Assassin's Creed Shadows will be the first new entry since 2020's Valhalla. In that game, players had to choose at the start whether to play with a female or male main character (Eivor Varinsdottir), but in the new installment, there will be two separate protagonists: the shinobi Naoe and the samurai Yasuke.
In case you were wondering to which extent Assassin's Creed Shadows will dictate who you're playing with, associate director Simon Lemay-Comtois told GamesRadar that players would be able to stick with their favorite protagonist for most of the game if they wish.
If you want to be only one character, you can for most of the game. So we're not really strong-arming anyone to switch back and forth. There are setups that are definitely better with Naoe, such as, if there's a bunch of bandits in a cavern that is very, very dark, sure you can go with Yasuke, but if you go with Naoe, it'll be quicker because it's in the dark. So there are some hints like this, but other than story missions that are particularly tailor made for one or the other, we don't specify who needs to be played at this moment, it's up to the players.
This is a similar approach to Marvel's Spider-Man 2, another game with dual protagonists in which you could play as either Miles Morales or Peter Parker during most of the open-world missions.
In case you're interested in the differences between Naoe and Yasuke, our freshly posted Assassin's Creed Shadows preview from Summer Game Fest outlines them very clearly:
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)
In the aforementioned Gamesradar interview, Simon Lemay-Comtois also talked about introducing a more enticing exploration loop that rewards gathering information in a Sherlock Holmes-like fashion.
Early on, we decided to break the rules as much as we could on the conception of Assassin's Creed Shadows. So we tried to go and change the formula as much as we could. That's one of the places where we've heard the criticism, we ourselves wanted to push the exploration to be more engaging to the player, to want to discover things rather than just sinking into something and being fed information. So it's something new that we try to work into the game. And since it's working, we kind of built it throughout all the quests and the missions that you can do in the game. Now, I will say there is still a guided mode that players can opt into, which is more classic. It will tell you where to go and stuff like that, but the basic mode, our new exploration loop, is more about playing Sherlock Holmes a little bit and having to work for the reward at the end.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is set to launch on November 15 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, Mac, and iPad.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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