ranzware
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has a lot riding on it. Between its multiple release date delays in response to Star Wars Outlaws not selling as well as Ubisoft would’ve liked, and Ubi potentially being bought by Tencent as they clamour for help, there’s a sense that Shadows needs to deliver not only a great game, but corporate redemption.
I’ve now played Shadows for four hours, having dipped into a bit of prologue action, some open world exploration, and a questline as both the hulking Yasuke and the lithe Naoe. Have Ubi delivered? I think there’s a strong chance. What I played was a lot of comforting Creeding, carried along by a gorgeous interpretation of Edo Japan, and some subtle tweaks to up stealth stakes. Although I do think the two protagonists are a split personality that doesn’t quite work for me.
To kick off proceedings, I was thrust into around 90-minutes of the prologue where I could get a feel for both of Shadows’ characters: 1) Yasuke, an outsider who’s recruited by famous shogun man Oda Nobunaga and 2) Naoe, a young village ninja who’s given the power of the hidden blade early doors. You learn that Yasuke is a hulking brute who prefers to lop heads as opposed to twist them, while Naoe treads lightly and fulfils the more traditional assassin role.
Yasuke was the more compelling of the two early on, as he’s a measured individual whose morals are tested by an early village slaughter he’s forced to play a part in. That village being Naoe’s, whose background is tragic, yes, but she’s – not that Yasuke’s storyline isn’t smoothed and TV-ified for an easy watch – a bit simple Shounen anime-y in the way she has a hard resolve and will stop at nothing to protect what is right and good.
It was a solid enough intro that gave us the skinny on Yasuke and Naoe’s playstyles as we transitioned into the longer open world portion of the demo. It was here where I could bang open the map and go, “ah yes, it’s fucking massive”, as I zoomed out to see multiple zones all with their recommended levels. Kyoto, Iga, Yamato, Tamba, countless others. I, however, was in Himeji, a region unlocked a few chapters after the prologue, which meant I was a bit lost as to the story and where I sat level-wise in relation to everything else. Still, I could look at my inventory and go, “ah yes, the rarity rainbow”, as I sampled my Legendary Katana of Gout with gold border and requisite stat boosts (I am a sicko and I do actually like this, to be fair).
On the other tabs of the menu, a tease of the Hideout system, which we only sampled ever so slightly. But it seems like a remix of Valhalla’s home hub creation, where you’ll contribute to its renovation like an extra savings pot over the course of your day to day kill jobs. There’s a dojo where you can recruit pals (more on this in a bit) and a place where you can hire more Scouts who act as consumables in the map screen, granting you the equivalent of objective marker shortcuts so you don’t have to look at the list of things like “He wears a top hat/He lives to the East of Lawson/He likes Pocari Sweat” to figure out where your target is.
Again, if it all sounds a bit familiar – that’s because it is. Shadows is still very much the Assassin’s Creed template overlain in a lovely Japanese setting. Granted I only had limited access to the game’s open world activities, but the main quest I tackled had your typical AC rhythm. Rock up to, say, a gambler’s den that immediately goes hostile once you cross the guards’ threshold. Stand on a ledge. Mark enemies. Mark the gold glinties that signal loot. Look for the blue glinty that signals the main objective. Crack on. Prior to that, you might clamber up the area’s viewpoint to see all of the map markers and go, “that’s very pretty”.
Is the typical fare mind numbing? No, actually, I found myself enjoying it. A past me may have called it tedious for not pushing the boundaries enough. But the current me? I have come full circle to my Assassin’s Creed Odyssey days and think it’s actually just a lot of fun ticking off bits and pieces. Here’s a bell curve meme that perfectly sums up where I am now in my gaming life and does apply to the rarity rainbow I mentioned earlier, too.
True-ish change lies in the dual protagonist thing, in that you can switch between Yasuke and Naoe at fast travel points or during pivotal story moments. Whenever I chose Yasuke, though, I always felt like I’d chosen the most boring, cheapest option to complete a scenario. I say “true-ish” because I feel like the dual protagonist thing is less of Ubi crafting two completely different characters and more of them splitting, say, the all-rounder Eivor or Cassandra into two parts. No you’re not overpowered anymore, but I have to say that I do miss the flexibility offered in the past.
