Summary

• Assassin's Creed Shadows will feature dual protagonists with distinct playstyles in 16th century Japan.
• Naoe's gameplay focuses on stealth, while Yasuke's approach is direct and combat-heavy.
• The game aims to balance different playstyles through specific character abilities and tools for stealth and combat.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will transport players to 16th century Japan later this year, telling the story of dual protagonists Yasuke and Naoe. Yasuke is the first character in the franchise to ever be based on a real historical figure, though it’s likely some creative license will be used when it comes to his story. The game is specifically set during the Sengoku period - a word which means “warring states,” and the many civil wars of the time period will almost undoubtedly be a major plot focus.

It’s not yet clear just how switching between Shadows’ dual protagonists will be, but the two will have distinctly different playstyles. While assassin Naoe’s modus operandi largely revolves around stealth, Yasuke’s is much more direct, going into fights head on and u-close combat against enemies. This difference in the duo’s styles feels like a blend of the gameplay in early Assassin’s Creed entries and newer titles, ideally providing something desirable to all types of players.

Screen Rant interviewed Assassin's Creed Shadows producer Karl Onnée to discuss the game's world, replayability, and what players can expect from the dual protagonists.

The Characters & World Of Assassin's Creed Shadows

Building A Dynamic, Changing Landscape & Crafting Complementary Characters

Screen Rant: Assassin's Creed Shadows having two playable characters immediately draws this kind of connection to Syndicate, which is also developed by Ubisoft Quebec, notably the series final classic game before Origins kind of shifted the gameplay a little bit. Have any important design lessons carried over from Syndicate even though it was quite a while ago? And how has Shadows’ different setting complicated what is kind of a familiar duo protagonist dynamic?

Karl Onnée: I didn't work on Syndicate, nevertheless, like you said, we evolved from Syndicate to Odyssey, and then from Odyssey to Assassin's Creed Shadows. I think one of the lessons we've learned is obviously, as a team, how to manage the size of the world. Obviously for Quebec, Syndicate was the first project as a lead and learning how to create all those features, create all the stories, all fitting together with two different characters.

This time we went even further than on Syndicate. Because in Syndicate you had two characters, they had different abilities, but they were pretty similar in some way. Here we have really went further with two different protagonists with their own progression. We own their own story, how the crowd and the people, the quest giver react to them, and you can play them nearly at any moment unless it's their own story or if it's in the red zone. I think the team has learned from there how to build bigger and better over time, I'd say.

You kind of touched on how the characters are different. It kind of feels like this blend of the action gameplay that you've seen in more recent Assassin's Creed with Yasuke, and kind of like a return to that stealth that we saw in Mirage with Naoe. How difficult was it to balance those two approaches going into the same missions?

Karl Onnée: Obviously, yes, it is complicated, because in some way, like you say, it's very different. You have to pick, and it's an open world game so the player can come from any place. If I want to play stealth, I'm going to prepare more for Naoe. It makes sense because, well, Yasuke really stands out. He's not as discreet. You can play stealth, but there's a big chance that you're going to be detected.

I think the way we work on a setup is to make sure that we develop tools that are proper to one character, and we make sure that you're going to be able to use those tools to infiltrate or to - for Yasuke, it's a bit different because he goes through the main door, and he can take on multiple enemies. It's more like making sure that when you make a setup, you prepare it so you can use everything that is available to you. Your grappling hook, you can attach to the ceiling, you have tall grass - making sure there's all the ingredients to play stealth.

For Yasuke, it is more about giving him the abilities that he can overcome lots of enemies at once, to make sure it's balanced. Because obviously with Naoe. there's too many enemies, you tend to try to avoid them, but with Yasuke, we are going to make sure that you are capable of taking lots of enemies at once. It's that balance where you're trying to make - one is glass cannon level, but you have lots of tools. The other one has abilities that can really kill people and control the crowd and take people head on.

We saw the Shinobi kind of tackle people head on towards the end of the presentation, and you did mention that Yasuke could potentially try stealth but would be easily detected. Is there room for Yasuke to do a little bit of stealth gameplay if he needs to?

Karl Onnée: Absolutely, yeah. He can prone too, he can prone in the tall grass. It's just he's slower, basically. He's slower because obviously he's wearing a heavy armor. The armor is pretty heavy so he's not going to be able to - there are little roofs that you don't need the grappling hook Naoe can climb, but Yasuke can't. There are lots of little differences. When Naoe it jumps into a haystack, it works for her, she disappears and goes. If you jump into a haystack with Yasuke, you destroy it. You don't die, but when you fall into it, you hear you destroy it.

You can play stealth, but you're not going to be as effective as Naoe. You can manage to even reach sometimes on the roofs, where Naoe is going to be very agile like a cat, Yasuke is going to be really trying to hold this balance. We've been even showing these little details to show that yes you can, but maybe it's not the most effective. Naoe, on the opposite side, she can go head on combat. You saw it when they showed the demo, when there starts becoming too many enemies or too strong, that's where maybe it's the moment to hide.

This is the location that everyone has been requesting for years and years. What kind of design decisions go into a location that I think basically everybody has wanted? Is there that added pressure? Is there that added, "We need to do this thing because everyone's talked about how this would be perfect for it"?

Karl Onnée: Yeah, it's a mix of a lot of things. Obviously, in the Assassin's Creed brand, we have several different projects potentially running at the same time, so first you need to make sure that the team is ready, and we build that experience. Same with Syndicate and Odyssey - it felt like the right time for us now, but not just because of experience, but also because of the tech available.

