Assassin's Creed Shadows Fixes The Series Protagonist Problem

Summary

Assassin's Creed has struggled to balance action gameplay and stealth sequences in ther games.
Giving us an all-action samurai and stealthy ninja fixes this problem.
If you can't see that because one's Black and the other's a woman, that seems like a you problem.

The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Shadows 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:reveal trailer has only been out for a day and it is already annoyingly impossible to discuss anything 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:withouꩲt getting involved in deeper discour♚se. So here goes: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I don't really know much about Yasuke and how 'true' a samurai he was, but then, the trailer doesn't reveal much about Yasuke's role in the story or Japanese society either. The fact he's a 'shadow' does imply a more hidden role in history. In a series where gods are aliens and you fistfight the Pope, playing as a Black man just isn't a dealbreaker for me.

It's also worth pointing out that we have played as an African man in an African Assassin's Creed (Bayek in Origins), and that when the game was set in the Caribbean, we were Welsh. Shadows is already drawing comparisons to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima, and playiꦆng as a♈ Japanese man might have exacerbated this.

But we aren't just playing as Yasuke, we're also playing as Naoe, a ninja armed not with a sword, but with the classic hidden blade. Given how obviously influenced by ninjas the entire iconography of Assassin's Creed is, it's odd that we haven't been one so far. And it's this split between the characters that I find most interesting - I hope that isn't derailed by outrage that one character is Black and the other is a woman.

Assassin’s Creed Has Tried Two Protagonists Before

The two protagonists of Assassin's Creed Shadows side-by-side. — Image: IGN

Assassin's Creed has struggled in the past to get the 'two protagonists' system right. In Syndicate, we could switch between the two Frye twins at will, but they never felt like two distinct characters, just an avatar for the player's preference. Origins technically had two but was almost all Bayek, and Odyssey was Syndicate all over again, though with a bit more difference between the two leads. Valhalla strangely complicated the issue, making you one character who could inhabit both genders in a way that eventually made lore sense but seemed to be scratching its left ear with its right hand. In Shadows, finally, it feels like there are two fully-fledged lead characters.

Though the trailer doesn't include any gameplay, it feels like there is a much firmer split between the two styles of play. Assassin's Creed is part action, part stealth, and much like with dual protagonists, has struggled to get the balance right. A major complaint with Valhalla was that it was all-action, which makes sense for vikings - not famous for their quiet grace and stealth. But Yasuke and Naoe could represent this division perfectly.

Yasuke, a sword-wielding samurai, offers a more action-led approach, chopping down enemies with a slash of his sword as blood sprays across his mask. Naoe, the hooded ninja, lurks in the shadows and on rooftops, ready to swoop down and strike in the darkness, disappearing before the victim even knows they're dead. How much Ubisoft commits to this is to be seen, but these two feel like distinct characters with unique styles of play that both fold into what players want from Assassin's Creed.

Assassin’s Creed Heading To Japan Makes A Decade’s Worth Of Wishes Come True

Naoe in Assassin's Creed Shadows. — Image: IGN

For so long, fans have been crying out for an Assassin's Creed set in Japan. The Chronicles spin-off set in China is the closest we've come. It felt as though the idea was resisted because it was too obvious a destination for the historical jet-setters to hit up, but after growing increasingly large and losing its footing under its own weight, a crowd pleaser is a solid bet.

On the one hand, I have the same concerns that I had over Sifu and Ghost of Tsushima - this is a Western development team telling an Asian story, and cultural sensitivity has not always been a strong point there. On the other, the trailer doesn't fall into tired tropes about 'honour' and parodies of the samurai way, and there's no heavy-handed Kurosawa Mode filter anywhere to be seen, so for now, that's a bullet dodged. Ubisoft has been clumsy on political issues in the past, particularly in Far Cry, but this seems more character driven than a love letter to a weeb's dream of the East.

The choice of Yasuke and a female ninja shows some creativity too. While Yasuke's story has been explored in the recent Netflix anime, he's not the typical choice of protagonist for a samurai game, and neither is a female ninja. Some will cry foul and DEI wokeness, and these characters aren't inherently good just because they're diverse, but it does suggest that Shadows is trying to tell a more unique story than a standard tale of samurai honour.

Yasuke and Naoe seem to better fit the tenets of Assassin's Creed's work in the background to nudge the course of history in new directions, and after feeling underwhelmed by Valhalla, I'm firmly back on the Assassin's Creed train. After so many attempts, it seems to understand the purpose of dual protagonists, and I can't wait to see more.