occidental arts in general,' says Dumont. 'Kagemusha from Kurosawa, 13 Assassins, Zatoichi, Sekigahara, The Tale of Genji or Musashi from Eiji Yoshikawa, to name the more obvious, have [all] helped shape our vision for the game. Even Studio Ghibli movies such as My Neighbour Totoro have helped us understand the countryside and vegetation.'
It's certainly an interesting time for Shadows to release. Multiple high-profile failures of recent live service games have left players yearning for the era of big single-player adventures, with decent sales reported for Obsidian's recent RPG Avowed. Meanwhile, the huge success of FX/Hulu's Shōgun series has brought feudal Japan back into the cultural spotlight, and its story of stranded English navigator John Blackthorne becoming a high ranking samurai somewhat reflects that of Yasuke.
The game does look beautiful, with intricate environments, a dramatic weather system and incredibly bloody combat. Ubisoft has survived a difficult period; a lot now rests on its most treasured possession.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is released on 20 March for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox. Keith Stuart attended a press trip to Kyoto with other journalists. Accommodation and travel expenses were met by Ubisoft