What this means then, is Yasuke being a bumbling heap of flesh when it comes to stealth and an absolute weapon when it comes to head-on clashes, so it forces you to largely meet guards and tackle those setpieces in endless fights. Again, it’s similar to Valhalla and Odyssey here: light attacks, heavy attacks, parries, some fun skills (a big kick, a quick slice) when those meters build up. All impactful and occasionally tense if you’re up against a boss, yet a bit one note. Granted you can try stealthing with him, but he’s terrible and lacks the quiet pads of Naoe to make it much fun.
Naoe was my go-to pick for largely any quest moment where I was like, “I doubt this will lead to a pivotal one-on-one battle”. Where Yasuke can’t scale high places with a press of the parkour button, Naoe can. She whips out a grapple to scale those spots. She doesn’t clunk around, and has “Eagle Vision”, letting her see through walls to highlight enemies. She can fling shurikens to knock folks dead from afar and has a bunch of abilities that make her assassinations sneakier (we couldn’t mess around with the skill trees, sadly, but they seem like familiar fare). It just felt like the right way to get the most mileage out of Shadows’ scenarios.
For instance, I could’ve blazed through some quests where I’d need to clear out shrines and dens as Yasuke, but all of them would’ve played the same: a bash and crash. But as Naoe, those same scenarios had some depth to them. A bit of crawling in brush, some blowing out candles to keep hidden in darkness, chucking a shuriken through a paper wall, opening up trap doors and doing ankle assassinations. Even just the classic bush-to-bush-and-whistle trick was a laugh.
And Naoe’s more fun, to a certain extent, because stealth is possible and she’s capable of surviving a scrap, even if it’s a bit tougher for her. If you get caught, you can whip out a Tanto (small sword) for some acrobatic swings or the Kusarigama (my fave, and nice to see a familiar friend that features heavily Nioh series make an appearance here) that’s like a sickle with a long chain attached, and on the end of that chain, a heavy ball. This enables you to swing it overhead, lashing groups or yanking them into you for a quick sickle stab. Get hit, though, and you’ll take far more damage than Yasuke, so you’ve got to play very carefully – or flee and regroup.
Oh and quick note on that Hideout (see, I didn’t forget, nosiree) perk. One of them is building up a Dojo of pals, which you can seemingly call onto the field like you would a skill in combat. As Naoe I remember thinking, “Huh, I don’t think I can murder that lad over there without giving away my position”. So I tried calling in my pal, a ninja who stepped out of the shadows and buried a shuriken in the guard’s head for me. It was neat and played into the fantasy of Naoe having developed her band of merry assassins.
As time in the demo ticked down, I decided to do a bit of trotting around on my horse and sample a bit more of Himeji and the surrounding area. As someone with Japanese blood running through my veins, I was suitably impressed. I think what really got me going wasn’t so much the landmarks (they were beautifully rendered), but more so the attention given to the quieter, inbetween scenery. That appreciation of Japan being this wonderful cohabitation of frantic crash and easily found quiet if you go off the beaten path for a couple of minutes. Workers toiling in swaying rice fields. Quiet stone paths leading up to serene shrines. Shaded forests. Fisherman drying squid on racks, as the waves lap.
A lot of the open world tick-boxy stuff wasn’t available to try out, which made it seem a bit emptier than the full game. However, there were a couple of things to do. I could pray at shrines and sneak up on animals to observe them, before whipping out a pad to paint them for reasons unbeknownst to me. There was also a “Tachi” master I stumbled into, who Yasuke is apparently searching for, but I couldn’t interact with them.
Do I think Assassin’s Creed Shadows will begin Ubisoft corporate redemption arc? I don’t know about that. But what I do know is that they’ve seemingly got themselves a strong chance of bagging those sales. It’s familiar fun in a setting that’s – in my play session at least – brilliantly realised and will cater to people who can’t be arsed with stealth or can be arsed with stealth, even if it’s a bit rigid for my taste. Really, I think the win for my play session was how easily I fell into play once I sat in front of the screen. I just cracked on and enjoyed myself and didn’t think, “eh, I’ve had enough of this”, despite burning out on Valhalla.
Kurt Indovina
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