Assassin's Creed Shadows, the long-awaited murder-trip to feudal Japan, has finally been revealed in both a cinematic trailer and a breakdown of the new characters coming to the series: The shinobi Naoe and the samurai Yasuke, the first playable character in the long-running series to be based on a real-life historical figure.
Players will take on the roles of both Naoe and Yasuke over the course of the game in an "intertwined story" set in the late Sengoku period, each of them offering a distinct narrative perspective and gameplay.
"With our dual protagonists, we have two fantasies, the samurai and the shinobi," game director Charles Benoit explained. "We want the player to experience both, and we cannot squeeze both fantasies into one character because the samurai and shinobi came from different social classes. They have different lives. So we cannot really mix them together."
As implied by the trailers, the two characters have very different playstyles: Yasuke is a stand-up fighter, while Naoe is all about stealth. "It creates this distinction right away," Benoit said. "Yasuke can fight with all these advantages, in stature he's a big guy—he can break doors, he can fight multiple enemies, he can break armor. Compared to Naoe, her character and the outfit, it's really about being stealthy, being unseen. She's the only one with the hidden blade."
That definitely sounds more Assassin-like to me, but fair enough: Sometimes all you really want to do is whomp some dudes with a giant spiked club.
Today's announcement also confirmed the release date, which—like so much else—had previously leaked: Assassin's Creed Shadows will be out on November 15 and is available for pre-purchase now on the Ubisoft Store and Epic Games Store, and is also coming to Apple platforms via the Mac App Store.
