The next entry in Ubisoft’s massive Assassin’s Creed franchise, Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes players to the conflict-rife world of feudal Japan during the Warring States period. Players take control of two protagonists, the samurai Yasuke and the shinobi Naoe, as they work together to bring justice to people whose lives have been affected by constant war and strife. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, players can explore a vast open world, switch between two characters with very distinct gameplay styles, and use a variety of traditional Japanese weapons to take down powerful foes.
Game Rant spoke to Assassin’s Creed associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois and associate narrative director Brooke Davies about developing the upcoming title in the series. They discussed how AC Shadows utilizes both gameplay and storytelling elements to establish Yasuke and Naoe as distinct characters, how the dynamic lighting and season system affect the world, and how Shadows will be both similar and different to previous Assassin’s Creed titles. Both revealed just how excited the Ubisoft team was to make a game set in feudal Japan and detailed the extensive historical research that went into bringing the setting to life. This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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The Cycle Of The Seasons In Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Q: You mentioned that Ubisoft has wanted to do a game in feudal Japan. Can you talk about that moment of finally being able to have that, the moment where whoever needs to say yes said yes?
Lemay-Comtois: It’s a fun moment. I can’t tell you why it never happened, but one thing I can say is that, ultimately, I’m glad we waited for the current gen that we have. Now, we’re really able to push it and show all of the seasons and all the stuff that makes it so special as well.
Q: Would you say that the seasonal changes are one of the big things that the current gen offers you? Are there other examples of things?
Lemay-Comtois: Yeah, definitely. We have snow that will stack on the ground, which is something that’s particularly hard to do. Sakura trees bloom and petals fly off. I don’t have the exact number of petals that can fly off at any given point, but it works with the wind, with the weather – all of these things we put together. We could not do it before.
Q: You see things like the oranges that spill everywhere, it’s one of the kind of things that make the world feel real. Can you talk about designing a world that feels lived-in?
Lemay-Comtois: There are so many aspects to it, but for the destruction in particular, we really wanted to pay homage to the katana. You can slice through rocks, according to legends, so we developed some slicing tech. From there, we were like: Okay, how can we push it? If you kick somebody in that stuff, how does it break? How does it roll off? And you can actually slice individual oranges in the game.
Yasuke And Naoe’s Distinctive Gameplay Styles
Q: What I noticed from the game is that it seems like there’s a lot of armor and health. Can you talk a little bit about designing combat where, for example, Yasuke seems more like he could break armor quicker, but Naoe needs to kind of chip away?
Lemay-Comtois: You got it right. Yasuke, basically, is very brutal and forceful, so all of his balance is towards breaking armor and getting to the kill in a straightforward manner. But Naoe, when she does the stealth thing, she goes around the armor. I don’t know if you noticed, but she stabbed in the heart, in the throat – places where there’s no armor. When she’s stuck in a fight, she has to deal with the fact that there’s armor now. She cannot just go for those easy kills, so it takes much more time and effort for Naoe to be able to fight this way. That creates a path of least resistance towards stealth for her. For Yasuke, it’s all about brutal assaults.
Q: I noticed with the first assassination, during the fight, there was a level above the character. Is there the same Assassin’s Creed level progression as past RPGs?
Lemay-Comtois: Correct. It’s still very much an RPG, so some enemies are at higher levels than you, way higher levels than you. You can try. You can try and go for it, but you have to progress to be able to have a good time with it.
Q: The flip side of that question is, if Naoe is at a certain level, could she assassinate anyone as long as she’s not seen? Are there restrictions?
Lemay-Comtois: I have two answers for you. Normally, yes. There are restrictions on enemies that are way out of your level that you will not be able to assassinate until you progress and unlock certain skills, but we do have an accessibility mode, much like Valhalla, that is a one-hit kill switch that makes sure you can actually assassinate anyone you want in the game. I suggest, for players who think of themselves as hardcore, to try and hit it with the progression. It feels great to have that natural feel and see Naoe grow as an assassin.
Q: Assassin’s Creed has had multiple characters before, but this is, at least to my knowledge, the first one where two characters feel distinct in terms of their playstyle. Can you talk a little bit about balancing and designing this experience where you’re playing as two characters, and one is an assassin and one isn’t?
