This article contains SPOILERS for Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
The Assassin’s Creed series is renowned for including a vast array of historical cameos, from Benjamin Franklin to Napoleon and a fair few in between. But some of the series’ most ingenious integrations of history are when major real-world events are woven throughout an Assassin’s Creed game’s main story. For instance, Assassin’s Creed 3 sees players partake in the Boston Tea Party, AC Odyssey sees players fight in the Battle of Themopylae, and AC Unity sees players escape from the eponymous prison during the Storming of the Bastille. Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ story has plenty of similar moments.
Beginning in the year 1581, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set at the tail end of the Sengoku period, an era of near-constant conflict and civil war among Japan’s daimyos and clans. The start of Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ story follows Oda Nobunaga’s war to unify Japan, which is suddenly cut short by an event known as the Hanno-ji Incident, which players get to witness first-hand.
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The Real-World History of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Hanno-ji Incident Explained
Setting The Stage for Betrayal
Having just decimated the Takeda clan, Oda Nobunaga had become the most powerful single daimyo in all of Japan by the year 1582. In an attempt to seize control of Japan in its entirety, Nobunaga sent his top generals to invade each of central Japan’s key provinces, which had already been weakened greatly by their own various internal conflicts and wars with other hostile clans.
Believing his ultimate goal of unifying Japan was finally within reach, Nobunaga returned to Kyoto. Upon hearing that the Mori clan had higher numbers than were first thought, Nobunaga sent Akechi Mitsuhide to bolster his forces in the Chogoku region. Nobunaga planned to join them, but first he would rest at Hanno-ji, a nearby Buddhist temple.
The Death of Oda Nobunaga
With the vast majority of his army and generals fighting in distant regions, Oda Nobunaga had little protection in his own capital. Akechi Mitsuhide wasted no time in acting upon this temporary weakness. Mitsuhide marched his 13,000-strong army into Hanno-ji temple, and Nobunaga’s minimal defense was no match.
Within just two hours, Akechi Mitsuhide’s siege of Hanno-ji temple was complete. The walls surrounding the temple were decimated, and the temple itself was burned to the ground. Oda Nobunaga’s body lay inside, lifeless, with the betrayed daimyo having committed seppuku.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Interpretation of the Hanno-ji Incident
A few hours into Assassin’s Creed Shadows, player-character Naoe is summoned to a meeting with Akechi Mitsuhide at his castle. Here, Naoe is told that Oda Nobunaga is the head of the Shinbakufu organization that killed her father, and she agrees to help Mitsuhide bring an end to Nobunaga’s reign.
Naoe sneaks behind Oda Nobunaga’s defense at Hanno-ji with ease and confronts the daimyo while Mitsuhide’s forces attack. Nobunaga tells Naoe that she’s been deceived by Mitsuhide, that he was the one who killed her father, not him. Distraught, Naoe leaves the temple as it burns. Oda Nobunaga commits seppuku, with Yasuke performing the role of assistant, reluctantly severing his master’s spinal cord.
- Released
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March 20, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language