At the BAFTA Games Awards in London, I had the phenomenal opportunity to catch up with Masumi, the talented performer behind Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Naoe. The shinobi character took my expectations and firmly exceeded them, so much so that I labelled her the best Assassin’s Creed character we’ve seen in many years.
As I chatted with Masumi on the red carpet, I was curious to learn how she came to land the role of Naoe, given that it was her first ever job in video games.
What she revealed was quite surprising – but as I’ve learned, not entirely out of the ordinary.
Here’s the full video interview:
‘It Was a Gradual Realisation’
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has delivered on bold promises made by Ubisoft. It’s a stunning game with a solid amount of meat on the bones, and it’s a turning point of sorts for the series. My only hope is that Ubisoft can capitalise on the game’s success and keep the ball rolling.
I asked Masumi, who plays Naoe in Shadows, about how she landed the role and how it felt to be such a pivotal part of this transformation. This is her first video game role, after all.
I’m so honored. I didn’t know what Assassin’s Creed was before I booked it, because I don’t play video games, so actually, it was like a gradual realisation of what I’m a part of, and I just feel so excited and honoured.
I got an audition for it but I prepped the role just like I would for film or TV. I had to spend two years – actually I’m still on it, so it’s like a long time – developing this character, so I got to really dive into Naoe, which was amazing. It was so layered, her character was.
We also discussed some of the more controversial topics, such as the ‘shrine destruction’ theme that was aired ahead of the game’s release. She explained how she didn’t know those elements were present in the game, but they ‘hurt her heart’ to see them.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be expanded in the coming months by expansions, and I, for one, am very excited to see them and to continue down this path with Masumi’s character.
Let me know what you think about Masumi’s performance on the Insider Gaming forum.
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My husband and I have played about 15 hours of this game. For the first few hours we were questioning if the game’s voice overs were Al generated. Almost every line of dialog sounds like it was being read off of a piece of paper for the first time in one take. Like a middle school play or something. The facial animations are robotic and worse than a lot of last Gen games too, with characters yelling but their faces only half moving into the right emotion. The game world looks nice, but everything else about the game is pretty shoddy for a game with such a huge budget and dev time.