Like I was saying, we have new features like light and shadows. They're very demanding in of resources, and we wanted to be able to make sure that we have not just gameplay, but we want to really give them enough really to be meaningful, to intertwine where seasons have an impact on the gameplay, the light and all kind of things. It felt like the right moment for us because we had the experience, we had the tech, and we could finally make the game that we as a team also wanted to make released. It's basically when all stars align, we're aligned to do it at that moment.

I wanted to talk about the seasons, too, because that just feels like such an interesting element that I don't think anyone was really expecting to be added to Assassin's Creed. What makes Shadows the time to add that dynamic system to the gameplay?

Karl Onnée: It's a bit of both. The tech, because obviously it's a lot of data to create and you'll be able to run it being able to load everything quickly. But it also, for us, was we wanted the game to be more photorealistic, and at the same time we wanted it to be more immersive. We wanted this world to evolve, to change over time while you play basically, to be able to discover and go back to places that you already seen and then suddenly it's totally different, it's in the winter.

And for us it was very important that two players, or even two different sessions, like when you replay another time, that basically you have the games really being different from one to another. What was important, like I said, is that it would also not just be nice, but it would have an impact on your gameplay.

We saw the storm in the presentation, does that mask audio more, or does it affect how the NPCs and the other AI kind of interacts with your character?

Karl Onnée: Yeah. The weather, because you have the seasons, you've got the weather, and even now the distractions, all that. The storm, the way we built it, it's not everywhere like we would do in a game before. Now it's developing at one place like you would have in - it's nearly a simulation, and you see it building up.

Yeah. There's that moment where you can see all the clouds on the horizon.

Karl Onnée: Exactly. You say, "There's going to be a storm, and how is it going?” Because it starts raining and it's heavy, the crowd is going to be reacting to it, the guards rather than staying under the rain like what we would have had before, well, we said the guards are going to go under a roof to not be all wet. With the seasons it's the same, it opens and closes new opportunities basically.

In winter, for instance, I will say, a pond that you saw in the demo is going to be frozen. You can't go in there. The tall grass is going to disappear. The icicles are going to form. If you walk and you go too fast, it falls and the guards going to hear it. You say, "Winter, it's not really interesting," but at the same time, enemies are going to be cold, so they're going to tend to go closer to fires - places where they would stand in the summer are no longer there. They go to other places, which means that you do a play through, I do another one, and depending on what character we play and depending on the season, depending on time of day, it's very different basically.

Making The Most Replayable Assassin's Creed Yet

Ensuring Different Playthroughs & Creating Engaging RPG Elements

This sounds like there's so many different factors in what's going to determine how you interact with these levels. Would you say this is probably the most replayable Assassin's Creed you've made?

Karl Onnée: So, I can't speak for the other projects, but I would say yes. Because you have two characters with their own progression, with their personal quests, but even the way the crowd and the quest givers react to you, one has been given the honor of samurai, the other is from a farmer background basically. Because of the way the seasons work, the weather works, and all that makes really great replayability, yes.

We saw items dropped in the demo, nobody picked them up so I couldn't really tell what they were. How much is there an inventory system? Is there equipment that you can find?

Karl Onnée: Yes, absolutely. Assassin's Creed Shadows is an open world action RPG, so yes, you do have an inventory. You will basically have resources that you can use in your hideout, which is a place where you can customize, and improve, develop and have your own crew. You can think of it like the settlement, but upgraded basically. But you also have obviously loot. When I say, "loot," it's more like equipment, outfits, weapons and so on that you'll be able to use on your character, and obviously you have also rations, shurikens, all these kinds of things. Shurikens are obviously for Naoe, but I mean, things that, to your character, are useful and that you can use basically, yes.

And we also kind of touched on very briefly the spy network and that feels kind of RPG-ish too. How much do you get to work with that in the game? Is it something that frequently comes up in each level? Is it limited to one character or another? How much of it is a feature system of the game?

Karl Onnée: It's a feature of the game which, for now, we haven't talked much about. We'll talk about it later, but I'll answer you a bit. The spy network is a very important part of the new exploration loop that we've put in place. So, for instance, you're going to build your own spy network that is going to help you find your way in Japan, find the people you're looking for, find your targets. You're going to use everything available. It's very in the Shinobi fantasy, having a spy network.

We've changed [the] exploration loop in a way that basically, you don't have an eagle now anymore, because we felt like we wanted to give more autonomy to the player exploring. When you use all those things and you look in the world yourself, it changes totally the way you do the exploration. You're not going to have necessarily icons popping everywhere. You have to go and look for those places, discover, and the spy network is going to help you to a certain extent when maybe it's more difficult. Basically, it's going to accelerate how to find the clues, your progression.

The timing is interesting, Shogun is huge as a show. Obviously not planned, but it's the same time period. How much are we going to see the kind of overlaps? How much of this is your very specific take on this time period? Is there going to be some familiarity potentially? When you were watching the show were you just like, "Oh man. That's kind of our thing."

Karl Onnée: Obviously, I did watch the show. I personally really liked it. The show is actually a romanced version of real historical figures, and so it was really interesting, because for us we'd say, "Oh, that's actually that person. That's actually that person."

I think it was really interesting for us, because we were like, "Okay. That's how they did portray or how they rebuilt an authentic Japan," and for us it felt like, "Okay. We are really, really close. We are doing the same." How they did that research, that kind of thing. It was very interesting and very exciting at the same time because we could see that people were very interested in that show. It is just, for us, very promising.