One of the major things pointed out by the community during the extended gameplay reveal of Assassin’s Creed Shadows was their feelings toward the dual-protagonist model, favoring the stealthy gameplay of Naoe over the combat-focus of Yasuke. Well, it turns out most of the game can be played as one or the other without “hard gating.”
Associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois spilled the beans during a VG247 interview explaining the team knew stealth and combat were two needed elements. In order to not rock the boat too much, though, most of the story can be played as one character, though players are incentived to try the other as you can discover loot for the other character throughout the adventure.
Comtois labeled it as a “balanced approach” and lets the characters “kind of progress together.” This reveal does alleviate some unsavory elements of the experience, mostly the concern that the game’s bog-standard combat would slow the game down and change its core, which was always supposed to be stealthy.
“It’s a balanced approach. Most of the content can be played by either character, and there’s no hard gating that says this is a Naoe thing. Story moments are character-focused, but the rest of the game is open, and progression incentivizes you to switch because when you play just one character for a while, they will pick up stuff for the other character to use. So both characters kind of progress together.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place in Feudal Japan focusing on shinobi Naoe and samurai Yasuke. Both have starkly different play styles, with Yasuke being more combat-oriented while Naoe is a lot more stealthy, based on the gameplay we’ve seen.
Pre-orders are live and we can a map size similar to Origins. Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on November 15 on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.
