It’s no secret that the video game industry is struggling. The last two years have seen more than 25,000 redundancies and more than 40 studio closures. Thanks to game development’s spiralling costs (blockbuster titles now cost hundreds of millions to make), overinvestment during the Covid-19 pandemic, and a series of failed bets to create the next money-printing “forever game”, the pressure for blockbuster games to succeed is now higher than ever.
It’s a predicament that feels especially pertinent for Ubisoft. Employing in the region of 20,000 people across 45 studios in 30 countries, its most recent big licensed games Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws underperformed commercially. It has had two expensive, failed live-service experiments in the past year, Skull and Bones and X-Defiant. With Ubisoft share prices plummeting and investment partners circling like sharks, rarely have the fortunes of a massive games company relied so heavily on a single release. It has already been delayed multiple times, to ensure its quality.
Against this gloomy backdrop, I find myself roaming the glistening halls of Ubisoft Quebec for the world’s first hands-on of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. The company’s series of historical action games is back after a two-year break, and this time it takes us to feudal Japan. This has been the most requested setting by fans, according to creative director Jonathan Dumont, but ironically some of those purported fans have turned on Ubisoft over the course of this game’s development.
Shadows stars Yasuke, a documented historical figure known as the black samurai, and a female shinobi named Naoe. This ignited a mini culture war, as X posters and YouTube commenters seethed over “historical inaccuracy” and the wokefication of video games. (Oddly enough, these complaints of historical inaccuracy have never been levied at the series before, despite the fact that it stars a secret order of essentially time-travelling assassins doing side quests for Karl Marx and Leonardo da Vinci.)
When I ask nervous Ubisoft developers about the deluge of unpleasant comments and online harassment directed their way over the past year, they look understandably scared. Nobody is willing to address it directly. “We like to make games, this is what we wake up to do every morning,” offers Dumont. “So obviously if the criticism [we receive] is nuanced or if it’s good feedback, it’s always taken.”
When I pick up the controller, Yasuke is the first character to take the stage. After an engrossing opening cutscene, Portuguese missionaries introduce their African slave Diogo to the Oda clan’s ruler, Lord Nobunaga. The influential warlord takes a shine to Diogo, employing him as a samurai and renaming him Yasuke. As he wanders silently across Harima’s cobbled streets, he is greeted by the kind of dumbfounded looks you’d expect for an African man arriving in 16th-century Japan. Kids and adults alike scramble to take a look. It’s a clever and attention-grabbing opening, reminiscent of 2024’s Emmy-award winning Shogun series; here Yasuke echoes the TV show’s John Blackthorne character, a cipher for players to experience this era of Japan through a foreigner’s eyes.
After a so-so hour-long prologue, this war-torn world finally opens up. I gallop across the green fields of the Iga province, and Shadows’ Sengoku period adventure truly begins. There is pleasing visual variety and attention to detail. Reeds sway in the wind convincingly as workers toil the rice fields beside the road; fishing boats float across the horizon line while villagers chatter by bustling markets.
With open worlds, it’s the little details that really bring the simulation to life, and in Shadows, I am told, there are more than 1,000 different situational behaviours directing its 16th-century characters. Roaming the port town I see a fishmonger chopping his fish, a woman cleaning a firearm and a shiba inu gleefully hopping around as merchants and villagers haggle over their wares. Wild deer frolic in the tall grass, fleeing skittishly as I ride past, and noble ladies gather idly at Buddhist shrines. Weather and seasons change dynamically too, adding a welcome layer of unpredictability as a sunny countryside walk suddenly becomes an ominous, rain-drenched affair. As I ride valiantly into battle, scale Osaka castle and gallop my way across serene landscapes, I forget all about the difficulties surrounding this game’s development and lose myself in the feudal fantasy.
It’s hugely enjoyable to play. In recent years, Assassin’s Creed has strayed from its stealth roots, embracing RPG-esque inventories and swapping infiltration for all-out action. Yasuke embodies this, yet in Shadows, players who prefer their Creed on the sneakier side can step into the tabi boots of shinobi Naoe, swapping lumbering might for agile parkour and stealthy takedowns.
In a Grand Theft Auto V-esque touch, you’re free to switch between Yasuke and Naoe as you please, approaching each new quest as either protagonist: sneaky shinobi or murderous samurai. On main missions, this plays out as the pair splitting up to divide and conquer, with Naoe silently running across rooftops and slitting throats while Yasuke charges brazenly through the front door. Yasuke’s heft leaves him unable to perform aerial assassinations or do much in the way of the series’ trademark acrobatics, but he can wield katanas, bows and rifles. Having the freedom to swap between protagonists and their vastly different play styles keeps things fresh, providing a welcome antidote to the mission-repetition fatigue that so often plagues open-world games.
On first impressions, Shadows marks itself as the most overtly violent Assassin’s Creed to date: heads are sent flying by Yasuke’s katana; arms are severed from bodies by the force of a spear; and skulls caved in with a mace. An explosion of blood and viscera accompanies each of Yasuke’s cinematic executions (these gory animations can be turned off for the more squeamish player). At key moments during Shadows’ 700 cutscenes, players can decide which lords they will pledge allegiance to, how they navigate Japanese/ Portuguese relations and which romances they chase.
Shadows also takes surprise inspiration from the other AC: Animal Crossing. Once you unlock a hideout for your characters, you can adorn it with furniture and decorations, and people you recruit along the way will relocate themselves there. I became entranced with setting out a tea room and laying a beautiful bamboo forest around a pond. It was a welcome contrast to all the bloodshed.
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You can also hang paintings of wildlife in your hideout – because instead of hunting and skinning animals, Naoe and Yasuke respectfully sketch Japan’s wildlife. Crouching out of sight, you edge yourself quietly into the perfect viewpoint, allowing you to paint two deer clashing horns or capture a heron mid fish-dive. This made me feel like an ancient Japanese Attenborough.
Despite Shadows’ recent second delay, I find myself pleasantly surprised by just how polished and bug-free my six hours of playtime are – a marked improvement over the enjoyable but bug-ridden Star Wars Outlaws. It is shaping up to be an immersive and enjoyably slick adventure, offering perhaps a more detailed and varied simulation of feudal Japan than Sony’s Ghost of Tsushima.
Brooke Davies, the game’s associate narrative director, talks me through the team’s painstaking efforts to create relatable and endearing characters. “We had the great privilege of working with consultants, historians and experts at every stage in the production,” she says. “That gave us lots of interesting ideas about how to tell stories about very ordinary people caught at this very extraordinary moment in history.
“One of our core narrative themes is community and about people coming together to make the world a better place, and despite loss and difficulty, really persevering and having the courage to start over. It’s a really uplifting message to me, imagining and learning about the courage of these people and being able to explore that alongside our protagonists Naoe and Yasuke.”
With a series as big as Assassin’s Creed, it’s all too easy to forget that these pieces of fiction are made by very real people – people who just want to entertain their audience. “Games made by humans, and no one wants to make something bad,” says art director Thierry Dansereau. “We’re working hard. We want to make the best Assassin’s Creed we can … So I think [people] should just keep that in consideration. The people that are making video games, they just want to have fun and to create great products.”
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