Oneof my oldest videogame wishes is about to be granted. Assassin’s Creed is finally bound for Japan, but I’ve resisted getting too excited until I see it in action. Ubi says Shadows will return to the series’ roots as a stealth game, similar to last year’s Mirage. Here are my thoughts after an hour-long hands-off demonstration.
Shadowsis still firmly in the territory of Valhalla combat—lock on, dodging, animation canceling—but I noticed some improvements. Enemies seemed less spongy, and in general both Yasuke and Naoe are more deliberate with their attacks. The pace of combat was a bit slower, and looked really cool. It’s also great to see enemies actually react to each of Yasuke’s strikes. Nothing pulls me out of an Assassin’s Creedfantasy faster than guards who tank hits like it didn’t even bother them.
Piggybacking off last year’s Assassin’s CreedMirage, stealth doesn’t seem to be an afterthought in Shadows. Naoe can scale walls, hop between clusters of rooftops, and quickly ascend to higher ground with her grapple hook. She has tools to silently kill, distract, or displace guards so she can avoid violence altogether. Naoe can also crawl through grass, MetalGearSolid-style.
Ubi has been saying that Yasuke is the more capable fighter of the duo, but that doesn’t track with what I saw. Sure, Yasuke has more brutal finishers, but the Ubi dev piloting my demo cut down handfuls of guards just as easily with Naoe’s katana and chain blade. I was already planning on playing Naoe most of the time, and now I don’t know what Yasuke has going for him beyond chopping guards’ heads off every time he triggers a finisher. Apparently there are some mechanical differences between the two in combat—Yasuke can block attacks while Naoe can only evade, but is that a meaningful difference when both accomplish the same thing?