As the period fans have been begging Ubisoft forever since Desmond’s first days in the Animus, Assassin’s Creed is finally exploring Feudal Japan with a new story and dual protagonist setup. Book-ending the Ubisoft Forward press conference and our last appointment of Summer Game Fest’s Play Days, Ubisoft invited us to take a deeper behind-closed-doors look at Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
During a guided presentation on PlayStation 5, Ubisoft presented an intimate look following the first assassination mission involving Yasuke, the more brash and directly honorable of the dual protagonists. Standing approximately six feet tall, Yasuke is head and shoulders above most Japanese retainers and common folk that adorn the streets of Fukuchiyama. As Ubisoft Quebec puts it, there’s no social stealth for Yasuke for quite obvious reasons. Each presentation has been quite cagey about bringing up Yasuke’s skin color despite it being such a notable part of the history that resulted in him being one of the first foreign retainers under Nobunaga Oda. Yet at the same time, the music that builds up once Yasuke enters combat infuses the traditional Japanese shakuhachi and koto melodies with hip-hop beats.
It was the second half of the presentation that deviated greatly from what Ubisoft Forward showed off with the mission to infiltrate a castle and eliminate an allegedly corrupt Lord Hayashi. In the moments leading into the mission, the UI is populated with hints about surface-level information about the target rather than just another icon for the minimap. As players walk through the level and eavesdrop on conversations, information populates. Eventually, the lord is indicated as spending time wandering through the nightly gardens due to insomnia, giving a clear indication of the end goal.
As Yasuke, players lose the assassination tools, such as the grappling hook and eagle sight, in exchange for raw power. Rather than trying to jump over and scramble over a locked gate, Yasuke can instead shoulder tackle and burst through like a wrecking ball. Yasuke can go loud and alert anyone in the immediate vicinity by utilizing a matchlock tanegashima rifle that tears through armor and bone alike.
His playstyle in combat is about as far from the assassin’s style as one can get. A massive studded club was Yasuke’s primary weapon in the Assassin’s Creed Shadows demos, which would be swung around like a baseball bat and squish ashigaru skulls like overripe tomatoes. For enemies that take more than a single strike to down, Yasuke’s mighty swings rip through the air and smash into their armor to strip their breastplates off in the streets. Charged attacks and a trio of special skills each operated on cooldowns mix up his brutish swings all the while having the fortitude to shrug off intense blows.
On the other hand, Naoe hearkens back to the more refined assassination styles. In addition to the single hidden blade, this plucky shinobi wields a shorter katana and a chain-and-sickle weapon called a kusarigama. With the latter, Naoe can swing a massive chain around for crowd control but also stun enemies with the weighted end before closing the distance and stabbing the foe with the sickle end (sometimes taking more than one stab to finish them out in brutal fashion). As a much smaller and more nimble combatant, Naoe does more with her agile frame to dodge and jump around the battlefield to sidestep enemy attacks that glow red (blue-highlighted attacks, on the other hand, can be blocked and parried).
Ubisoft Quebec omitted a year for the period during which this particular Assassin’s Creed Shadows mission took place, although there’s still a certain range of possibilities, starting with 1579, when Yasuke arrived in Japan as a Jesuit slave and sword-bearer for the missionaries who touched ground. The Honno-ji Incident of Summer 1582 marks the death of Nobunaga Oda, so I would narrow down the majority of Shadows’ storyline to fall within the three-year window.
In talking with other journalists, there was the concern that Ubisoft would provide a cold opening and tutorial segment with Yasuke in chains before being brought to Japan, but there would have to be a great degree of sensitivity and care that I feel an Assassin’s Creed title is not yet capable of portraying despite the multinational development cast. Similarly, the assassination mission presented an early encounter between Yasuke and Naoe to work as colleagues rather than competing anti-Templar fellows. In the art centerpieces featuring Naoe, she is marked by a scar below her right eye that seems indicative of a key moment or failed mission.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is looming on the horizon with a release that fans won’t have to wait much longer to check out. Ubisoft Quebec’s latest open-world action-adventure will be released on November 15th, 2024 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, PC (Luna, Ubisoft+ and Epic Game Store) and Mac (Apple Silicon), as well as iPadOS.
