Assassin’s Creed Shadows has finally taken the series to Japan after being the most requested region for the assassins to venture into since the series first started in 2007. Like its open-world contemporary Ghost of Tsushima, it takes a lot of inspiration from Japanese media, with both games pulling heavily from Akira Kurosawa’s films for their vibes (Ghost literally having a ‘Kurosawa mode’). However, as it turns out, Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ flashback sequences were actually inspired by a common storytelling trope in various anime series’.
The game features a number of flashback sequences to help players learn more about Naoe and Yasuke. Naoe’s missions have her remembering what happened in her homeland, while Yasuke’s flashbacks show some of his life before he arrived in Japan. When speaking to GamesRadar+, Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ creative director, Jonathan Dumont, revealed some more inspiration behind these scenes.
When asked how Ubisoft decided to tell a lot of Naoe and Yasuke’s story through flashback sequences, Dumont told us, “I think it comes from watching a lot of anime.” and explained that anime series’ are “masters of exposing background character stories through flashbacks to expose missing pieces of character motivations.”
Dumont didn’t just take a page out of anime’s book for the storytelling method for the sake of it; the director explained that it was also used to help out with the game’s pacing. Dumont said, “It also helps to have a faster action pacing and then slow down at key moments to learn about characters.” Interestingly, Dumont also revealed that Yasuke wasn’t originally planned to be in the game, but the team wanted to include samurai tropes. Rather than kill the shinobi fantasy by making Naoe have access to tank-like abilities, Ubisoft settled on its dual protagonists.
