Assassin's Creed Shadows Preview: A Leap Of Faith For Ubisoft

Once upon a time, there was nothing more thrilling than the prospect of an 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed set in feudal Japan. Ubisoft’s stealth-action series has always been about letting its audience loose in ꩲsprawling historical periods with a slew of toꦐols, outfitted for murder and espionage.

It seemed perfectly befitting of the samurai and shinobi power fantasy, not to mention the piles of iconic figures from real history and a comprehensive folklore that Ubisoft could pull inspiration from. But it’s been over a decade since players first expressed that desire, and in the years since, we’ve seen games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima excel, while Ubisoft has evolved Assassin’s Creed from a standalone series of action-adventures into gargant🦩uan RPGs demanding every piece o🃏f spare time you have.

Knowing all this, I was unsure if Shadows was capable of being the game we dreamed up in our heads a🐻ll those years ago. But after four hours with it, it may just have a chance.

A Tale Of Honour, Revenge, And Parkour

My hands-on preview took place in two sections. The first is a complete playthrough of the prologue as Yasuke arrives in Japan for the first time to meet Oda Nobunaga and becomes a retainer♒ to the shogunate. Second, shinobi-in-training Naoe finds herself caught up in a conspiracy involving the Templars that puts her highly-skilled family right at the centre of the action. After learning the ropes (and in many cases, climbing them), getting to know characters and meeting a cast of evildoers you will doubtless murder in the dozens of hours to come, I’m thrust forward deeper in the campaign to explore the western region of Harima.

The prologue centres around the hunt for a box containing an important object that is never🐠 revealed to the player, but the characters are willing to kill for it. I bet it’s yet another Piece of Eden-esque MacGuffin design൲ed to drive the plot forward.

Naoe receives her hidden blade in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

While I didn’t see the moment Yasuke and Naoe befriend one another and become unlikely allies, I was able to witness them work together during an extended questline which granted the ability to switch between them at the touch of a button. Unlike past entries like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Syndicate or Odyssey, where you picked a character at the very b🐎eginning or certain protagonists offered distinct missions, Shadows is trying to strike a balance between the two⭕.

You will meander through cutscenes before being presented with an option to play as either Yasuke or Naoe, and how you decide to tackle objectives or defeat your enemies will vary significantly depending on this decision. Naoe is a ninja who operates in the shadows and throws kunai into the skulls of her enemies, while Yasuke is strong enough to ღsprint through doors and kick brutes from castle walls as they plummet to their deaths. Instead of giving us a single protagonist we can shape to our specific playstyle over the course of the campaign, Shadows aims to be more defined and deliberate, while giving the capabilities of our heroes a narrative purpose.

Yasuke and Nobunaga prepare to storm a fort in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Yasuke can take on countless enemies in a fight𒁏 and live to tell the tale, while Naoe is easily overwhelmed by a handful of hits if you aren’t expertly dodging every str🅘ike.

I admire this approach, although when there isn’t enough variety in the combat to justify the existence of one character, let alone two, part of me is concerned whether this experiment is going to result in more♋ repetition than innovation. During the preview build, we weren’t able to heavily customise our loadouts beyond weapons and armour, meaning I was limited to kicks and strikes, which are executed by holding the shoulder button and pressing one of four face buttons before abilities enter a cooldown phase.

Naoe and Yasuke surrounded by a swirling rainbow ribbon

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You can string abilities together with normal light and heavy attacks alongside parries to break armour gauges and murder foes with glee. There will hopefully be more variety in the full game, but when I’m already feeling bored in a single region, this doesn’t bode well for an experience 🅠that wants to spread its combat across two characters and several dozen hours of playtime.

Thankfully, Shadows is still visceral and stylish in the ways you’d want it to be. Dismembered limbs and gnarly beheadings are common sights, and when performing special moves♑, the screen will briefly change into an enrapturing splash of greys, blacks, and crimson reds to mimic classic Japanese cinema.

A Surprisingly Grounded And Alive Open World

Yasuke prepares to take on enemy shinobi in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

If Ghost of Tsushima’s brief glimpse of Japan was a stylistic homage to the works of Akira Kurosawa, Shadows feels more grounded and considered in its depiction. At least, it does right now. What I saw of its world feels more alive and compꦏrehensive than Sucker Punch’s depiction, with NPCs able to react differently to my behaviour depending on whether I’m Yasuke or Naoe, and animals galloping or flying past me as I hide in tall grass and clamber up the sides of buildings. It presents a take on this setting I cannot wait to explore, bolstered further by familiar – but refin꧋ed – traversal mechanics while placing greater focus on surfaces you can climb.

