Hide in plain sight.
This core tenet of the Assassin’s Creed series has been a fundamental aspect of the franchise, owing to its emphasis on stealth-based gameplay, and avoiding direct confrontation whenever possible. While the first nine Assassin’s Creed entries (since 2007) relied heavily on its stealth component, the series adopted a paradigm shift from 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, charging down a more RPG-oriented path, combining traditional stealth gameplay with a deeper focus on combat.
Enter Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft Quebec’s latest take on the Assassin’s Creed RPG formula since its 2018 outing, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which finally brings the series to the most requested time period from the franchise’s legion of fans – feudal Japan. But this isn’t even the biggest change the new chapter will bring, as Shadows doubles down on its dual protagonist system, promising two differing playstyles to suit fans of both the classic Assassin’s Creed experience, and its newer RPG affair.
While the series is no stranger to having dual protagonists, previously introducing the concept with 2015’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’s Jacob and Evie Frye, Shadows takes things further this time around, offering distinct playstyles for both its heroes, the samurai Yasuke and shinobi Naoe, which aims to drastically change the way the game is played depending on a player’s choice of character, and from our four-hour hands-on preview session in Singapore, that was certainly the case.
We had a chance to check out two substantial portions of the game: A truncated version of the game’s prologue, and a lengthy free-form section taking place within Harima, one of the game’s nine regions, comprising of open-world exploration and a multi-layered quest set in the region, The Noble.

The prologue kicks things off with Yasuke, a slave and bodyguard of the Portuguese Church who arrives on the shores of Japan on a religious mission to secure the right to preach from the illustrious daimyō (powerful feudal lords) Oda Nobunaga. After their brief interaction, Nobunaga is amused by Yasuke’s size and takes him under his wing as a samurai.
The preview then skips ahead a few months later, seemingly saving Yasuke’s training and growth under Nobunaga’s wing for the game’s full release, to a battle to quell an Iga rebellion, offering a first look at Yasuke’s combat style. Fans familiar with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will feel right at home here, as it adapts the same core combat systems of blocking, parrying and dodging.
New to the game, however, is the inclusion of the armour meter for certain foes, requiring players to employ posture attacks – charged light or heavy attacks performed by holding down the respective keys – to effectively break an enemy’s armour to leave them vulnerable.

Combat in Shadows has evolved to become much more reactive than previous entries, requiring careful study of an opponent’s moves, and where button mashing will only lead to a quick death. For a man of his stature, controlling Yasuke feels adequately chunky, but for what he lacks in grace, he makes up for with pure brute strength, able to run straight through certain wooden barricades and doors with ease.
Amid Yasuke’s rampage, the preview then switches gears to Naoe, who’s on the side of the rebellion. The shinobi (a covert guerrilla warfare expert of the time) is tasked by her father to protect a mysterious box, the contents of which should never fall into the wrong hands. Although not revealed, it wouldn’t be surprising if the object within turns out to be a Piece of Eden, powerful artefacts created by the highly advanced Isu race that have been featured in past games in the series, including the Apple of Eden and the Spear of Leonidas.

On her way to the box, the game introduces players to Shadows’ stealth fundamentals, which build upon the systems used in past games with two new additions. Firstly, the introduction of a prone position, which allows players to further reduce visibility or hide among short grass, opening up more viable sources of cover and even enabling them to assassinate enemies from that position.
Perhaps the most substantial addition though, is the game’s new shadow mechanic, enabling Naoe to hide in any pockets of darkness during nighttime without being seen. This is represented by an on-screen visibility gauge, which changes accordingly to reflect how quickly an enemy can spot her, if at all. To this end, Naoe can also blow out lanterns or destroy them from afar with her throwing knives, creating areas of darkness which she can then use to move around unseen, a feature which harkens back to Ubisoft’s legendary stealth franchise Splinter Cell.

