If you’re like me – and recall things that don’t matter much for way too long – you probably remember that Ubisoft had, once upon a time, said that having an Assassin’s Creed game set in feudal Japan would be “boring”. This was attributed to Alex Hutchinson, the creative director of AC3, all the way back in 2012, with a followup in 2014 saying the setting has been done to death. Not his exact words, but you get the idea.
And yet, in the year of 2024, we have the announcement of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Not only is it set in feudal Japan, it is set in arguably the most represented period of feudal Japan – the warring states period.
Granted, Hutchinson has long since left Ubisoft (he left in 2017), but the irony of the statement has not lost any of its flavour. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is, effectively, a Ubisoft U-Turn that’s 12 years in the making.
When I first wrote my review for Ghost of Tsushima, I had intended to call it “The Assassin’s Creed Game Ubisoft Won’t Make”. And in hindsight, it’s probably for the best that I didn’t. But I stand by the opening statement I wrote at the time; if Ubisoft won’t make a game that gamers want out of some superiority complex, then another dev studio will.
Now, I won’t claim to know if the success of the Sucker Punch Productions game is the reason for the French publisher changing course, but as an outside observer, it sure looks like it. It also ends up being pretty amusing that it’s come to this after all that posturing, and even more ironic when Ghost of Tsushima covers a much less represented period of feudal Japan than Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Granted, 12 years is a long time, and plenty of things could have changed by then, especially behind the scenes at Ubisoft. It’s also worth noting that, at the time, Hutchinson also said ancient Egypt would have been a boring setting, and yet we got Assassin’s Creed Origins in 2017. And while not a standalone game of its own, a minor segment of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is set in 1914, at the outbreak of World War I. Incidentally, World War II was also one of the three settings listed as both “most wanted” and among the “worst settings”, so make of that what you will.
Maybe back then Ubisoft was feeling confident with the performance of the series, and as time passed the suits at the company decided to reduce risk and just play things safe. Considering the budget for recent games, and the massive layoffs in the industry, it makes sense to me.
But on the flip side, Ubisoft has gone for the controversial choice of making Yasuke one of its playable characters. I’d rather not go into the specifics of why it is a controversial choice, but it’s suffice to say that consensus is split on this, with those who are for and against this in mostly equal measure. Things are also so out of hand that there was an edit war going on over the Wikipedia entry of Yasuke.
『アサシン クリード シャドウズ』11月15日発売！
日本語吹替版の公式シネマティックワールドプレミアトレーラーが公開されました。
🎥 https://t.co/J6NxafGY6FUbisoft+加入者・アルティメットエディション購入者は、12日よりプレイ可能です。#AssassinsCreedShadows pic.twitter.com/G1zUYDatxd
— Ubisoft Japan (@UBISOFT_JAPAN) May 15, 2024
Rather than talk about Yasuke though, I’d much rather talk about that comment in the video describing the two playable characters. Specifically, the claim that the devs at Ubisoft cannot squeeze the the fantasy of being a samurai and a shinobi into one playable character. The justification for this is that the two archetypes come from different social classes, and have different lives that cannot be mixed together.
First of all, Ghost of Tsushima has proven that merging the two is completely possible. Secondly, as I mentioned when discussing the historical inaccuracies of said game, the two are not mutually exclusive entities. Samurai, being practitioners of koryu bujutsu, would have learned some stealth techniques. Sure, peasant shinobi exist, but the claim that samurai cannot be shinobi is a strange one to make.
Either way though, it’s fair to say that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has quite a lot to live up to, especially after the high bar set by Ghost of Tsushima. With the initial trailers, it’s unclear in what direction Ubisoft plans to take the plot, or even gameplay for that matter since none of that was shown. But then again, Ubisoft has a track record of having really great trailers, with the eventual gameplay not quite matching. So the publisher will have to meet the bar it set for itself first before worrying about the one set by Sucker Punch Productions.
And on that bombshell…
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