Ubisoft gave Assassin’s Creed fans their first real look at the next flagship game in the long-running franchise with the debut trailer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows on Wednesday. Previously known as Assassin’s Creed: Codename Red, Shadows will send the franchise to feudal Japan for the first time this November, letting players live out their shinobi fantasies as the ninja Naoe.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will also let players take on a second role, that of Black samurai Yosuke. While other Assassin’s Creed games have featured dual protagonists, the two playable characters of Shadows appear to be more distinct than those of any previous game. The game’s female ninja character is shown wielding ninjato, wristblade, and kusarigama, her samurai counterpart is a heavily armored fella with a hefty katana.
The debut trailer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows teased its cinematic ambitions and introduced its characters. Fans may need to wait until Ubisoft Forward in June for a look at actual gameplay.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is being developed by Ubisoft Quebec, the studio behind 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, under the creative direction of Jonathan Dumont. Shadows was originally announced in 2022 under its codename, and promised to send the Assassin’s Creed franchise to one of fans’ most-requested settings.
Shadows is the open-world RPG follow-up to last year’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the scaled-back take on the 17-year-old Assassin’s Creed formula. The feudal era Japan-set game is just one of a multiple announced projects in the works for the Assassin’s Creed publisher. Others include Assassin’s Creed Jade, a mobile game set in China’s Qin dynasty, and the mysterious Assassin’s Creed Codename: Hexe, “a very different type of Assassin’s Creed game,” according to Ubisoft executive producer Marc-Alexis Cote. Hexe is being overseen by creative director Clint Hocking (Watch Dogs Legion, Far Cry 2).
Elsewhere, there’s Assassin’s Creed Codename: Infinity, which is “not a game per se,” Cote said in 2022, but “a hub that will unite all our different experiences and players in meaningful ways.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is coming to PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Nov. 15.
