Assassin's Creed Shadows Trailer Reveals Yasuke

By returning to the core concepts the series was founded on, Shadows delivers the most satisfying Assassin's Creed experience in years. The parkour system—the best since Unity—lets you seamlessly transition from ground level to castle rooftops, and the grappling hook makes reaching advantageous viewpoints even faster. Perched on a tightrope high above your enemies, you're only a drop away from securing the perfect kill... as long as you're playing as Naoe. Switch to Yasuke, the game's second protagonist, and the experience transforms entirely.

Yasuke is slow, clumsy, and incapable of silent kills. He climbs like a grandfather. He’s the polar opposite of a traditional Assassin’s Creed hero. He represents one of Ubisoft's most perplexing design decisions... and one of its most intriguing. When I control Yasuke, it no longer feels like I'm playing an Assassin's Creed game.

At first, the disconnect between Yasuke's abilities and the series' core tenets was deeply frustrating. What purpose does an Assassin's Creed protagonist serve if they can barely climb and can't execute stealth takedowns? But the more I played as him, the more I appreciated the rationale behind his design. He is definitely flawed, yet I believe he tackles a couple of significant issues the franchise has wrestled with recently.

Aside from a short appearance in the prologue, you don’t get to play as Yasuke until several hours into the campaign. Your entire introduction is with Naoe, a nimble shinobi who embodies the "assassin" part of Assassin's Creed more effectively than any lead character in the last ten years. Shifting to Yasuke after spending so much time with Naoe is a jarring transition.

This towering samurai is too large and noisy to effectively infiltrate enemy camps, and he struggles to climb anything taller than himself. He can't find grips on the overhanging roofs lining Japan's streets, and when he does manage to climb, his pace is painfully slow. On rooftops, he awkwardly balances on the ridge, standing tall and visible as he inches forward. These restrictions on Yasuke's climbing introduce friction. Scaling the environment can feel laborious, with structures like scaffolding and ladders required for any significant vertical progress.

While these limitations don't strictly force Yasuke to remain on the ground, they strongly encourage it. This, in turn, limits his sightlines. Without easy access to high vantage points, it's difficult to identify threats and strategize. And where a grounded Naoe can rely on Eagle Vision to highlight enemies, Yasuke has no such tool. Choosing to wield his blade means sacrificing almost everything except raw power.

Assassin's Creed is built on stealthy assassinations and vertical exploration—concepts that Yasuke directly contradicts.

If this sounds like a departure from Assassin's Creed, that's because it is. The series' foundation is rooted in parkour-led exploration. Even in historical settings with primarily one or two-story structures, verticality has always been central to the gameplay. Losing the series' traditional freedom of movement and being restricted to more prescribed paths makes playing as Yasuke feel closer to Ghost of Tsushima than a traditional Assassin's Creed title—an impression amplified by his lack of stealth training and reliance on samurai swordsmanship. Embodying Yasuke means playing a game focused primarily on intense combat, an area where Tsushima is fondly remembered and Assassin's Creed has often faced criticism.

Playing as Yasuke requires you to rethink how you approach Assassin's Creed. Historically, the series let us climb anything. Past assassins were like knife-wielding Spider-Men, equipped with sticky hands that let them scale towers and glaciers as if they were ladders. It was effortless and, consequently, offered no challenge. Yasuke changes this. While many surfaces are out of his reach, careful environmental observation reveals specially designed paths that allow him to reach his goals. For instance, a leaning tree trunk from an outcrop can lead to a sync point otherwise unreachable without a grappling hook. A castle's open second-floor window becomes accessible by navigating the staircase-like arrangement of the courtyard's outer wall. These pathways are arguably more engaging to discover than the mindless scrambling of previous games.

However, these routes only take Yasuke where he needs to go. His freedom in general exploration is much more limited, and gaining a high vantage to observe enemy patrols is difficult. But Yasuke truly doesn't follow the traditional Assassin's Creed method of analyzing guard movements and planning. His only stealth-like ability is "Brutal Assassination," which... well, involves impaling an enemy on his sword, lifting them into the air, and shouting. Not exactly subtle, is it? It functions less as a takedown and more as a combat initiator, starting the fight with an instant kill. And when the fight begins, it excels. It excels tremendously. Shadows features the finest swordplay the Assassin's Creed series has seen in over a decade. Every strike feels deliberate, with a wide array of techniques—from powerful rush attacks to satisfying parries. Finishing moves sever heads from shoulders, creating a stark visual contrast between Yasuke's direct power and Naoe's stealthy approach.

Yet it's more than just contrast; separating combat and stealth into two distinct characters prevents the styles from blending excessively. In Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, too many quests defaulted to direct confrontation, making action the primary language. In Shadows, the dual-protagonist system protects against this. Naoe's relative fragility prevents her from entering a full slaughter mode, so when combat erupts, you're eventually forced to retreat, reposition, and re-establish the stealth loop. When you need a break from that tension, Yasuke's strength ensures you can withstand the toughest challenges Shadows presents. It's the raw power he contributes that makes him such an exciting prospect in battle, especially as his extensive skill tree unlocks over time.

So, there's clear intention behind Yasuke's design. Yet, it's still challenging to see how he fits within the Assassin's Creed framework—a franchise built on stealth assassinations and vertical exploration, which he fundamentally opposes. While characters like Bayek and Eivor leaned too heavily into action, they could still perform the fundamental actions of an Assassin's Creed lead. They scaled temple peaks and wielded hidden blades. While it's thematically fitting for Yasuke, a samurai and not an assassin, to be poor at stealth and climbing, his design simply means you can't play Assassin's Creed in the traditional sense while controlling him.

The real challenge Yasuke faces, however, is his partner. Naoe is simply the superior choice. Mechanically speaking, she is the best Assassin's Creed protagonist in many years. Her stealth abilities are perfectly complemented by Sengoku Period Japan's architecture, which offers the verticality the series has lacked since Syndicate. Together, these elements deliver an experience that truly fulfills the promise of Assassin's Creed: becoming a highly mobile, silent killer.

Naoe also gains from the design philosophy that defines Yasuke. While she can climb almost anywhere, the series' "stick to every surface" approach has been replaced with a slightly more realistic system. This means you still evaluate climbing routes and find anchor points for your grappling hook, but you can leap farther and climb quicker—these are the essential elements that turn an open world into an Assassin's Creed playground. And when she's on the ground in the heat of combat, Naoe's fighting style feels just as brutally effective and impactful as Yasuke's. She benefits from all the same swordplay improvements, with the only caveat being that she can't sustain a fight as long as her samurai companion. All of this begs the question: why choose Yasuke when you can play as Naoe?

In its commendable effort to provide two distinct playstyles with Yasuke and Naoe, Ubisoft has crafted a double-edged sword. The African samurai operates under a completely different rule set than a classic Assassin's Creed hero, creating a unique and reasonably compelling experience that's a first for the franchise. However, he is undeniably at odds with the foundational ideas of these games—ideas that remain fairly unique in the open-world genre. So, while I'll certainly revisit Yasuke's perspective to revel in the vicious thrill of his swordplay, it will be through Naoe's eyes that I genuinely explore the world of Shadows. Because when I play as Naoe, I feel like I'm truly playing Assassin's Creed.