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[Castielle]

The following is an excerpt of a blog article.  Read Full Article

With the release of developer Team Ninja's new action RPG: Nioh coming February 7th, many people know about the game's challenging combat and bosses but the history of Japan in the Sengoku period may come as a mystery. Should you know nothing about it, Nioh on its own is still a wonderfully fantastic game. However, having some knowledge of the background and the characters, many of whom are actual figures from history, will markedly improve that experience even further. Let's take a look at exactly why Team Ninja chose this specific moment in history to drop you in to. Check out the ...

[Nahztek-Shadowpath]

Excellent read.

It reminded me of my days playing the first Samuri Warriors game. I didn't actually know that Nioh was taking a historical route with the story. And spicing it up with folklore?

I'm pretty excited about that.

[Fexelea]

Cas butchered some names, but this should help put some context to everything that'll be going on in the game. Keep in mind the Yokai folklore is not mentioned on the video because it is it's own beast.

Read the Nioh Lore Page to find out some more history details, specific Nioh Lore, and links to Yokai pages.

[Aiddon]

A bit of advice for Japanese pronunciation:

A = ah

I = ee

E = eh

O = o

U = oo

As for trivia

Hanzo - There were at least four men who carried the name Hattori Hanzo as Hanzo was a name given to the head of the clan. The first was Hattori Hanzo Yasunaga, the second was his son Hattori Masanari (died 1596), the third Hattori Masanari (different kanji, died 1615) who was the son of the second Hanzo, and he fourth was Hattori Masashige (Masanari II's brother, died 1652). The one in the game is the third Hanzo going historically.

Ginchiyo - Other fun facts about Ginchiyo was that she was quite a tomboy growing up, refusing to be "ladylike" and took interest in masculine practices. After becoming the head of the clan she actually trained her maids in swordsmanship and one famous (though unverified) story was that she terrified Toyotomi Hideyoshi due to the sight of her heavily armed maids. Strangely she and her husband Muneshige never had children, leading to theories of what their marriage was like.

[Fexelea]

Cas knows the above. I told him that he butchered the names but it was a lot of work to redo the video just for name pronunciation. I put on subtitles so turn them on to see spelling

[Fallenangel700]

Very cool. I knew William was a real person, I didn't know everyone else was too. I'll definitely re-read this when the game comes out so I can keep all these people straight.

[Castielle]

When you have to record like 15 times just to get one paragraph even that decent, you sort of just except that you'll be there awhile if you don't say good enough at some point. We put a disclaimer at the beginning because we knew I messed some up

Cas

[imacwesker]

Very informative, thanks for doing this video/text

[kyori]

it is a good thing that Team Ninja is teaching history but the consequence of mixing real life history with game stuffs to create an 'alternate universe' might result in kids next time teaching their kids about the fabricated game story of mixing oni etc into history, then from there every generation will have wrong conception of what is real.

[TheEndingDay]

Not saying that's not exactly an issue, Kyori, but I know in my experience with games that follow a historical narrative, I've often been interested enough to look up the real history and delve into it. That's by no means a universal experience, but it makes me wonder about the young'uns, and whether or not a significant number of them might do the same, to some degree. It's definitely easier to do so these days.