Assassin’s Creed Shadows preview

Naoe is definitely the textbook assassin in the game. She’s got the hidden blade and the hood to match, along with the excellent parkour skills that make the clay and straw roofs of 16th-century Japan her personal jungle gym. Yasuke is a Samurai, taken in and trained by Nobunaga because he takes an interest in his skin colour and warrior instincts. Before this, Yasuke served as a slave and bodyguard for the Portuguese church priests. He’s not trained by the stab-happy cult of Assassins or a family of ninjas so Yasuke cannot climb roofs and stab evildoers in the dark. He’s a 6-foot-tall tank that relies on his brute strength and precise katana swings to decapitate enemies.

The way you approach missions depends on which of the two characters you pick at the start of the mission and based on that, the bloodshed to the boss is going to be different. Neither of them can do what the other can and it’s this particular choice in gameplay with the two characters that makes Shadows such a compelling game.

In terms of story, we only got to play the prologue and while Yasuke’s story was straightforward, Naoe’s was a bit more tragic but nothing too shocking. A missing box and a dead father leading to a tragic initiation into the Creed? Now where have I seen that? Italy? Naoe's background seems a little predictable but we can’t judge a story from a four-hour gameplay so we’ll know in the full review.

Yasuke uses heavy weapons ranging from Long Katana, Naginata and Kanabo to Bow and Teppo (rifle). Yasuke’s combat moves are more destructive and brutal. He can jump forward and smash the Kanabo on the enemy and deal AoE damage as well or cut the head clean off an enemy with the Katana. He’s also efficient at breaking armour and can kill most enemies with two or three hits. If you get frustrated with stealth, use Yasuke to smash through doors and bamboo walls (yes, he can do that) and absolutely trainwreck the enemies. It’s a lot of fun!

Naoe is your cookie-cutter Assassin with Japanese ninja techniques. She’s very acrobatic and uses backflips and kicks with her weapons to deal damage. She uses a Katana, Kusarigama and Tanto (used with the hidden blade). Naoe primarily uses stealth and a new prone feature lets both, Yasuke and Naoe, stay out of sight better than crouching. She can even be prone and stay underwater in garden ponds to stay out of sight. These tiny ponds and rivers will freeze in winter which will limit her movements but we didn’t get to try that during our playtime.

 

 

 

 

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Naoe’s grapple hook lets her climb any roof with ease and she can even swing across some trees using the grapple hook. She also has Shuriken, Kunai and smoke bombs to take out enemies as stealthily as possible.

Each character has multiple skill trees for weapons and tools and you can unlock powerful moves using this skill tree. Naoe can call upon ninja allies to take down enemies for her while also having many interesting skills that deal tons of damage. Even Yasuke has brutal powerful abilities that we've seen in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

You can switch between Yasuke and Naoe at any point in the game but not during a mission. During open-world exploration, if you’re in an enemy zone that is marked red on the compass then you’ll have to leave the area to switch to another character. This means you cannot sneak in with Naoe and then switch to Yasuke for combat if you get caught in the middle of the mission. However, story missions progress as if both are involved in the mission so there are points in the mission where the game asks you if you want to continue as Yasuke or Naoe.

We played a main story questline called The Noble where we had to find out the main perpetrator behind an attack on your allies. The mission takes you clue-hunting across the small city of Harima and some choices in the game change certain interactions. For instance, I had a conversation with suspicious merchants as if I knew their plan and I just needed more information for certain reasons. This resulted in a non-combative interaction and I was able to get through to the other objective faster. Consequently, a creator next to me chose a different dialogue option and that interaction resulted in a fight. All roads lead to the same destination but the journey through your choices may differ.

We didn’t have enough time with the game to try another playthrough with a different choice but in the end, you do get the option to kill or spare the life of the perpetrator and that might change a few things in the game which we’ll have to see in the full review.

In terms of combat as well, charging in with Yasuke means you will have to fight everyone in your line of sight but it’s relatively easier to fight with Yasuke because he can take hits and can deliver hits. We had to climb a pagoda to the top where the perpetrator was hiding and with Yasuke, you literally take the stairs, fighting your way to the top but with Naoe you can simply parkour from the outside and sneak in from a small window to get to the top. It’s such a shocking change in combat approach with these characters that Shadows seems like it will be worthy of a replay even after you finish the game.

There’s a new dynamic weather system which changes the landscape in a few interesting ways. Firstly, moving to winter will freeze some ponds and water bodies, besides that, falling snow and icicles will alert nearby enemies of your presence. Thunderstorms, on the other hand, will hide your footsteps and make stealth easier. Foliage also changes with seasons with crop fields getting a harvest cycle and flowers bloom and change colours too. Your wanted status also resets.

You can also paint animals in a traditional Japanese painting style called Sumi-e. These black ink painting opportunities happen as you explore the world and come across animals in their habitat. You have to crouch and approach the animal from a safe distance before you can paint them. Rushing in will not work here.

As for mission objectives, Ubisoft has also added a new Scout system which lets you pinpoint enemy locations on the map. So if you’re feeling foggy from the clues on the screen, you can use a scout and select the radius in which you want them to search. It’s just one extra step for players who require some help from time to time.

There’s also base building in the game which we didn’t get to experience in the build that we played on. The game is still a work in progress so we’ll know more closer to launch.

Unlike Kassandra and Eivor who felt too brutish for an Assassin, Shadows is hoping to balance that open-world brutality of Odyssey and Valhalla with the tiptoeing stealth of Mirage. The setting is just perfect with the civil wars of the Sengoku period in 16th-century Japan serving as the perfect Petri dish for betrayals, bloodshed and brotherhood. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is shaping up to be a very interesting twist on the established formula, however, the story still seems to lean heavily into politics and sometimes you might just brush aside the character conversations as a means to an end. Hopefully, the full review might help us better understand the backstory and motivations of both the protagonists so come back soon for the full review when the game launches on March 20th.