When the cabal of baddies is introduced at the end of the prologue, however, there is a definite S💛eventh Samurai vibe to the entire ordeal. Like you are starting at the bottom and must work your way up to take on the world. If only I cared about the characte💖rs.

Naoe prepares to assassinate a target in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Yasuke is a bulky boy wearing several layers of armour, meaning he🐼 is unable to clamber up sheer surfaces or use a grappling hook to reach higher ground, but he can run through walls or doors, knocking them to pieces and creating entrances that Naoe doesn’t have access to. One is a brutally aggre𓃲ssive tank who can take on armies while the other can move through the night without a peep, entering guardhouses and outposts to steal loot and leave without a trace. It distils the two modes of gameplay that Assassin’s Creed has always been about, and maybe splitting them into two characters and forcing us to embrace them is what was needed.

The ability to finally go prone is a game changer for stealth, turning what has long been a pattern o🍸f hiding in tall grass, whistling🐈 to get an enemy’s attention, and stabbing them into a far more compelling cat and mouse affair.

The player chooses between Yasuke and Naoe before a mission in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

As for exploration, Ubisoft is building upon the greater autonomy of past games by trying to avoid outright telling the player where every objective is by putting an icon on the map. You will instead be given hints such as the location of a character, what they are doing, or what might be r❀equired to achieve specific objectives. It encourages you to explore the world on your own terms, appreciating the scenery and experimenting with mechanics instead of just going from one place to the next.

Or, you could sod all this and pay for scouts to explore the map for you and indicate exactly where the objective is. You only have limited quantities of scouts to use at any given time, but this feels like Ubisoft’s way of trying t🐭o expand its open world formula while still making it accessible for those who want to keep consuming content, no matter what its purpose.ꦗ I’m not sure if you can have both without making it feel awkward.

A World Is Nothing Without Its Story And Characters

One of my overriding concerns with Shadows right now is its lack o🍸f personality. Everything about it, from its perspective on 🍌Japanese politics and dual protagonists, is very cut and dry. There wasn’t a single moment of humour or levity in the four hours I played, with each line of dialogue delivered with dry determination and a focus on exposition over immersion. Neither Yasuke or Naoe were sold to me as people, just spectres to house game mechanics holding onto backstories so generic that nothing about them made me care.

I watched as Na🌱oe lost her father and was forced onto a road of redemption, but I didn’t know enough about her to feel any sympathy. Yasuke, meanwhile, is eager to abandon his Portug🍃uese captors to be his own person under the tutelage of Nobunaga, even if his skin colour paints him as an outsider. Both are compelling foundations to build characters on, and I pray the full game is able to deliver on that potential.

How you are able to express yourself as Yasuke and Naoe also leaves much to be desired. Dialogue options are now chosen from a BioWare-esque wheel, and it appears there will be moral decisions to make that impact the narrative and how yo🍷u are viewed in the world. It’s the impression I got at least, but the one major choice I was allowed to make regarding if a target I hunted down was allowed to live or die was taken away from me. I decided to spare his life, only for the game to go ‘oh, but he needs to die for the story to progress,’ and he was killed anyway.

If Shadows wants to embody the honour and traditions of samurai or shinobi, why not put that power in the hands of the player? I want to make decisions and feel like I am a significant presence in this🎀 world, not a historical tourist watching as major events all unfold around me with no means to intervene.

If Ubisoft is trying to present a mainstream open-world RPG with a decent amount of narrative depth, why not embrace a Paragon/Renegade system? It would work well ꦆhere.

I Can’t Tell If Shadows Is The Evolution That This Series Needs

Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t feel 🍨too big for its own good. Many parts about it appear focused, satisfying, and willꦕing to expand upon the series’ formula in daring and unexpected ways. It also wants to be the type of open world juggernaut that appeals to every single type of player, however, which means it can only fly so far towards the sun without melting its wings.

The Animus is mentioned briefly in the prologue as someone tries to hack into the system and warns you that Abstergo cannot be trusted, but now it seems like a hub for all modern Assassin’s Creed titles and a narrative device linking you to historical perioꦺds.

Its dual protagonists, gorgeously designed world, and ambitious combination of parkour and combat work in isolation, but when combined I’m unsure whether it paints a flattering picture of the future or leaves Ubisoft floundering in the past. After four hours, I’m curious to see more of this adventure, but I just hope it does eno🧜ugh to hold my attention.