Recent details about Assassin’s Creed Shadows that were revealed in the run-up to its release showcase how Ubisoft has gone back to the drawing board, designing its take on feudal Japan in the Sengoku era with a clear vision of the experience it would like to deliver to its players. The new open world looks to be shaping up to be an addition that could make Assassin’s Creed Shadows one of the finest additions to the franchise.
However, Japan’s shifting political landscape and social hierarchies are key areas of focus for Assassin’s Creed Shadows and might be the most important influence on Naoe and Yasuke’s journey through their country’s history and their attempts to give rise to the Brotherhood’s Japanese chapter.
Crafting a World That Responds to Its Players
Let’s be honest, Ubisoft is not the first studio to try and breathe life into ancient Japan in modern gaming. A title that immediately comes to mind would be Ghost of Tsushima, a stellar effort from Sucker Punch whose take on the real-life island of Tsushima was so good that the Japanese government decided to honor its devs. It was no surprise, considering how Jin Sakai’s time on the island was marked with several insightful takes on what life on the island was like before and during its conflict with the Mongol empire.
Everything in Tsushima was designed to be a part of the player’s experience, with the wind guiding them to their next objectives and its denizens pointing them toward areas of interest and useful loot. However, Sucker Punch’s antagonists and NPCs were largely lifeless, existing only to serve as interactable elements of the open world that gave its players reasons to travel across it.
That’s where Shadows attempts to make bold changes to the tried and tested open-world formula. With its creative director hinting at a “massive power struggle” between various political factions in the game, their presence in Japan could lead to Naoe and Yasuke having to pay attention to the open world in ways that Assassins in the past may not have had to worry about.
For instance, it builds on Odyssey’s constant tug of war for control of key regions in Greece between the Athenians and Spartans. While that struggle merely determined which faction Kassandra (or Alexios) was going to have to deal with as they explored the region, it had no impact on the core gameplay elements that Odyssey had incorporated into ancient Greece.
Shadows is poised to these conflicts a step further, adding in more factions while also ensuring that their presence in a region and their relative strength against other ones in the game, the Assassins included, influences the gameplay loop in ways that feel like Japan is a living, breathing entity. A great example that the devs have pointed out here is that a faction with a strong presence in a region would be more guarded against efforts to acquire its treasures, locking away valuable loot behind closed, heavily guarded doors that the two protagonists must find ways around.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Could Refresh the Franchise’s Aging Formula
Those power struggles between factions might work very well with the game’s new weather system that sees regions change according to the weather. For instance, agricultural lands might have more places for the Assassins to hide during harvest season but will be harder to infiltrate in the snow for Naoe considering her smaller stature.
With Japan’s rigid social hierarchies thrown into the mix, increased possibilities and variables for players could not only make for an exciting narrative but also improve the replay value of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, especially if they would like to explore its newly added Canon mode or New Game Plus (which is due in post-release updates)
The game’s developers have revealed interesting details such as high-ranking officials taking shelter indoors during bad weather, making them harder to get to during stealth missions. This could change Templar Hunts, with each target’s social standing being a factor in how easy or difficult they are to find.
Social hierarchies could also be crucial to the newly added recruit system that sees Naoe and Yasuke build up a system of spies and even train a few of Japan’s citizens to join in on their crusade. They may need to take on objectives that discredit their intended victims which would in turn help reduce how well-guarded they are, making use of their recruits in creative ways.
They could also be crucial to the main story when Yasuke’s role as a samurai is factored in, considering that the samurai may be disapproving of one of their own dismantling social systems that they were sworn to maintain. Japan’s factions and social hierarchies could potentially be major talking points in Shadows’ larger conflict between the Assassins and Templars.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ new additions are ambitious attempts to make its open world garner traction in the same way that Elden Ring managed to achieve back in 2022. While the Lands Between may have had a plethora of mysteries to unlock, they did not relay the conflict between Marika’s many children in ways that impacted the Tarnished’s quest for shards of the Elden Ring – a detail that Ubisoft may have kept in mind when crafting its latest title.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows and its take on ancient Japan could be a lively take on a time period that has needed a bold new approach after multiple attempts to bring it to life in the past few years. And perhaps Ubisoft has risen to the challenge, going all out to ensure that its latest effort puts it on the road to redemption in the wake of its recent troubles.