Lemay-Comtois: There are two aspects to this. There’s the gameplay part, which I can easily speak to, and the narrative part that leverages this distinction as well. For the gameplay part, we have old-school players who want Mirage and the old-school assassin, and we have a setting in Japan. Of course, we’re going to give you a shinobi, and to make that happen, we really wanted to create a distinction where one character cannot give their gear to the other. There’s a size difference. Naoe is smaller. Yasuke is bigger than our usual protagonists. They won’t exchange gear together. You have two builds, essentially, that can really take advantage of one situation over the other, and there’s very little crossover between the two. Neither of these characters are a jack-of-all-trades, and that’s the design philosophy we started from for Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Q: You mentioned that, in certain instances, you’ll have to play as one character to further the story. Let’s say I prefer one of the characters. Is it okay to just jump back into that character where I need to, and then just play as one? Or do you really want people to play as both? Do you envision it being that way?
Lemay-Comtois: Personally, I want players breaking even, 50/50, because I think both characters have something to offer, but it’s fine if somebody prefers one over the other and plays 95% of the game with the other. The way the story works, it’s not “you have to progress this bit of story and then catch up with the other characters.” The story unfolds like this: if you started with Yasuke, then Naoe joins up, and it asks: “Do you want to play with Naoe? Yes/no?”
The story keeps progressing. If you never pick Naoe, for example, the story still progresses. You’re missing out on some of the gameplay, some little tidbits that Naoe has unique to her, but for the most part, it still progresses.
Q: Is that how you switch, in those specific moments? You can’t in the open world, just on the fly?
Lemay-Comtois: You have both. You have story moments where we say: “Okay, here’s a fulcrum to the story. Do you want to tackle it with either character?” Sometimes they are together to tackle an objective so, within a mission, there are multiple points at which we offer you to switch. Yasuke goes through the front door, Naoe goes through the back – how do you want to tackle this? And they join up for the kill. You can also, just roaming the open world, pop them in here and say “Okay, let me switch.” Then that will take you to wherever the other character is, and you keep playing as the other character.
Q: There are still some similarities in terms of their general movement, but if you wanted to tackle anything as Yasuke stealthily, you really couldn’t?
Lemay-Comtois: You can try. Some of us are able to do it. It’s particularly fun because he’s very unwieldy. As an example, he’s always sticking out of cover because he’s too tall. Yes, you can crouch, you can go prone, but he sticks out. He’s easy to spot when he crawls. He makes a ton of noise. It’s a little bit of a square peg that you tried to put in a round hole, but it works and it’s particularly fun to do.
Q: Can Yasuke use bamboo to breathe underwater?
Lemay-Comtois: No. If you go prone in the water, he’ll get up. He doesn’t like to have his face in the water.
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The Duo Can Wield Many Classic Japanese Weapons
Q: Can you talk about designing the weapon skills, and what informed those things? There are some really incredible things, especially with the multiple katana stabs and the grabbing.
Lemay-Comtois: Yasuke has more weapons overall than Naoe because samurai just had everything at their disposal. For the shinobi, we were more selective. Naoe doesn’t need every tool, she just needs to be an expert at some of the tools. The only weapon they have in common is the katana. Naoe has a shorter katana, and Yasuke has a much bigger katana. It’s super heavy.
The kusarigama, which we saw today with Naoe, is her one weapon for crowd control. If you find yourself in a jam with Naoe, use the kusarigama. It’s a good option. Each weapon that Naoe has unlocks a specific type of assassination that is unique to that weapon. We saw the katana through the shoji door, the kusarigama’s rush assassination over a little gap, and we have one more weapon to show with Naoe, which is the tanto and hidden blade combo. You can do a classic double assassinate with those two tools.
Q: Can you customize them? Or do they kind of look how they look?
Lemay-Comtois: You can customize them. We have options for transmog and you will loot essentially different variations of these weapons over time. We showed the iconic costumes and weapons today, but you have much more visuals than what we saw.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about designing the kinds of combat encounters where you are fighting multiple people, and you’re going at it a different way, and how you get out of these challenges based on the character you’re playing? I imagine that’s really challenging to say “Okay, we want the conflict to be like this, but we have to make sure it works for both characters.”
