It might have just been delayed for another month, but I’m pleased to report that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is shaping up to be one of the most promising games of the series so far. Having played around six hours of it at developer Ubisoft Quebec’s offices last week, Shadows doesn’t just look the part of a next-gen Assassin’s Creed game, but everything – from its revamped combat, customisable base-building, and its effective use of having two very different protagonists to play as – all comes together to make this feel like a tangible step forward from what’s come before. If you’re a long-term fan of the series, don’t worry – this is fundamentally still the same Assassin’s Creed you know and love, just with some playful new twists that come from some unexpected places.
For starters, there’s a new Immersive Mode option you can select before starting the game that automatically switches to the Japanese voice track, mixed with the period appropriate Portuguese – good news for those of you who want to go full Shogun ahead of its second season, as Shadows effectively covers exactly the same period of history here. It’s the kind of thing that probably always should have been in Assassin’s Creed games – and one I fully enjoyed during my playthrough – and game director Charles Benoit tells me it was in part inspired by watching Shogun himself. “It’s more immersive. So why not do that, and put it more [at the] forefront [of the game]?” he told me, saying it would be “a good thing” if future games in the series carried this forward.
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The biggest new wrinkle in the series, though, came partway through my preview, when I realised I hadn’t yet taken the time to climb up to one of the series’ trademark viewpoints. Having spent the first hour of my playtime trundling through the game’s thrilling, albeit linear prologue (which deftly sets up the back stories of both Yasuke and Naoe with the kind of dramatic flair the series probably hasn’t seen since the days of Origins), the next part of my preview brought me to the castle town of Himeji, now almost mostly fully tooled up and boosted all the way to level 25. I played as the samurai Yasuke to begin with, though a quick dip to the menu screen let me swap to the nimbler shinobi Naoe at any time. The story itself will also offer up several separate points to pick between the two of them as well, giving you the option to decide who to take forward in the main missions.
In fact, climbing up the shrine as Yasuke did actually prove a little challenging – or at least, not quite as quick and easy as simply zipping up there with Naoe’s grappling hook, which will latch onto appropriate surfaces with a squeeze of the left shoulder button. Once perched and in place, that classic Assassin’s Creed panorama spin kicked in immediately, revealing a gorgeous scene below.