Assassins Creed: Shadows – Hands-on Preview

Assassin's Creed: Shadows - Hands-on Preview

On January 15th I was invited to attend an Assassins Creed: Shadows preview event at Ubisoft offices in Sydney with special guest Luc Plante, the Level Design Director on Shadows who had flown in from Quebec to take myself and a host of press and influencers through one of the most hotly anticipated AC settings of all time. Requested heavily by fans and internally at Ubisoft, Assassins Creed: Shadows envelops players in Feudal Japan, specifically the year 1579 during the final stages of the Sengoku era and the same period in which FX’s award-winning series Shogun takes place. In Shadows, players are driven to seek vengeance on a veritable rogues’ gallery of antagonists which appear to draw heavily from the work of classic western and samurai film directors like John Ford, Akira Kurosawa and later Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone that influenced one another greatly during the mid-20th century.

AC Shadows Naoe Blade

Before our extended four hour play session, there was a short presentation by Luc which delved into a lot of the design philosophy behind Shadows and what the team were hoping to achieve, highlighting some of the new and refined systems Shadows will introduce. The dual protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke, serve to realise the player base’s fantasies of playing as a shinobi or a samurai respectively in the Feudal Japan setting. Rather than having a single character proficient in two vastly differing skillsets, splitting the playstyles into a stealth focused character and a melee focused character allows players to switch freely between them or play exclusively with one, as the storyline adapts to whomever is being controlled at any given point and removes the need for a second playthrough to experience all the content Shadows will have on offer. Jettisoning a last gen console release has allowed Ubisoft to enhance not just the visual aspects of Shadows but also many of the systems which underpin much of the gameplay for a richer experience, most notably in regards to the way stealth is handled.

 

We were given access to two different sections of Shadows to play; an hour-long prologue introducing the overarching storyline and those of Naoe and Yasuke, as well as a larger section further into the game taking place in and around Himeji Castle which gave a feel for the new way quests proceed compared to previous entries. The wider map showed a number of nearby locations including Kyoto, Nara and Osaka, albeit not to scale – Ubisoft have condensed where necessary to represent much of Japan in a world similar in size to that of Origins. The prologue succeeded in ushering me into the world of Shadows, with a balance of drama and mystery around the … shadowy antagonists, leaving me keen for March 20th to see where the storyline takes these characters. It also helps to give players a taste of how Naoe and Yasuke function before choosing whether to switch between them at regular intervals or focus on one completely.

AC Shadows Yasuke

When kicking off a new game, players can choose from two options which have a significant bearing on the experience; Immersive Mode and Canon Mode. Immersive Mode has all dialogue performed in native Japanese and Portuguese, localised in English subtitles, while Canon Mode removes some dialogue options and player agency around story choices to present a sort of ‘directors cut’ of the narrative experience. Immersive Mode is a great way to thrust players into the world of Shadows and is something I wouldn’t be surprised to see backported into other entries in the series where possible, also serving to highlight the sheer number of voice actors projects of this scale require to provide the necessary audio for the many localised languages. Of perhaps greater interest to long-time AC fans is the main menu of Shadows itself, the Animus Hub, which offers access to the major series releases of the past eight year: Origins, Odyssey, Mirage, Valhalla and of course Shadows. While I shudder at the required storage space of keeping all of these titles on hand, it’s an excellent way to consolidate the series on digital storefronts and encourage players to revisit earlier titles.  

 

Shadows handily lives up to its name thanks to a new dynamic lighting system, providing the cover of darkness for Naoe as she skitters across rooftops and lurks in the darkened corners of buildings and gardens. Many lanterns and candles can be extinguished by hand or with a ranged weapon to facilitate a sneaking shinobi, who might also prefer to wait for the cover of darkness, fog or even pouring rain to obscure her movement, with an added ‘prone’ position bringing Assassins Creed ever closer to the glory of Metal Gear Solid. Both Yasuke and Naoe can now swim underwater for periods of time to add yet another point of approach to their arsenal. A few substantial shake-ups to the tried-and-true formula, nevertheless Ubisoft haven’t stopped there.

