The ninja of upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows will, says Ubisoft, be the fastest assassin it’s ever let loose on the unsuspecting guards and mission targets of their murderous little historical fantasy world.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Jonathan Dumont, creative director of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, said that “Naoe’s the fastest Assassin we ever made,” following up that “She runs super fast, she has a lot of gadgets to keep her stealth so that she doesn’t have to fight often. We wanted to satisfy that for players that come in for that ninja-Assassin game.”
Dumont also hinted that Naoe would have a lean-forward, arms-back run akin to the style made infamous by its ubiquitous presence in the anime Naruto.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will have two playable characters, the deuteragonists Yasuke, a close-combat brawler samurai based on a historical figure who plays like the warriors of recent Assassin’s Creed games; and the fictional Naoe, who it seems is more likely to appear as a traditional assassin matching the earlier games in the series: good at staying hidden, but in trouble if she’s up against four or five enemies at once.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will release on February 14, 2025, and is set in the Sengoku (“warring states”) period of Japanese history.
It’s yet another thing to love about Naoe, the character that reminds us mostly of how Ubisoft used to make the greatest series of stealth games—Splinter Cell. Shadows will, appropriate to the name, let you finally hide in shadowed areas and extinguish lights to stay hidden à la Splinter Cell.
If you’re surprised that a big title like Assassin’s Creed is releasing that early in the year, well, it got delayed a bit and 2025 is absolutely packed with huge games.