Assassin's Creed Shadows Japanese voice actor says applying his native language to an English script about Japan was "an unusual and interesting experience"

Assassin's Creed Shadows screenshot showing female protagonist Naoe
(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Assassin's Creed Shadows is based in Japan, but the script was written in English, and the Japanese voice actors have shared their thoughts on working on the game.

In an IGN video, Mutsuki Iwanaka says: "When I was dubbing my lines, I could hear the English dialogue. Dubbing Japanese lines over the original English in this very Japanese setting made this an unusual and interesting experience."

The Assassin's Creed games are set all over the world, from Baghdad to Boston, London to Cairo. In the earlier games, even though they were originally voiced in English, characters still had accents that sounded region appropriate, but not all of the games are dubbed in the language of the locations they're set in, and I never thought about how strange that dubbing process must be.

Miyuri Shimabukuro, the Japanese voice actor for protagonist Naoe, says it was the romance options that challenged her. "Depending on the player's choices, Naoe may be involved in a romance thread," she explains. "So I had to think hard about how much of that essence to reveal as well."

Makoto Tamura, the Japanese voice actor for Nagato-no-Kami Fujibayashi, seemed to find the whole experience fairly easy. "As far as the tone of the vocabulary goes, the script had already been well translated," he says. "So all I had to do was read out the lines as they were and it was fine. I've watched period films since I was a kid and I love them, so the Sengoku Period vocabulary and samurai speak felt familiar. That part of the script came surprisingly naturally to me."

If you can't wait for Assassin's Creed Shadows, check out some of the best action games you can play right now.

Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

Read more
Naoe and Yasuke walk in the sunset in a screenshot from Assassin's Creed Shadows
Assassin's Creed Shadows' Japanese setting has been "very, very tricky" because Ubisoft wants to be "respectful" and "avoid telling a culture about their own culture"
Assassin's Creed Shadows cinematic screenshot
Assassin's Creed Shadows reverses roles to show off Naoe's combat and Yasuke's stealth, and I'm suddenly sold on playing Yasuke like a clumsy Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3
Assassin's Creed Shadows cinematic screenshot
Assassin's Creed Shadows forced Ubisoft to "craft the crap" out of its new-style open world, ensuring you won't have Points of Interest every 50 meters
Assassin's Creed Shadows cinematic screenshot
Assassin's Creed Shadows had to have 2 different characters because players want both stealth and combat, and you couldn't have both with just one
Assassin's Creed Shadows cinematic screenshot
Assassin's Creed Shadows director defends Yasuke's inclusion in the game from "noise online": "We know why Yasuke is in the game, we know how he fits"
Yasuke is clad in samurai armor and on horseback beside Oda Nobunaga, as they invade Iga province in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Yasuke not being an assassin in Assassin's Creed Shadows is nothing new, it's just the first time Ubisoft isn't in denial
Latest in Action RPGs
Atomfall screenshot
Atomfall dev doesn’t understand how massive development teams manage to keep organised: "How do you organize a game that has 2,000 people working on it?"
A Monster Hunter Wilds character holding binoculars.
Monster Hunter Wilds' final boss is even cooler than we thought: series experts point out attacks stitched together from iconic monsters throughout the series
Monster Hunter Wilds screenshot showing a chatacabra battling a hunter
Monster Hunter Wilds' new event quest is the best one yet: bully a Chatacabra for "a pile of Hard and Advanced Armor Spheres"
Zenless Zone Zero screenshot of Soldier 11 eating crackers
Actors supporting AI protections didn't know they were being replaced in Zenless Zone Zero update 1.6: "I found out the role was recast today alongside all of you"
Monster Hunter Wilds trailer screenshot showing a young woman with long blonde hair tied back into a ponytail smiling slightly, pumping her left fist in the air
Monster Hunter Wilds' infamously confusing menus spare no player, not even Gemma's voice actor herself: "This is honestly what I’m struggling with the most"
Monster Hunter Wilds
Monster Hunter Wilds players are tricking the action RPG into thinking they completed hunt quests in mere seconds using the power of poison ammo
Latest in News
Overwatch 2
My hopes for an Overwatch anime or Diablo horror movie are going strong as Blizzard president points out "we are Blizzard Entertainment, and not simply Blizzard Games"
The New Thunderbolts leaping into action
Marvel's New Thunderbolts* comic steals the MCU's asterisk, and the reason why is just as big of a mystery
Pokemon Go players brace for the worst as Niantic is sold off for $3.5 billion: "This game is entering its death knell"
Stamp PSP
A 16-year-old pitch for a newly discovered first-party PSP game has me mourning the death of PlayStation's Japan Studio all over again
Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3
Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion actor Neil Newbon says he "got rid of" agents who deliberately kept him away from video game gigs: "They just didn't want me to do it"
Mass Effect
Jennifer Hale says she didn't see a single line as Mass Effect's Commander Shepard until it was time to record: "It was all cold reading on the spot"