Assassin's Creed Shadows' full map has been uncovered, and she's huge

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is shaping up to be the most exciting entry in years, and this latest map discovery has only sent our excitement soaring even further.

Ubisoft dropped the very first full-length trailer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows last week (formerly titled Codename Red).

In that trailer, we got confirmation that samurai Yasuke and shinobi Naoe will indeed be our dual protagonists just as leakers suggested.

This dual perspective is expected to work much like it did in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, with the duo playing in tandem with one another.

One aspect that’s piqued my interest is the emphasis placed on the importance of seasons within the game.

For example, in winter, NPCs are said to be much more likely to gather around a fire - or in summer, Naoe will be able to skulk through tall grass that’ll be gone by the autumn.

This sense of immersion and dynamism is exactly what needed to be injected into the Assassin’s Creed franchise.

It’s likely that we’ll get our first look at some gameplay during the upcoming Ubisoft Forward on 10 June.

Take a look at Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ first trailer below.

In the meantime, we’ve got our first glimpse at the game’s map.

This all began with Ubisoft releasing a mysterious string of Japanese symbols alongside a numerical cipher.

Long story short, these symbols equate to numbers that can be plotted against the X and Y-axis of a graph. Stay with me on this.

Twitter account AccessTheAnimus was one of the first to do the above task, which gave them an outline that looks an awful lot like a map.

This mapped out outline was then compared to real world Japan with the conclusion being that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is all but confirmed to be taking us to the Kansai region of the country.

This area encompasses both Kyoto and Osaka, adding further certainty that this will indeed be the area we explore.

Comparing the shape of the graph to various areas of Japan, it does look that it is representing the Kansai region of Japan, that comprises Kyoto and Osaka!

Is this going to be the map of the game? What is your opinion about this? pic.twitter.com/gEgMlte4z2

— Access The Animus (@AccessTheAnimus) May 14, 2024

Shadows begins its story in 1579 during the Azuchi-Momoyama period. Well, during this period, Heian-kyō was the country’s capital city - now modern day Kyoto.

Osaka, on the other hand, was the country’s largest city. It makes heaps of sense for Shadows to focus on these two locales.

Could this be the year Assassin’s Creed once again produces a GOTY contender?