Assassin's Creed Shadows' Game Director Charles Benoit On Split Protagonists, Stealth & Breaking The Rules

screenrant.com:

, like most games in its franchise, comes down to the details. Set in Japan's Sengoku period, the upcoming title is taking the typical broad strokes of the franchise and layering on a generous dose of new systems. While some of its ideas are big — dual protagonists that lean heavily into different playstyles are an obvious selling point — others shake up the series in subtler ways.

Those details are the product of many different developers, but if there's anyone qualified enough to touch on them all, it's game director Charles Benoit. As the director of and a designer for and, Benoit has plenty of experience behind the wheel. sat down with Benoit at an preview event in Ubisoft Quebec to discuss the split protagonists, stealth, and breaking the rules of

Screen Rant: The gameplay sessions really highlighted how different Yasuke and Naoe feel and how their physical interaction with the world differs. What was the process of building two very different gameplay experiences like?

Charles Benoit: First, I'm happy that you realize that they are quite different because that was the goal. So first, the game direction, we have that in our DNA. From day one, we wanted to have this split between the stealth and combat to really make players choose with strengths and weaknesses.

So we established a couple of levers of what can affect stealth and what can affect combat in terms of hurt reaction or damage or health. And then we kind of pulled back on one and increased the other to make each of them really different.

Screen Rant: The game gives some hints about what an upcoming gameplay segment might entail when you're choosing between one character to the other. Is there a sense in designing that, okay, this mission's going to be a little more for Yasuke, this one's going to be a little more for Naoe, or is there an imperative to try to make that just very equal overall?

Charles Benoit: It's more about when something is playable by both characters, we wanted it to be doable for