Lemay-Comtois: The fight system is similar for both characters. At this point, it’s very balanced in how the enemy behaves. One very small detail, as an example of the design, if you want to get into minutiae: When Naoe fights, she has to dodge a lot, so she’s kind of always on the back foot. She retreats to avoid hits. Whereas Yasuke can block and stand there, and as he parries, the enemy bounces back from him. With Yasuke, you attack on the front foot. You’re always kind of moving forward. That changes how the fight feels for both. You feel more vulnerable with Naoe, which is part of the design. With Yasuke, you feel like you’re a mountain, like “Waves are crashing on me.” He runs through doors and through walls.
Dynamic Lighting, Color Choices, And More
Q: One of the iconic elements of Assassin’s Creed is, obviously, the assassinations. Can you talk about designing these? It feels very inspired by Japanese media; it fades to black, but the blood is coming.
Lemay-Comtois: Yes. When we kill a particularly high-value target, we have the monochrome effect, which is inspired by Japanese paper and ink. The only splash of color that we have is the red, so this is one of the ways we took from Japan a little bit, to make it special when you take somebody important off the board.
Q: Are the seasonal changes informed by the story, or, if I just sit around long enough, will the seasons change?
Lemay-Comtois: You have to do a couple of things. If you just stand there, you’ll have a boring time. When you change character, when you engage in a cutscene or a dialogue and stuff like that, that’s when we progress the seasons a little bit. Eventually, without you noticing it, the seasons change and some of the trees turn. And then, over time, everything’s orange and red, and it feels very natural.
Q: What are you most excited to see people experience in the game?
Lemay-Comtois: The contrast between our two characters because I know people think, “I’m going to have a favorite.” Fine. No problem. Every now and again, whenever you play one or the other, you hit a wall. You just get tired. It’s done. “Let me switch it up.” And then you change to the other character, and everything changes. You see the matrix now. “Oh, okay. Let me engage this. I’m going to play two more hours of this.” It’s like eating ginger after sushi, whenever you switch gears. It changes how you see the options in front of you. It’s cool.
Shadows Takes Place In Japan’s Azuchi-Momoyama Period
Q: What was the feeling on the development team to see the excitement around feudal Japan grow?
Davies: It’s a project we’ve been so excited to make. To see it enter the collective consciousness and come up was so exciting for the team, like to see it around, see what a positive response people are having to the setting, and the interest that there is for it. To be working on the game at the same time has been really exciting for us.
Q: Can you talk about settling on this setting, this time period, and these characters? What kind of discussions went on as far as settling on this?
Davies: I think a good word to think of for all these decisions is “dynamic.” We’re in the Azuchi-Momoyama period. It’s 1579 when the game starts, this period extends to 1584, and it is a super dynamic period. It’s also known as the Warring States period. It’s a time of civil war, of a lot of conflict in Japan. The daimyo, the warlords, are clashing to fill a void of power left by a declining Shogunate. These situations of conflict and times of conflict are very nuanced. There’s no sort of black and white, so it gives us a lot of very interesting angles to explore.
In addition, these big times of war, of transformation, are catalysts for growth and change. It was also the seed, the start of an artistic renaissance that bloomed later in the Edo period. We had this war and politics and intrigue on one side that we were able to explore, but then also this incredible glimmering of this artistic and cultural future in Japan as well.
In terms of historical characters or figures to explore, it gave us a lot of opportunities, within that setting, to have the dual protagonists. I think, when people think of this era, the key figures would be samurai and shinobi. Like, who would you want to play as? Probably both of them. This made Naoe and Yasuke such a dynamic choice because, as I mentioned, we’re in this time of war. It’s the start of Japan’s unification period. Oda Nobunaga, the daimyo that Yasuke becomes a samurai for, is the first of the country’s three Great Unifiers. As the game starts, he’s basically reaching the peak of his power, and he’s one of the most powerful people in Japan. SYasuke’s association with him, and also the Jesuits, puts him in this very interesting position and perspective on what’s happening in Japan.
But then, shortly thereafter, Nobunaga goes to war – the second Tensho-Iga war, in the province of Iga, which is Naoe’s homeland. Iga’s a fiercely independent region. Naoe’s been relatively sheltered from this foreign conflict up to this point in her life. The moment of confrontation between the two is a very interesting starting point. To be on different sides of this conflict is an interesting place to start.
