Assassin's Creed Shadows Creative Director States Players Won't Be "Missing Out" On Content Playing One Character

Assassin's Creed Shadows is more than a month away from its much-anticipated release, and Ubisoft has prepared players for what to expect from a gameplay standpoint. The Deep Dive developer blog posts explored this, which detailed the game's exploration component, the combat, stealth, and parkour systems, and previews of its dual protagonists leading up to its launch.

Creative director Jonathan Dumont recently sat down for an interview with Screen Rant in which he detailed how the team finally took a crack at approaching the feudal Japan setting, a location many players had hoped to see, exploring new features and mechanics and having dual protagonists. Dumont also clarified some player questions regarding the game's protagonists and how they complement each other when tackling the game's narrative while advancing their respective character journeys.

Assassin's Creed Shadows will let players explore the stunning open world of feudal Japan in a compelling new story during the end of the Sengoku period that unravels through its dual protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke. Much like Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which had dual protagonists in Evie and Jacob Frye, the Frye twins, the differences between Syndicate and Shadows boil down to combat as Naoe and Yasuke will play very differently, who they're within the game's narrative and how to explore their individual stories.

Speaking of the game's narrative, Dumont was asked how much of the gameplay content can be explored with either character and whether players will miss out on crucial narrative beats. Dumont responded that players wouldn't be "missing out on things too much" as it will be player preferences on which character they choose to explore the gameplay content as both will have "individual introductions" and questlines, but the game adapts depending on which character, they wish to play for the majority of the time.

Regarding the main story, both characters are "very complementary" as players explore the main story from two different perspectives, which "complements them well working together," they can switch between Naoe and Yasuke should they prefer the one over the other as Dumont assures that players won't miss out on any gameplay content by playing as one character. Emphasizing that players can "just play it" as they want, there will be instances with "a couple of choices here and there" where players will wonder what would've happened from a different perspective or with a different character but won't be missing much.