AC Shadows Naoe

A new ‘dynamic seasons’ system serves both a gameplay and cultural function, as Japan is well-known for its distinct seasons that form the basis of many celebrations and practices throughout each year. Verdant green fields and blooming Sakura blossoms filled the areas in and around Himeji Castle which the provided vertical slice centred around. While this build only offered spring or summer, we were shown a number of images of autumn and winter which provide conditions that complement the effects of lighting and weather on gameplay. Crunching through autumn leaves scattered across the ground is a quick way to draw enemy attention, while a trail of footsteps in the snow will surely be found and followed. The plummeting temperatures of winter will freeze ponds and lakes alike, granting new pathways for an enterprising assassin to take advantage of. Without a doubt, Shadows is one of the most atmospheric Assassins Creed games ever crafted, as cranes majestically fly over rice paddies and fields of swaying silver grass, while Shiba inu dogs run through town streets, monkeys hide amongst forest foliage and koi swim gently through lily-padded ponds begging the player to make them the subject of a sumi-e ink painting. Assassins Creed: Shadows showcases the natural beauty of Japan at its most picturesque across every season, something citizens and travellers alike will attest is a highlight of any journey there, digital or otherwise.

AC Shadows Naoe Winter

While it might seem that most of these new and improved features are geared towards benefitting Naoe and a stealth playstyle, it feels necessary in many ways to balance out the increased combat difficulty – no two ways about it, Naoe is not built to handle hordes of enemies and is a classic ‘glass cannon’ character type. Yasuke on the other hand is able to handle numerous foes far more effectively, charging through sturdy wooden doors like they were little more than a nuisance and hoisting foes skyward on the end of a naginata. 

In the hands, there is a sharp contrast between the way each character handles and how suitable they are for different encounters. One particularly nasty ambush saw Naoe leg it out of a temple from a horde of attacking shinobi which gave me pause to wonder whether Yasuke would have needed to do the same thing, or if he could have simply made short work of them instead.

A new approach to Quest design that Shadows takes also facilitates and encourages the use of both characters depending on mission requirements. The questline in the preview build, titled The Noble, tasks players with discovering the culprit behind an assassination attempt and subsequent kidnapping of an important political figures’ son. Rather than a straight line from mission to mission, Shadows wants players to buy-in to the world and look more closely at their surroundings, giving general guidelines or an area as to the final location rather than simply marking it on the map. For example, one suspect was noted to be located in a gambling den, which was marked in a broad area of the town, but due to the sort of establishment wasn’t in plain sight and thus had to be sniffed out. One of three possible ‘leads’ I could follow, completing a mission could play out in different sequence depending on what task sounds more enticing – sneak around a large temple, dodging guards while ferreting out clues or mete out some punishment to thugs shaking down a suspect’s wife? In many ways, it’s a simple restructuring of the way each prior game has handled giving the player tasks to complete, but one that feels far more natural than bouncing from checkpoint to checkpoint.

AC Shadows Noble

When examined individually, none of these changes appear hugely substantive, yet cumulatively Shadows feels like the biggest jump forward for the Assassins Creed series in terms of design ideology since Origins, successfully attempting to break away from some of the more stale gameplay elements of the franchise they’d never quite managed to shake off in Odyssey and Valhalla. Following multiple delays and the underperformance of Star Wars Outlaws, all eyes are on Ubisoft to deliver a product that proves they’ve still got what it takes in the AAA space in 2025; if the rest of Assassins Creed: Shadows matches the five hours I spent with the game, the wait will have been well worth it.

 

Assassins Creed: Shadows launches for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X on March 20th. Player2 attended the Assassins Creed: Shadows preview event as a guest of Ubisoft, with the majority of our interstate travel costs paid for by the publisher. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was previewed on the PC platform.

Have you seen our Merch Store?

Get 5% off these great Arcade Machines and help support Player 2

Check out our Most Recent Video

Find us on Metacritic

Check out our Most Recent Posts