“It’s the fantasy of the shinobi, always hiding in the shadows and waiting for the opportune moment to strike,” explained Luc Plante, Level Design Director of Ubisoft Quebec in an interview with Geek Culture. “It was important to us to incorporate this as a game mechanic, and one of the investments we had to make to ensure that the game was more immersive and dynamic than ever before.”
Plante’s statement certainly rings true, as Shadows offers some of the franchise’s most complex stealth systems seen in recent years, presenting the player with the freedom to tackle situations from multiple approaches, be it stalking a target across rooftops, or getting up close and personal from ground level, extinguishing light sources along the way to remain undetected.

To this end, the latter was the personal go-to option in order to appreciate the newly added feature. Unlike past games where similar stealth runs involved hiding between bushes and cover spots, the dynamic visibility and prone systems meant that being out in the open was now a viable approach with clever management of light sources, adding a layer of flexibility and encouraging tactical thinking.
In direct contrast to Yasuke, Naoe is agile and acrobatic, enhancing the game’s tried and true parkour system with flashy animations like cartwheels and flips over objects and off ledges. While its core traversal mechanics remain largely unchanged from Valhalla, the addition of these animations makes parkour feel smooth and natural in comparison. Complementing traversal is Naoe’s grappling hook, which she can use to quickly climb up most ledges, or swing across large gaps.

While Naoe prioritises stealth, she can also choose to engage in direct combat in a pinch, with an entirely different fighting style to Yasuke that sacrifices defence for mobility. Naoe is unable to hold a constant blocking stance like her brutish samurai counterpart, instead requiring precision parries to deflect blows, or making use of swift dodge rolls to maintain her distance. Coupled with her smaller health pool, using Naoe in combat felt more akin to most Soulslike games, requiring more strategic positioning and situational awareness.
Ending off the prologue section was a cutscene featuring the game’s main group of antagonists, mysterious warriors donning animal masks that quickly overwhelm Naoe and her father, killing the latter and leaving her for dead, subsequently sparking off the game’s tale of revenge.
Eliminating members of the group, which is most likely a feudal Japanese sect of the Templar Order (a secret organisation and long-time series antagonist), functions as the game’s core story progression akin to that seen in Origins, with Yasuke and Naoe taking on various missions to thin their numbers one by one.

From the prologue missions alone, it’s clear that the team has made significant strides in terms of the game’s visual fidelity, especially during cutscenes. Simply put, Shadows features some of the series’ most impressive facial animations to date, conveying the subtle nuances of emotion that help to deliver an authentic tale of loss and revenge, which goes a long way in capturing the audience’s emotional investment in what would undoubtedly be a lengthy gameplay experience.
While its opening hours are presented in a linear and focused manner, placing players in the shoes of both protagonists on their individual quests, the game opens up after the conclusion of the prologue, both in terms of its open-world design and the freedom offered to handle subsequent missions. Jumping into the second preview portion, which occurs mid-game in the province of Harima, the proverbial leash was removed, and we were able to freely explore the region, discovering side activities while still being guided by the overarching The Noble questline.

For Level Design Director Plante, balancing the game’s nine regions to ensure that players will always have something new to discover was an important part of its development. “Each province provides a key theme, and Harima, for example, showcases the aftermath of Japan’s 150-year-long civil war, so we wanted to show the effects this had on the population living there,” he explains.
“Throughout the game, players will explore other regions too, each with its own varied themes like piracy, or trade control by the Japanese army. We wanted to make sure that every new region discovered offered something fresh while providing activities within each that are varied enough to provide new experiences but not too overwhelming for players.”

Exploring the post-war streets of Harima, overlooked by a towering castle and patrolled by town guards at every corner, one thing became abundantly clear. Whilst playing as Yasuke, traversal options between waypoints are severely lacking due to his hulking size, making him the first protagonist in an Assassin’s Creed game who’s unable to climb any wall or ledge taller than his height. Because of this limitation, he mostly resorts to travelling on foot or via horseback, navigating the tight city streets instead of leaping across rooftops like his shinobi companion.
This extends to the series’ trademark synchronisation points as well, particularly those perched atop large pagodas with only one direct way up. Due to this, players will need to swap over to Naoe, which can be done at any point outside of combat, making her their best bet for thorough exploration.

