When Ubisoft’s new action-adventure title Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was announced in September 2022, the gaming world was simultaneously outraged, perplexed and most of all, surprised.

Why Japan? Why now? Why … Yasuke?

Considered by many as the game which was announced a few years too late, having an AC game set in Japan has always been at the top of the franchise fans’ wishlist. Everything fits. Assassins as actual shinobi. Infiltrate, sabotage and assassinate; all the core traits of the titular assassins in the storied franchise. But Ubisoft sat on it for far too long.

Instead, we were served with Rogue, Unity, Syndicate, Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla and the most recent release, Mirage – all released to mixed reviews. But the want for an AC-style game set in the Land of the Rising Sun never waned.

So in 2020, Sucker Punch did a Thanos…

…and released Ghost of Tsushima on the PlayStation. Almost immediately the video game world was all in unison declaring ‘This was what Assassin’s Creed should have been”. It was super polished, refreshing, compelling, and gorgeous. It undeservingly lost the 2020 Game Awards Game of the Year to The Last of Us Part II, but we know deep down it’s a samurai period piece video game experience for the ages.

So it came as a major surprise when two years later at Ubisoft Forward, the French company revealed that they are just a few years away from fulfilling their fans’ biggest request: an AC game set in Japan.

An easy slam dunk, right? Not really.

The dual protagonist approach which was well received in previous games, most notably Valhalla, received backlash due to the addition of Yasuke, a samurai of African descent. Doubts on Ubisoft instantly crept in, not helped by the poor reception garnered by Star Wars Outlaws released in late 2024 and the now twice-rescheduled release dates of Shadows.

So what is Ubisoft doing to turn their fortunes around, and get this long-standing franchise out of the *cough* shadows? We were recently at Ubisoft Singapore to chat with the folks behind the scenes and production of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows: Luc Plante,  Level Design Director from Ubisoft Quebec and Cassandra Poon, Associate Producer based in Ubisoft Singapore.

From what we’ve gathered, they are silently confident of the game’s success and the franchise’s long-term future.

When asked about Ubisoft’s reaction to the critics of Shadows and how much feedback received contributed to the final product, Plante responded “Like any Ubisoft products, we use playtests to gather feedbacks on many stages of production. We are always keen of hearing what the players wants”.

When asked about the reasons for the delay and how the shifting of release dates has affected the final release as a whole, Poon said “From a production standpoint, I would say that we are always happy, as creators ourselves that we have had additional time to polish and improve the game.”

“Can we balance it better? Can we make sure that the experience is uniformly good? Essentially, a ‘delay’, from a creator’s point of view is an opportunity to identify areas we can improve on. The A.I, the fights, the balancing, the execution, the visual fidelity.” she added.

When asked what makes Shadows different and novel when compared to other games set during the medieval Japan period, Plante said from the get-go, the team wanted to make sure that the game stays true to two fantasies; the samurai and shinobi. “Those are two strong player fantasies all around the world so it was very clear from the start we needed two protagonists. We do not intend to compromise on the extent that we push.”

“With Naoe and Yasuke,” he further elaborated, “our take was to have different perspectives with Naoe from the farmlands of the Iga region while Yasuke, an outsider. They might not always agree with each other but they share a common goal of peace and unification. This new take on storytelling and campaign would push the system and storytelling tools of the Assassin’s Creed franchise to the limit.”

So how involved is Ubisoft Singapore this time? Poon emphasized the team had been working on world-building for a very long time, since back then. “With Black Flag, it helped us to get into the space of naval and water tech. So building upon that over many years, what you’ll see in Shadows is the accumulation of all our experience from that. Japan itself is an island; surrounded by water so I encourage our players to take a boat ride and sail around the coastal areas to experience the waves and marvel at the scenery. Also, the prologue section was fully developed by the Singapore team”.

How Does It Play?

Having had a hands-on test build, I am cautiously optimistic about the game. It felt a lot like any Assassin’s Creed game in the past, but now much prettier. I applaud the team for recreating medieval Japan in such stunning manner – a world felt like it’s very much lived in as opposed to many other open-world games. And one cannot help but compare Assassin’s Creed Shadows to Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima.

My thought so far? I am happy to report that while the premise may be very similar – samurai, stealth and realistic sword combat in the period aplenty – one can easily distinguish one title from the other. Based on my limited, yet sizeable gameplay experience, Jin Sakai’s fighting style would fit perfectly between Naoe’s nimble and lightning-fast strikes and Yasuke’s tank-like, full-brute physicality approach to battles. All three protagonists fight differently.

While Ghost of Tsushima delved into Jin Sakai’s internal conflict of upholding the bushido, Shadows delved into acceptance and compromise between two individuals of polarising backgrounds. Like how you can eat KFC 2-piece chicken meals while also wolfing down a Big Mac; both games hold themselves well and can easily co-exist.

Will Assassin’s Creed: Shadows ‘save’ Ubisoft in the long run? We are no soothsayers. It’s too soon to tell. But whether it can serve as the badly-needed rebound Ubisoft need after Star Wars Outlaws? We are pretty confident it can.

* Media junket to check out the early build of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and the opportunity to interview the dev team at Ubisoft Studios Singapore was made possible by Ubisoft who covered travel and lodging. However, Ubisoft had no say on the final outcome of this piece nor received an early proof-read before it is published. They are reading this for the first time, the same as you are.