Assassin’s Creed Shadows Makes Great Use Of Its Two Protagonists

Assassin’s Creed has been a household name in the gaming industry ever since it debuted in 2007. With a series focusing on stealth, trickery, and assassinations, you’d think there’d be an Assassin’s Creed game in Japan, right? It took a while, 17 years to be exact, but we’re finally here.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place during the Azuchi Momoyama period in the late 16th century when its contact with the Portuguese empire was at its highest. It follows the story of two people, the ninja Yaoe Fujibayashi and Yasuke, based on the real-life African retainer samurai. Anime News Network had the opportunity to check out a 30-minute gameplay session of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

The demo starts with Yasuke strolling around the town of Fukuchiyama Castle in the Tamba province. An interesting detail is that everyone stares at him, given his massive size, and that, well, he doesn’t look Japanese. While in town, he learns about Fujioka Jiro, a samurai who is stealing from the villagers. He then decides to assassinate Jiro himself.

This is where the game’s combat begins. As he approaches Jiro at the center of town, Yasuke pulls out a massive kanabo (spiked club) and brutally takes out Jiro’s henchman. Shadows also isn’t afraid of getting bloody. There’s even a finishing animation where Yasuke crushes an enemy’s head with the kanabo. Here, the camera zooms in to give the finishing moves an extra oomph.

Yasuke can also pull out his katana and slice off enemy heads, and the camera zooms in to give the action a bit more oomph. Ubisoft learned to be flashy by looking at other similar games like Sony‘s Ghost of Tsushima.

After taking Jiro out, Naoe joins Yasuke and they learn they have to get rid of someone higher than Jiro, the Daimyo Lord Hayashi. They both decide to infiltrate Fukuchiyama Castle, but only one can go at a time. We chose to go with Naoe, who specializes in stealth and speed. Under the cover of night, she sneaks to the castle’s outskirts and begins taking out enemies one by one with various kunai and shuriken tools.

Naoe also has a kusarigama that can choke out enemies if players want to incapacitate them non-lethally. Upon reaching Hayashi deeper in the castle, Naoe could hide in shallow water and breathe through a bamboo shoot, a cool stealth feature. Naoe can stick to ceilings upside down, similar to someone like Spider-Man.

After popping out of the water and assassinating Hayashi from behind, we had to navigate Naoe out of the castle while reinforcements searched for her. As we exited the castle, we were treated to a brief cutscene of her fleeing the scene safely.

The devs also replayed the mission and picked Yasuke instead. Here, Yasuke’s playstyle is wildly different from Naoe’s. Yasuke barges in during broad daylight and can completely overpower enemies. While Naoe has to climb around locked doors, Yasuke can run through them, further emphasizing the difference between their playstyles. Yasuke also has access to a bolt-action rifle that lets him kill enemies from afar, similar to Naoe’s shuriken and kunai. I liked how both characters had a variety of attacks to tackle each situation with, but it also made them feel balanced.

Yasuke then walks up to a trembling Hayashi deeper into the castle and assassinates him. Interestingly, the demo just ended there. We didn’t need to see Yasuke escape the castle for the mission to complete itself.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ dual protagonist system opens up the door for new gameplay possibilities. In the past Assassin’s Creed games, dual protagonists were limited to just picking your gender. However, Shadows manages to give both Yasuke and Naoe distinct personalities, which previous games in the series failed to do most of the time. I’m excited to see where the rest of the game takes me when it launches on November 15 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.