Assassin’s Creed Shadows lives up to the series’ name

I realized quite late in Assassin’s Creed Shadows that being this version of a shinobi is hard — but it was precisely the precision the game demanded that made it all the more rewarding.

With Shadows, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has achieved both its most impressive stealth and assassination mechanics. At its best, Shadows evokes games like Arkane’s Dishonored series, mixing emergent action with an artful blend of skills and scenarios. While not nearly at the level of sophistication as those games, I nevertheless had moments that left me breathless from what I could achieve. These put me more in the space of immersive simulated assassination games than the most recent, chest-thumping Assassin’s Creed games.

Here’s an example. In Ubisoft’s open-world third-person action game, I was faced with a group of about 10 men in a dark cave, all of whom turned out to be targets I’d been hunting for ages. They were all part of one group, who I’d been carefully taking down individually — one leading me to the next. Now, after tracking one, it turned out he and his remaining colleagues had decided to hold a meeting. Together. With their guards. I hadn’t planned this, but now I either had to leave or use this opportunity to finish the job in one lethal swoop.

Importantly, my character, the shinobi Naoe, was not without her own tricks to balance the overwhelming odds. First, she wasn’t alone. In Shadows, you organically recruit allies throughout your massive revenge quest. You can summon them at a moment’s notice to assist you in any scenario: from a barefisted fighter monk to a giggling, creepy teenage poisoner. Having “upgraded” my poisoner, her poison bomb put three enemies to sleep immediately. Her upgrades also meant anyone who came to investigate fell under the same spell. I began by summoning said poisoner to take out several of the targets and guards.

Second, Naoe herself has skills that verge on magical, such as slowing down time while moving at normal speed — again, reminiscent of Dishonored or Arkane’s other big hitter, Deathloop. Using this skill immediately after my poisoner allowed me to throw several deadly kunai at guards’ heads and move closer to the actual targets for a slick close-up double assassination.

All of this happened within less than 20 seconds. And voila! All the targets and their guards were down.

Never had I felt more like an assassin in Assassin’s Creed. It surprised me, given that I have been playing the franchise since the first game. But this moment made me realize that I had never had to be this clever before in these games, or had access to such a variety of complementary skills, tools, and abilities. Even the more recent trilogy of “reboots” — Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla — did not feature such variety and complementary actions. While the lovable goofball protagonists of those games develop god-like abilities, most were centered around combat rather than stealth. The last expansion of Valhalla, for example, literally saw you play a god, Odin, battling through the Norse realms to save his son, Baldur.

Now, with Shadows, Ubisoft has managed to balance both action and stealth, allowing you to play as the shinobi Naoe and the lethal mountain samurai Yasuke. It’s Naoe’s stealth, in particular, that has left me impressed. Shadows creates multiple scenarios that require planning for your shinobi. While Naoe moves like dark silk on a night wind and can instantly assassinate multiple targets, she can die quickly. Yet, she will often face large set pieces with upward of 20–30 enemies patrolling an area.

The game places huge rewards in, for example, giant, heavily guarded castles. Walking in the front gate is almost never an option. But Naoe can climb overhanging trees, find cracks in walls, and swim in via aqueducts. Once inside, she can use “eagle vision” to see through walls and tag enemies. Shadows removes the flying companion from the previous three games, which acted like a military drone to provide air reconnaissance.

Now, it’s entirely within the limited confines of Naoe’s vision — but that’s not necessarily limiting. If used properly, Naoe can never be surprised and can plan the order of assassination such that no one ever realizes she has infiltrated. For example, if one guard is patrolling, it could be easier to take him out, rather than his colleagues who are stationed, since he may spot you moving.

The size of these places turns this into a murdery puzzle. If I take Guard A out, I have access to Guards B and C. However, Guard D is watching Guard A, etc. Without realizing it, you have to create an assassination Rube Goldberg machine, taking one out, then another, timing it and using different abilities, recruits, and so on. It takes some time to get through these giant castles, but you’re rewarded with some of the best weapons and armor in the game. And if you’re caught, you are hunted for a while, making traversal a hazard. In previous entries, stealth was largely optional and functional but unremarkable. There was also no real penalty for being spotted that those godlike protagonists couldn’t easily silence.

Similarly, the other playable character, the samurai Yasuke, requires careful consideration, despite being a moving mountain. He doesn’t have eagle vision. He is made for loud lethality; even his instant assassinations sever heads and limbs. This creates its own thoughtful play since you need to carefully move and work your way through these large set pieces, ideally without drawing attention.

Yasuke’s advantage is that he can use a huge bow to take enemies out instantly from a distance — unlike Naoe, who has to be close. This speaks to the give-and-take theme central to the game’s mechanics. But Yasuke can more easily and quickly end alerts, making his style of murder puzzle less clean but easier to recover from should things go awry.

I did not expect Shadows to place so much work and thought into its assassinations, which is obviously amusing given the name of the franchise. Having played this series since its inception, I was struck by the emphasis on clean, thoughtful assassinations — not only within scripted contexts, but in the open world itself.

After years of trending toward bombastic action, Shadows points toward a future where Assassin’s Creed continues to live up to its name — and hopefully creates scenarios to make players feel like the titular leads, rather than god-like warriors.