Keeping up with the hands-on preview event, I think it might just have the hook to get me excited again.

If there's any one thing I want out of an Assassin's Creed game, it's a sense of identity. While the hodgepodge additions and revisions to the series have always come together in imperfect ways, the entries that I find most memorable tend to have a big idea that the design actually commits to. In Assassin's Creed Shadows, the dual protagonists of Yasuke and Naoe feel like that big idea, and the execution isn't mired in the half-measures that lead to the franchise's biggest disappointments.

Assassin's Creed Used To Reinvent Its Protagonists

Connor Wasn't All That Bad

Shadows isn't the first Assassin's Creed game to feature dual protagonists. While the other open-world RPG entries have played around with male and female options, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is the one that previously committed to swapping between playstyles. Even in Syndicate, however, the difference isn't particularly pronounced, serving as a microcosm of a problem that's been weighing the series down for a while.

Perhaps my biggest Assassin's Creed hot take is that Assassin's Creed 3 isn't one of the weaker entries. While it introduced ideas that pulled the series away from its core strengths, it did so with thoughtfulness, launch bugs aside. I love how much AC3 is built around its protagonist, Connor, a step down from Ezio that does, at least, step somewhere. Connor acts very differently than Ezio does, but more importantly, he moves through the world differently. From his ballet of axe-based combat to weightier parkour that opens up pathways between trees, everything is rethought for the character at hand.

For all the strengths of later games, it's been a while since characters have felt like pointed reinventions in that way. Assassin's Creed Mirage's Basim is fast, but he's fast in the way of a sped-up Eivor, the preceding protagonist from Valhalla. Although I knew that Assassin's Creed Shadows was promising a big difference between Yasuke and Naoe, the history of decreasing distinctions was always dragging my expectations down. As it turns out, I didn't need to be pessimistic.

Yasuke & Naoe Are Truly Different In AC Shadows

Real Strengths & Weaknesses

Yasuke and Naoe are, in practice, what Jacob and Evie were in theory. Yasuke has real impact, and not in the typical blend of strength and grace. By offloading the traditional joys of stealth and parkour to Naoe, Shadows is able to take Yasuke's lack of agility to real destinations, from teetering attempts at freerunning to Brutal Assassinations that give enemies a heads-up before Yasuke runs them through. I'm sure his limitations will prove divisive, but even if I don't want to run around the map with Yasuke all the time, I find it refreshing to see trade-offs embraced.

Naoe's traditional approach is still more my thing, ittedly, but she also feels liberated by the dynamic. Unlike Kassandra or Eivor, she doesn't have to be capable of wielding heavy weapons, and the game can punish her for entering brawls without locking off that avenue altogether. When I died to a group of suspicious merchants, I switched to Yasuke instead of playing smarter, and it's nice to have that option for a more id-driven approach when the mood strikes.

Character Stories Matter As Much As Mechanics

I'm Actually Compelled By The Narrative Presentation

The playing field also feels more developed when it comes to the character narratives, even if neither are likely to become the new Ezio. Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Alexios is a great character on the side, but he feels shoved into the role of being a protagonist option, enhancing the sense that Kassandra is the "canon" character. Yasuke and Naoe are both perfectly positioned to provide interesting, distinct angles on the main story, and the way that both engage with NPCs and story beats is satisfying.

For context, Assassin's Creed Shadows takes place in Japan's conflict-filled Sengoku period, with Yasuke and Naoe initially positioned on very different sides of Oda Nobunaga's quest for unification.

For the first time in a while, I found myself immediately interested in where the narrative is going, an area that's been let down by the presentation of some recent Ubisoft games across the board. Although Black Flag isn't one of my personal favorites — another hot take that runs counter to my personal love for pirates — comparisons between its bespoke cutscenes and lifeless modern alternatives strike a chord. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle recently spoiled me to a degree that makes cinematic presentation in other games underwhelming, but Shadows feels like a step in the right direction.

Assassin's Creed Shadows Shows Some Reflection

It's Not Just Full Steam Ahead

Maybe more than anything, I'm just happy to see an Assassin's Creed team really pay attention to some elements that have fallen by the wayside. Mirage did this with stealth, but it had an unfortunate number of compromises elsewhere, from the aforementioned lifeless cutscenes to stiff kill animations that lurch into motion. While Assassin's Creed Shadows obviously doesn't deliver on every possible opportunity — I would have loved to see Naoe get a little closer to Connor's adaptability in nature, for example — I found myself running into far fewer elements that felt underbaked in the preview.

I don't think Shadows will be the miracle game that gets everything right for me, and there's definitely a sense that it's playing catch-up as the franchise's innovations have been picked up and sometimes done better elsewhere. My biggest concern with Shadows is still that the world will feel more hollow than the smaller games in the series, a problem that has consistently plagued past entries of its scale. I do, however, feel like it's finally managing to both re-establish past strengths and move forward with new ones, something that Assassin's Creed has been struggling to synchronize for a while.

I'm well-aware that not everyone is as enthused by Assassin's Creed Shadows' approach to protagonists, but playing the game convinced me that the dichotomy presented by the pair is the obvious choice. I can't imagine deg Naoe and not latching onto Yasuke as a historical gift of her natural counterpart, and I can't imagine making a game with Yasuke and not building someone like Naoe to pull everything together. Playing around in historical settings is what usually draws me to Assassin's Creed, but in the case of Shadows, who I'm playing in that setting as might be the best part.