ASSASSIN'S CREED SHADOWS

Ubisoft's latest adventure is making a great first impression

- Morgan Park

OK Ubisoft, I'm actually somewhat excited for Assassin's Creed Shadows. I honestly did not see that coming. When Shadows was announced, I was prepared to give it a big ol' shrug. Back then it was billed as the next “RPG” Assassin's Creed in the vein of Odyssey or Valhalla, which sounded like a regression from Mirage.

But since then, Ubi has been saying all the right things about Shadows to get a jaded, stealth-loving “we peaked with Ezio” fan to wonder: are we back?

One of the protagonists, Naoe, is a shinobi with a hidden blade (cool). Its open-world Japan is smaller than Valhalla, but dense with cities and rooftops (OK, good stuff). There's a dynamic lighting system and a Splinter Cell-like visibility meter (yes, yes, keep talking). You can go prone to hide in low grass or find shortcuts through crawl spaces (amazing, say more). You can extinguish candles and snuff out lanterns from a distance to create shadows (perfect, no notes).

This was the stuff on my mind going into a six-hour Shadows play session at Ubisoft Quebec. It was largely a gameplay showcase: I played through part of each character's prologue, but not long enough to see Naoe and Yasuke meet, and one main questline in the Harima province, one of nine chunks of the map.

The idea behind Shadows' dual protagonists is ambitious, and not at all subtle. This is Ubisoft simulating two distinct videogame fantasies in a bid to satisfy two very different, almost opposing, types of AC fan: the old purists who want hoods, blades and creeds back, and the folks who love stepping into the boots of historical warrior archetypes, assassins be damned. What's remarkable is that Ubisoft might just pull it off.