Assassin's Creed Shadows is both a samurai and a ninja game, as it borrows Syndicate’s dual-character story

rockpapershotgun.com:

After being unceremoniously thrown into the spotlight yesterday with a pre-reveal leak, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been given a proper unveiling via a flashy cinematic trailer, confirming both its leaked November release date and revealing that we’ll be playing as two protagonists for the first time in the series since Syndicate almost a decade ago. One of those heroes will also be the series’ first playable real-life figure: the African samurai Yasuke.

Yes, as it turns out, ‘Shadows’ does indeed mean multiple playable protagonists, making the long-expected ‘Assassin’s Creed ninja game’ both a ninja AND samurai game. Sneaky shinobi Naoe fits into the classic mould of Assassin’s Creed, uh, assassins, specialising in creeping up on targets - helped by the ability to zip around using a new grappling hook - and stabbing them with the familiar hidden blade.

While Naoe is the fictional daughter of a real-life figure of the time, legendary ninja leader Fujibayashi Nagato, Yasuke is himself a real-life person - the first time players have taken control of an actual historical figure in Assassin’s Creed rather than just chatting to them. The African-born swordsman is renowned for being Japan’s first Black samurai, serving under famous daimyo Oda Nobunaga - known for working to unify the country in the 16th century. (Nobunaga’s efforts would ultimately be completed by Tokugawa Ieyasu - the inspiration for Toranaga in recent and very excellent TV show Shogun.)

Compared to Naoe’s stealthy focus, Yasuke will excel more in direct combat - making his playstyle closer to the action-RPG feel of more recent Assassin’s Creed games or the similarly samurai-focused Ghost of Tsushima.

While we don’t see any actual gameplay in the cinematic trailer - nice as it looks and all - IGN wrangled some more details out of developers Ubisoft, including info on a reworked lighting system that will help Naoe to hide in the - ahem - shadows like Sam Fisher, the grappling hook traversal I mentioned