Assassin's Creed Shadows: Who Are Naoe and Yasuke?

With our dual

protagonists, we have two fantasies.

The samurai and the shinobi,

we want the player to experience both.

And we cannot squeeze

both fantasies into one character

because the samurai and shinobi came from

a different social classes.

They have different lives,

so we cannot really mix them together.

The historical character of Yasuke

presented a really exciting opportunity

for the narrative team.

We approached it

in the same way that so much of the work is done

in Assassin's Creed,

which is really

in terms of research and history first.

Not a lot is known about him,

but what we did know or we do know

is that he arrived in Japan in 1579 right

when our game starts.

And that he had relationships

with some of the most interesting people

in our setting, like Oda Nobunaga,

the Portuguese and Jesuits,

which made it very sort of tantalizing

and enticing

from a narrative perspective to come in

and start weaving these facts

with story in between.

The more we read that

about the character,

the more he was inspiring for us.

He's a foreigner discovering Japan,

and we thought it's the perfect fit

because he's discovering Japan

and you are discovering Japan also.

And on the flip side,

we have Naoe,

who comes from the province of Iga,

which is a remote mountainous area, fiercely

independent

and known as the birthplace of Shinobi.

So they're very contrasting perspectives

that really expose

a lot of different sides in facets of the era.

When Oda came he completely destroyed Iga.

You have Yasuke and Oda,

they are coming to destroy the shinobi.

So it kind of create this

this interesting tension between two characters.

We were able to connect her

to the province of Iga

in the legendary Igan Shinobi historical figure

Fujibayashi Nagato who's her father in the game.

So we understand why she has the skills

that she has

and the values that she learns from her father

and the people of Iga,

which are valor, benevolence and wisdom.

And as a young person

still at the start of the game,

we get to see Naoe

we acquire even more of that wisdom

as the story unfolds.

And if you ask anybody, it's super clear

that samurai will be combat heavy

and the shinobi will be stealth heavy.

It creates this distinction right away.

Yasuke can fight with all this advantage

in stature like he's a big guy.

He can break doors,

he can fight multiple enemies he can break armor.

Compared to Naoe,

like her character and their outfit

it's really about being stealth being unseen.

She's the only one with the hidden blade.

So they have clear advantages

that put them in the stealth and the combat,

even if they can do a bit of both.

They're really great paired together

because on one side

we have Naoe, who's very intense and passionate

and determined woman who is very

set on her goals, and she's kind of

got her heart on his sleeve

and she'll say, What she feels

in the heat of the moment and this intensity

that she brings as a shinobi

but that she also brings to her relationships

and this balance is very well with Yasuke,

who is sort of a thoughtful

level headed to Naoe’s fiery passion.

We really thought about somebody like Yasuke

historically who was able to come to Japan

and have the life that he did there

to enter service for Oda Nobunaga and achieve

all of the things that he did -

Like what kind of person

would go through all of this?

So our Yasuke is very intelligent, thoughtful

and respectful of this culture

that he encounters,

and that makes him a very nice

sort of counterpart to Naoe.

He's a bit mysterious as well,

and that's something we get to see

unfold as the game progresses.