Assassin’s Creed Shadows Is Just More Of The Same

I went into my hands-off preview of Assassin’s Creed Shadows very excited to see where the series might go with it’s feudal Japan setting and promises from Ubisoft that the game would set itself apart from the last three games in the series by decluttering the map and making the game’s structure more open-ended, however, after watching roughly 30 minutes of real-time gameplay, I’m left a little underwhelmed.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows seems like a game that will satisfy fans who’ve been satisfied by the rest of the series, but for someone like me, someone who walked away from my time with Assassin’s Creed Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, and Mirage wanting the series to scale itself back and focus on the elements that make it unique, I think I might be skipping Shadows when it releases later this year.

Split Down The Middle

AC Shadows follows two protagonists, the sneaky shinobi Naoe and the decorated (and historically significant) samurai Yasuke as they join forces to rid Japan of its corrupt leaders in 1579. Players are given the option to choose which character to play as in the open world and in the more linear assassination missions. This aspect was something that initially caught my attention since the series has previously featured dual protagonists that the player gets to choose from, but regardless of who they choose, the characters play functionally the same. In Shadows, however, Naoe and Yasuke are meant to have two entirely different playstyles with Naoe able to blend into crowds, climb on rooftops, and stay out of sight in the shadows while Yasuke charges into situations headfirst for more straightforward sword-v-sword combat.

At face value, I really like that concept since it means that players are able to choose what “flavor” of gameplay they want to have at any given moment; the more stealthy mechanics of Assassin’s Creed’s earlier days or the more brawl-heavy mechanics of the more recent entries in the series. Unfortunately, I wasn’t particularly impressed by either character’s abilities save for Naoe’s grappling hook which allows her to reach ledges that are high above her. More on these core mechanics later.

As I watched a Ubisoft representative play through an assassination mission as both protagonists, I was hit with the underwhelming reality that I’ve already seen everything Assassin’s Creed Shadows is doing on a mechanical level before. The “flavors” you get to choose from don’t seem to be a refined, updated version of mechanics from Assassin’s Creed’s past, but just tread the same water the series has been treading for 15 years.

That’s a deal breaker for me, but it won’t be for everyone. I will fully admit that I’m pretty tired of the Assassin’s Creed formula but I can still recognize that this game is going to be a massive hit for people who can’t get enough.

Something Worth Seeing

The one unique thing that does interest me about Shadows is Yasuke’s story. This is the first time that the series has starred a real historical figure and I think Shadows is positioned to serve as a unique history lesson of sorts (perhaps a much-needed history lesson for some.) I wasn’t exactly won over by the writing that I saw, but the vast majority of the hands-off preview consisted of the assassination mission, so I’m not able to say one way or the other if it’ll stick the landing there. My very rudimentary understanding of who Yasuke was (a slave who was eventually honored as one of Nobunaga’s most decorated samurai) has me tentatively excited to learn more about him, but that will be entirely up to Ubisoft’s ability to tell a compelling and historically accurate narrative.

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My preview of Assassin’s Creed Shadows was ultimately underwhelming and I think a singular moment in the audience watching the gameplay demo encapsulates how I feel about the game so far as a whole: when Yasuke got into his first combat encounter of the preview, the game played a flashy takedown animation that caused the entire audience to cheer. In that same two-minute fight, the same animation played two more times. There was no cheering for the other identical takedowns because the excitement had completely worn off immediately after seeing the animation for the first time.

The same audience response happened each time Yasuke and Naoe switched weapons: an excited cheer for the first takedown and then silence. I think back to my time with Valhalla where I watched the same decapitation animation over and over and over for 50 hours with a blank stare on my face and couldn’t help but feel a little deflated about the possibility of doing that again with Shadows.

Shadows was also pretty buggy in the preview I saw. It’s important to note that preview builds always have bugs that will be ironed out as development continues, but the shocking thing to me was that the bugs were the same ones present in the final build of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla from just a few years ago. NPCs got caught on all sorts of environmental elements during cutscenes, takedown animations caused characters to unnaturally slide around the world to make sure they’re in place for the animations or the characters’ attacks wouldn’t connect at all in a takedown, audio bugs caused enemy combat barks to be muted–it’s possible these things might be fixed in the final game, but when looking at the polish (or perhaps lack thereof) I’ve come to expect from Assassin’s Creed, I’m just not sure if I can expect much to change when Shadows releases later this year.

The Tired Assassin’s Creed Formula

What absolutely can’t be patched out are the core design choices made with Naoe and Yasuke’s approach to assassination missions. In the preview, we saw the same assassination with both characters. Yasuke isn’t able to climb up buildings and jump from rooftops due to his large stature, so he opts to approach assassinating targets head-on by challenging everyone in his way to a duel. Naoe sticks to rooftops and shadows to get close to her target before slicing them up with her hidden blade, however, I was curious how she would fare if open combat broke out and she had to face enemies head-on like Yasuke does. Luckily, the preview showed the same mission a third time, but instead of taking a stealthy approach, Naoe walked right through the front doors of the fortress and fought everyone the same way Yasuke did.

Here’s where things fully fell apart for me. When taking this option, Naoe plays essentially the same as Yasuke except that instead of parrying incoming enemy attacks, she has to dodge them. Otherwise, the route through the mission was largely the exact same–Naoe had no trouble taking on large groups of enemies in the same way that Yasuke did and she followed the same path to the target on foot. That got me asking myself what the point of having two protagonists who, in theory, are meant to play differently, but, in practice, one can do everything the other can do while also having more options by using stealth.

Perhaps there is a drawback to playing as Naoe that I wasn’t shown (other than missing out on the novelty of playing as a real person in history,) but so far I’m definitely not seeing it and Ubisoft didn’t make any indication that might be the case.

If you’ve played any Assassin’s Creed game in the last 10 years, you’ve already seen most of what Assassin’s Creed Shadows is bringing to the table save for its feudal Japanese setting. Yasuke, as a character, seems to be the only thing keeping me interested in the game which is a shame because based on how Ubisoft was talking up Shadows as something of a mechanical recentering for the series, I was expecting something new. Fans who’ve liked the most recent entries will most likely love everything that Shadows has going on, but I don’t think it’ll win back anyone who’s walked away from the series in recent years.

For more on our coverage from Summer Game Fest, take a look right here.