User:Soranin/Sandbox4

Store page

NAOE
Trained as a shinobi Assassin from Iga Province, Naoe Fujibayashi sets out to travel through Japan on a quest for revenge to honor impossible promise.

YASUKE
After becoming a loyal samurai for Oda Nobunaga, Yasuke finds a new purpose confronting the demons of his past.

BECOME A SHINOBI ASSASSIN
As the quick-witted and agile Naoe, use noise, light, and shadows to evade detection as enemies respond to their changing surroundings. Distract guards using kunai, shuriken, and smoke bombs, infiltrate enemy bases with your grappling hook and parkour skills, and assassinate your targets with the hidden blade.

BECOME A LEGENDARY SAMURAI
As the legendary and charismatic samurai Yasuke, strike your foes with brutal precision and power. Use his combat-oriented skills to attack, block, parry, and defeat your enemies. Master the vast arsenal of weapons at your disposal – featuring katana, kanabo, bows, naginata, and more – to free Japan from its oppressors.

Game page

A new creed rises
Live the intertwined stories of Naoe, an adept shinobi Assassin from Iga Province, and Yasuke, the powerful African samurai of historical legend. Against the backdrop of the turbulent late Sengoku period, this remarkable duo will discover their common destiny as they usher in a new era for Japan.

NAOE
Trained as a shinobi Assassin from Iga Province, Naoe sets out to travel through Japan on a quest for revenge to fulfil an impossible promise.

YASUKE
After completing his training to become a skilled samurai, Yasuke finds a new purpose confronting the demons of his past.

News post

The Late Sengoku Period

The development team was drawn to the late Sengoku period, also known as the Azuchi-Momoyama era, because it was full of foundational, pivotal events: the late 16th century saw three of Japan's most important and well-known figures successfully take power during an extensive Warring States Period. Social reforms reshaped and reorganized the land, farmers and religious leagues rose up to oppose powerful military clan warlords, and an artistic renaissance began that would later bloom during the Edo period. It was a dramatic era, full of contrast, and the threat of the Portuguese – who had reached Japan a few decades before – loomed large.

Yasuke: A Real-Life Samurai The decision to include a playable, real-life historical figure of this era in Assassins’ Creed Shadows was two-fold: Ubisoft Quebec wanted to include a Samurai, and Yasuke’s story was open-ended enough to allow for creativity; there are still plenty of questions and speculation surrounding him. The fascinating facts, though, were undisputable: of African origin, he arrived in Japan enslaved by the Portuguese; he impressed with size, strength, and wits; he served under the Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga. There must have been something exceptional about Yasuke to succeed in the service of a personality like Nobunaga’s, the team explains, and the goal has been to expound on this in Assassin’s Creed Shadows through his curiosity, openness, respect for values and tradition, valor, warmth, and charisma.

He also offers a unique perspective on the period: players can discover Japan alongside him. On one hand, he serves as a warning for the colonizing threat that the Portuguese present, and on the other, he adapted and thrived in Japan, and can be viewed as an example of the meritocratic structure established under Nobunaga. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, his historical story is established, and then developed and expanded from that point (the team won’t spoil how he’s linked to Assassin’s Creed’s lore; players will have to play the game to find out).

Naoe: The Blade of the People

While Naoe and Yasuke play very differently – Naoe is a shinobi who uses stealth, parkour, and gadgets, whereas Yasuke is combat-oriented and armored – the pair’s personalities ultimately complement each other to form a unique dynamic throughout Shadows.

At Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ start, Naoe is a 17-year-old from Iga, and the daughter of one of the era’s most iconic shinobi, Fujibayashi Nagato, who – despite a promise to keep her safe – is forced to train her to be his equal in battle. The team describes Naoe as ‘determined but compassionate,’ capable of taking down any enemy while showing compassion to victims of war and corruption. With her home province of Iga squarely in the path of Nobunaga’s conquest, she sees first-hand the destruction that war can bring, and vows to use her skills to help her people.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ dual protagonists are ultimately brought together by Nobunaga, whose goal of unifying Japan takes his army – and Yasuke – to the province of Iga for the Second Tenshō Iga War. The Igan resistance, though greatly overpowered by Nobunaga’s army, is courageously led by Naoe’s father. The two protagonists find each other through Nobunaga, although, for obvious reasons, they don’t exactly get off to a great start. The pair provide the player with opposing perspectives on Nobunaga and the means he used to achieve his goal of unification, and their overlapping perspectives throughout Shadows ultimately allow for a more nuanced look at the late Sengoku period.

The difference in their social stature is reflected in the world itself, which will respond differently to the player depending on who they are playing as. Naoe, for example, can present herself as a peasant and garner appropriate reactions; that is, if she wants to be seen at all. Yasuke, on the other hand, comes from a different land, but his status as a samurai garners respect from others, so people will bow to him on the streets. Characters can have different expectations of the pair, and in some cases, will prefer to deal with only one or the other.

Naoe and Yasuke’s disparate personalities also lead them to have different relationships and rapports with other characters, and they don’t always feel the same way about people, nor do people always feel the same way about them. Romantically, they will also attract and be attracted to different types of people. Through the pair, players will get to experience a multitude of relationships.

Who are Naoe and Yasuke?

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.

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 outfitit'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.

Explained

Naoe is from Iga, she is a farmer warrior, daughter of Fujibayashi Nagato. She is a capable person, let's say that. [...] she will be taking on a role of protector.

What we are looking at is the province of Iga, the homeland of Naoe. It's isolated, a little bit in the mountains, and they were home of the shinobi. They come from here, at least, a portion of them come from here.

So what we are seeing here are the troops of Oda Nobunaga. [Video has "1579: First attack by the Oda Nobunaga clan 1581: Second attack on Iga"] In 1579, there was a first attack from Oda Nobunaga's clan. And then in 1581, there was a second attack, a much more, violent one where Iga got crushed. And what we're seeing here is the Oda troops marching into the province of Iga.

[...]

So here we're in Sakai, a big port in Japan. The ships that we are seeing are Portuguese ships. They are, a version of the Black Ships or a lot of the merchant ships that were coming in and out of Japan at this point. A few came to Sakai, but mostly Nagasaki, but for the sake of the trailer it's happening in Sakai.

The person we're seeing on screen is Oda Nobunaga. He is known for being one of the three great unifiers of Japan, a very polarizing character, depending on which side you were. We're seeing Yasuke's first audience here with Oda Nobunaga, and one of the reasons why this meeting could even happen is due to Oda's deep relations with the Portuguese through trade, which resulted in him becoming quite a force to reckon with when it came to the use of teppo. All this to say, Oda Nobunaga's an incredibly powerful figure at the time, very important to our story as well.

There are a lot of speculation about Yasuke's arrival in Japan. The most common one is that Yasuke came in a couple of years before this meeting, and he learned Japanese quite fast. And he was very fluent into the Japanese culture. And that impressed Oda. So his stature, of course, impressed Oda, he was seen as super big. His skin color was one thing as well that the reports on the chronicle of Oda say that that was the first African man that Oda had ever seen. Oda asked him to stay with him, and this is what we know pretty much of the story of Yasuke.