What he lacks in traversal options, Yasuke makes up for in terms of flexibility during combat encounters, as he is equipped with a choice of five main weapons. Possessing a long Katana, a far-reaching Naginata polearm and a heavy Kanabo war club for close encounters, coupled with a powerful rifle and longbow for ranged damage, Yasuke has all the tools he needs to effectively deal with threats from any range, and his heavy armour allows him to shrug most blows off easily, barring enemy heavy attacks and grapples.
Naoe on the other hand is more limited in her options, as apart from the aforementioned throwing knives mostly used for stealth takedowns, she only has three other weapons to choose from – a short katana, her fast-hitting Tanto and Hidden Blade combo, and a Kusarigama ball-and-chain weapon for crowd control. Notably absent in her arsenal are ranged weapons that can be effectively used in the heat of battle, making her more at a disadvantage when it comes to dealing with a mix of melee fighters and riflemen.
That being said, combat runs with Naoe are difficult, but not impossible. After testing out her capabilities in a variety of combat scenarios, her survivability in battle ultimately boils down to the effective use of her weapons to match each situation, alongside employing hit-and-run tactics. Still, players are better off avoiding direct confrontations altogether, leaving combat only as a last resort when all else fails.

Supplementing combat are abilities gained by spending Mastery Points earned from levelling up and certain side tasks, some tied to specific weapons and characters. Examples include a crowd-clearing circular slash using Yasuke’s Naginata and a quick flurry of strikes with Naoe’s Katana, alongside passive skills that extend weapon combos or even introduce new mechanics for its associated character. During the preview session, the points on offer were too limited to try out all the skills available, leaving a clearer understanding of progression for the game’s full release.
With Yasuke and Naoe, Assassin’s Creed Shadows presents a larger difference in playstyles compared to other dual-protagonist games in the past. The Frye twins from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate might have had varying abilities, but they were both functionally identical in terms of core traversal, with equal effectiveness during stealth and combat on a basic level whereas here, the distinction is much clearer, placing a larger emphasis on player choice.

This differentiation also extends to the game’s mission design, as rather than locking players to a specific character for certain missions, all quests after the game’s prologue can be tackled by both Yasuke and Naoe. Take The Noble quest line in the preview, for example, a multi-tiered mission which sees the duo uncovering the identity of a kidnapper, consisting of multiple instances that can be completed with either character leading up to a grand finale set within Himeji castle.
Even then, player choice remains at the forefront, with its concluding section being split into smaller portions too. Interestingly, while the overarching goal of reaching the top of a large Tenshu (Himeji castle’s keep) to eliminate their target remains the same for both, a player’s choice of character here leads to different objectives.

Naoe is tasked with assassinating three imposters scattered around the castle grounds, then climbing up the exterior of the Tenshu to infiltrate via an open window, while Yasuke takes the more direct approach, clearing the Tenshu’s base of enemy samurai, then entering via the front door and clearing out foes on his way to the top.
“We looked at each location in the game from a 360-degree approach to ensure they are suited to all play styles,” Plante explains, “Each character has tools at their disposal to access places the other cannot, Naoe with her grappling hook, and Yasuke’s ability to smash through doors. This way, we encourage players to look at a level’s set-up and assess the best tactic to move forward.”
At certain checkpoints between these events, players can even choose to change characters mid-way through, which switches up the objectives accordingly. According to Plante, almost all missions in the game employ similar levels of flexibility, which in theory makes this one of the most replayable Assassin’s Creed titles to date.

With the preview ending after a final confrontation at the top of the Tenshu, this brief taste only left more excitement for things to come, from the allure of earning additional skills to further improve Yasuke’s combat repertoire and Naoe’s stealth prowess, to discovering visually and historically enticing locations. With its heavy emphasis on player choice and flexibility to suit all play styles, the future of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, despite its name, seems brighter than ever.
Prepare to uphold the three tenets when Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on 20 March 2025 for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.