Assassin’s Creed Shadows was officially premiered on Wednesday, May 15, 2025. The almost four-minute trailer featured cinematics and a bit of combat. Ubisoft followed up the trailer with a developer preview that dived into the qualities of the two playable characters.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will feature Naoe, a Shinobi, and Yasuke, a samurai who said in the trailer, “We are the shadows. That serve the light.” Naoe is a female character while Yasuke is a male character.
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Naoe’s gameplay will be tilted towards stealth while Yasuke will be more physical in combat. These two distinct personalities allow players to choose between two distinct playstyles. Assassin’s Creed Shadows was set in the “16th-century Japan during the Auchi-Momoyama era”.
“In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you will live the intertwined stories of Naoe, an adept shinobi Assassin from Iga Province, and Yasuke, the powerful African samurai of historical legend,” Ubisoft explained. “Against the backdrop of the turbulent late Sengoku period, this remarkable duo will discover their common destiny as they usher in a new era for Japan.”
Speaking about Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Game Director Charles Benoit said they wanted players to experience both the samurai and the shinobi and that it was impossible to squeeze both elements into one character “because the samurai and shinobi came from different social classes”.
Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed Shadows was based on real legend
One thing that should be admired about Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the level of research that the team had to do to bring the characters to life. Yasuke was a real-life samurai, the first Black person to allegedly become a samurai.
He first came to Japan as a servant and retainer to daimyō Oda Nobunaga who also gave him the name Yasuke. What he was called before that remains unknown. The many unknowns about this character presented Ubisoft with the freedom to model him and shape the narrative just how they wanted.
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“The historical character of Yasuke presented a really exciting opportunity for the narrative team,” said associate narrative director Brooke Davies. “We approached it in the same way that so much of the work is done in Assassin’s Creed which is really in terms of research and history first.”
“Not a lot is known about him, but what we did know or we do know is that he arrived in Japan in 1579 when our game starts. He had relationships with some of the most interesting people in our setting, like Oda Nobunaga, the Portuguese and Jesuits, which made it very sort of tantalizing and enticing from a narrative perspective to come in and start weaving these facts with story in between.”
Ubisoft has promised a full gameplay reveal in June which is likely going to be at the Ubisoft Forward scheduled to hold on June 10. Assassin’s Creed Shadows was given a November 15, 2024 launch date. Pre-orders are available now.
