2025 Preview: Will Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ big delay be worth the wait?

3 days ago 37

Ubisoft finally answered the wishes of longtime Assassin’s Creed fans by setting the latest game in the series in feudal Japan. And hurrah! The fans are totally delighted with the results, and not complaining at all.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows features two central playable characters. Yasuke was a real-life historical figure, a rare African face in the staff of Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga. He is portrayed here as a samurai, which he may or may not have been in real life (although historians agree he almost certainly was), and is the tank character of the game, barrelling through bamboo walls and slicing enemies in two or bashing their faces to a pulp with a very weighty club.

He walks slowly and heavily, and strikes with force. This at least adheres to historical fact, as the few existing records of Yasuke include Nobunaga’s description of him as having the strength of 10 men.

Meanwhile, Naoe is a female shinobi, a fictional character who is the daughter of real-life ninja Fujibayashi Nagato, and who uses stealth to attack from the shadows. Gameplay shows Naoe sneaking across rooftops and striking in silence, using a hookshot, kunai and parkour to quickly clear out foes and evade detection. Naoe can even recruit scouts to help fill in routes on the map and locate her targets.

This dynamic combination of fighting and traversal styles will add rich layers of additional strategy to what was already a series that affords a ton of player freedom. Some missions will require players to use one character or the other, but others will allow you to choose between them, greatly altering the mission’s flow.

Beyond that, though, Ubisoft Quebec’s choice of protagonists allows them to show a very different side of feudal Japan than other similar recent games like Ghost of Tsushima and Rise of the Ronin.

On the surface, Yasuke commands respect from villagers simply because of his samurai status, but his background means some will always see him as an outsider, opening the door for a fascinating take on this period of history.

And while Yasuke’s imposing frame makes him stand out whether he wants to or not, Naoe is able to blend into the crowd, or to appeal to townspeople as a fellow peasant to get them on her side.

Nobunaga oversaw a period of much change in Japan. The game joins him towards the end of his reign (and his life), at the final stages of the Sengoku period of civil war, and it seems it will explore Nobunaga’s assault on Iga province and other historically significant battles that changed the fabric of Japan forever.

Yasuke reached Japan as a slave of Jesuit missionaries, and they, together with Portuguese traders, began to introduce Western weaponry and Christian religion to Japan.

As fans of the FX series Shogun will know, this exploration of various outsider classes has the potential to lead to a multilayered narrative that balances historical fact and fiction to satisfying effect.

After all, if you want to highlight a period when Japan was forced to embrace foreign influence, which it still struggles with today (trust me, I live there), then what better eyes to show it through than those of one of Japan’s earliest Black immigrants and his interactions with a Japanese woman warrior?

“As fans of the FX series Shogun will know, this exploration of various outsider classes has the potential to lead to a multilayered narrative that balances historical fact and fiction to satisfying effect.”

Assassin’s Creed Shadows also promises a rich open world to explore – and all of the footage we’ve seen in online videos and private presentations has looked gorgeous, with a lush recreation of the castle towns, grasslands and mountains of late 16th-century Japan.

Recent games in the series have been pretty, but Ubisoft Quebec has overhauled its Anvil engine to allow more detail than ever, allowing the series’ first ever current-gen-only entry take full advantage of the hardware.

Wind blows in real time, ruffling the foliage and sending springtime cherry blossom petals fluttering like snowflakes on the breeze. The game takes place over four seasons, lending not only a contrast of colors as red autumn leaves give way to wintry branches but also a change in stealth options as lakes freeze over, rooftops become slippery, and enemy patrol patterns change to suit the weather.

Despite the controversy around the game (which you should joyfully ignore), I’d argue Assassin’s Creed Shadows is shaping up to be an unmissable entry in the series, and a fascinating glimpse into a period of history that helped define modern Japan.