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Yasuke And Naoe Are Stronger Together
Q: Would you say that Yasuke and Naoe have similar but also different aims? Are their end goals similar?
Davies: They don’t start out on the right foot. A line that I love in the gameplay trailer that dropped today is “Vengeance is a lonely path.” Until they meet, and come together, Naoe and Yasuke are both on this lonely path of vengeance. In coming together, they’re going to complete each other and remove themselves from this cycle of vengeance, from this path. They come together to both grow. Together, they’re more than the sum of their parts, and they take this relationship and mission that they create together to bring justice to the people of Japan.
Q: So I imagine that, when creating stories incorporating two characters, there are so many things that are probably challenging. Knowing that person A is going to play 50-50, while person B is going to lean one way or the other. Can you talk about the challenges of creating a story that fulfills both characters, but also makes them distinct personalities and gives them their own kind of fulfilling narratives?
Davies: On the writing side, it was super fun. It was more of an opportunity than a challenge. There’s that old writing expression: “Show, don’t tell.” When you have these two perspectives and they’re so different and they’re coming from such different places, having the two protagonists gave us really neat ways to explore the dynamic environment, the conflict, and all of the nuance in such a complex time. The opportunity to write the story of their friendship, their shared space, seeing them grow together was great.
Q: Dual protagonists are usually very similar people, if not outright the same person. What was that process like of discovering Yasuke as the character you wanted to use as the samurai archetype, and Naoe as the shinobi, the more traditional assassin archetype?
Davies: Yeah, so, they’re completely different characters, the samurai and the shinobi. You’ll see this not just in their personalities and their personal stories, but in their gameplay. As you see in the trailer, they’re very, very different to play. Even where they have something in common, like they both will fight with the katana, the way that they fight with it is really personal to each of them. And you’ll see that the way that they wield that weapon is entirely different. It was this great opportunity to really go very deeply, from the personality, to the story, to how they work together, to the gameplay. The team really was able to develop it for each of them.
The Writing Team Creates Thoroughly Researched Historical Fiction
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the research process? Yasuke is a historical figure, but not a lot is known about him. Where did you look, what did you draw on from the history of that time period? Assassin’s Creed usually has some grounded elements, but also fantastical elements – how did you blend those together?
Davies: “Blending” is actually a great word for historical fiction. We have this tremendous opportunity on Assassin’s Creed to work with our history and world director, Stephanie-Anne Ruatta, and an amazing group of historians, consultants, and experts to help us research the period and the setting and get to know them. And then, in the writing team, it’s historical fiction. We have our facts and our history that we study with the experts – I think it’s kind of like a palette. You have the history, and then the fiction, and they have to be harmonious. They have to come from the same palette. You can’t just bring in something that doesn’t belong there.
In the writing process, we’re very careful. We actually do historical validation of all of our scripts. It’s not just at the start or while we’re writing. We actually have it checked after we’ve written it. Because in the writing process, you get an idea, and you’re like “Oh!” and then you find out that oh no, actually, cows weren’t very common in feudal Japan. You go back and ask: what kind of animal can we use? Even little stuff like things, we do work really hard with experts to catch them. But then the story, it’s something that we build around, and it’s very much inspired by these facts in history. But it is fiction.
Q: Would you say that fans of that time period, history buffs, will find there will be moments of Yasuke and Naoe’s story that kind of align with history? Or would you say it kind of exists over to the side of history?
Davies: It’s very much rooted and grounded in history. I think that was the team’s starting point in the setting. It’s not just our characters. Characters do a lot of movement within the setting of the world. The detail that goes into every castle and village and even the nature and what plants were there – the world is our team’s. It’s not my personal area of expertise, but having observed the work that they’ve done, every detail is really conceived with attention to history, to bringing it to life in a respectful way.
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Assassin’s Creed Shadows Previously known as Codename Red, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an upcoming game in Ubisoft’s open-world franchise. Set in Feudal Japan, Shadows includes two playable characters, a ninja assassin specializing in stealth and a samurai who focuses on power.Released November 15, 2024 Expand