Composers Joe Henson and Alexis Smith may have just accomplished a three-peat by scoring Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft’s latest entry in its long-running historical sci-fi series. Known as The Flight, the composers previously wrote the music for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (the multiplayer mode) and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, two games widely regarded as some of the franchise’s best. Reviews are yet to come in for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but Ubisoft’s ambition is on full display and The Flight are calling it “the one you’ve been waiting for.”

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set in feudal Japan in the year 1579 (21 years before the events of Shögun, for fans of that series) and breaks from series tradition by following two protagonists through its respectably long campaign. Players will switch between the Japanese stealth assassin Naoe and the real-life African samurai Yasuke, each of whom offers a drastically different playstyle. The Flight not only scored the individual stories of the game’s two protagonists, but crafted layered world and stealth music deeper than they’d ever attempted before and worked with top-tier instrumentalists to capture an authentic Japanese sound.

ScreenRant interviewed Joe Henson and Alexis Smith about their work on Assassin’s Creed Shadows and can debut a piece of music from the game. Check out “Morning Training” below, which is a perfect example of how the composers blended traditional sounds with modern sensibilities. Beyond that, the conversation stretched from the game’s deeply personal stories to how The Flight chose to score it like the science fiction narrative it is, canon mode or not.

How The Flight Journeyed From Light To Darkness For Assassin’s Creed Shadows

They Took A Bold Step Away From The Wide World Of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

The conversation began where The Flight left off: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. “Odyssey was blue and green and lush,” Joe Henson said, with Alexis Smith adding, “It was Greek myth. There were massive statues, and there were mythical creatures. This is a personal story. It’s darker.”

The time period made a huge difference to the composers as well. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is the earliest game in the franchise canonically, which led the composers to lean primarily on acoustic instruments. “That was so old,” Smith explained, “we took a journey to get to the more modern stuff.” With Shadows, he said, “We really wanted a modern, dark, contemporary score at the heart of it, with the influence of Japanese traditional instruments in there to give it that feeling. It still, for us, is a dark science fiction adventure.”

The Flight found inspiration across a range of media when shaping the sound and tone of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. They discussed the influence of Japanese cinema on Western films and reflected on their own experiences watching anime as children. Then, there’s Wu-Tang Clan. “Whenever anyone says ‘samurai’, the first thing I think of is Wu-Tang Clan,” shared Smith, with Henson adding, “In the pitch process … one of the first things we said was Wu-Tang Clan.”

“We’re not going to write music that sounds like Wu-Tang Clan,” Smith clarified, with Henson finishing, “It’s the feeling.” Given that Assassin’s Creed Shadows also has hyper-stylized, cinematic, and modern-feeling moments–certain combat moves briefly turn the world black and white with bold red sprays of blood–the choice tracks.

Character Led The Way For Assassin Creed Shadows’ Music

Both Characters Have Multiple Themes To Chart Their Long Journeys

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ two protagonists represent the Assassin’s Creed franchise as a whole. Players sneak around as Naoe much as they would have as earlier games’ Altair or Ezio, while Yasuke offers a gameplay style much closer to Kassandra/Alexios from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Eivor. Naturally, this provided an immediate framework for the composers.

The Flight began the process by coming up with themes for Naoe and Yasuke: “And not just one theme,” Smith said, referring to the pieces instead as story suites, “they’ve got journeys. We wanted to write a miniature version for each of their stories in order to give us the themes, sounds, and feels that we were going to need later on in the score.”

Smith and Henson pulled from more than Naoe and Yasuke’s stories (which they promised were very personal and emotional) even taking cues from their playstyles and animation. “Sometimes we just watch them walking around the world,” Henson shared, “and we can key off the pace of their walk.”

Naoe’s Strength, Stealth & Family Ties

The Flight Explain Both Sides Of Naoe’s Musical Personality

The musical details surrounding shinobi Fujibayashi Naoe were a steady focus of conversation, and with good reason: music is a big component of the character’s story. Naoe plays a clay flute (or tsuchibue) in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which gave the composers instant guidance when writing her themes. “Instantly, it was, ‘Okay, well, our main theme for her is going to be played on that,’” said Smith. It was a new experience for The Flight, Smith revealed: “We’ve never used that instrument before, and we know it’ll fit into this setting. We know that it’ll work.”

That flute was used to write a three-note motif dubbed “family motif” by the composers. According to Henson, “the idea is that that’s what they play to each other, so it had to be something really naive–that anybody can pick up the instrument and basically play it.”

Of course, people who buy Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be doing more sneaking than flute-playing as Naoe. The way the game seamlessly lets players slip into and out of stealth and combat presented The Flight with a challenge, with Smith revealing, “we hadn’t really done that kind of thing before in that way,” but the composers still put remarkable intention behind what players would hear, especially in full-on stealth segments.

“The stealth music for Naoe is very important,” Henson offered, unprompted, during the interview. The Flight have written plenty of stealth music meant to convey feelings of tension and fear, but Naoe offered a new opportunity. “She’s in a place of strength when she’s in stealth, Henson revealed, “This is what she does.”

In fact, the composers wanted so much to evoke Naoe’s inner voice that they wrote it a script. “There’s whisper dialogue, and it’s what she’s thinking while she’s hiding,” Henson said. The lyrics are in Japanese, the composer continued, but “she’s talking about ‘I’m hiding in the shadows, and I’m going to get you, and I’m going to kill you,’ though he was quick to add that “it’s more poetic than that.”

The Other Musicians Of Assassin’s Creed Shadows

The Flight Worked With & Alongside An Array Of Talent

Although they wanted a modern-sounding score, The Flight chose to incorporate traditional Japanese instruments. Luckily, Ubisoft had done some of their homework: “There’s a lot of diegetic music where people are playing traditional pieces in market squares,” Smith said, revealing “that wasn’t anything to do with us.” But it did give the composers leads on what instruments to incorporate into their work. Those included the aforementioned tsushibue, a bamboo flute called a shakuhachi, the stringed taishōgoto, and the shinobue transverse flute.

Henson itted that, on most games, he and Smith would buy and record new instruments themselves. For Assassin’s Creed Shadows, they found help in musicians like Keiko Kitamura and Hibiki Ichikawa, with Henson sharing that “we had to find master players, because [these instruments] are very difficult to master … luckily, we did.”

One of the other most notable musical aspects of Assassin’s Creed Shadows didn’t involve The Flight, either. Japanese-language rock music bursts through the speakers during certain scenes in the game, thanks to two groups. “There’s TEKE::TEKE, a Montreal-based Japanese psych-rock band,” Henson revealed, adding, “If you get a chance to see them live, they’re absolutely brilliant.” TEKE::TEKE is more related to Naoe, Smith revealed, while “Thunderdrum and Tiggs (Da Author) are doing more from Yasuke’s side.”

We’re Lucky Shögun Came Out Deep Into Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Development

“It Would’ve Been Too Much In My Mind”

In this writer’s opinion, “Immersive Mode” is the way to play Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Instead of having every character default to English, the mode ensures that every character speaks in their native language. It puts the player in a world that feels extra authentic–and inevitably will draw a few small comparisons to last year’s Emmy-dominating Hulu show Shōgun. “We were way into [development]” by the time Shōgun was released, said Smith.

“It was lucky, actually,” Henson itted, “because it would’ve been too much in my mind.” Ultimately, though, The Flight found validation in the score Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross, and Nick Chuba wrote for Shōgun: “It is a very modern score,” said Smith, “it almost said to us, ‘Yep. You’re doing the right thing. It works.’”

Assassin’s Creed Shadows releases March 20 for Xbox Series X/S, PC, and PlayStation 5.