https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/mar/17/its-been-a-challenge-assassins-creed-shadows-and-the-quest-to-bring-feudal-japan-to-life

From watching classic samurai movies to rendering the unique way light falls on Japan’s mountainsides and modelling individual characters’ socks, Ubisoft has spared no effort recreating a fascinatingly violent period of history

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.