Assassin's Creed Shadows' Yasuke isn't your average assassin

While the Assassin’s Creed games are known for the stealth-action gameplay, the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows aims to shake up that formula in a big way.

Ubisoft recently showed off its first gameplay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is finally taking fans to a setting they’ve dreamt about for years now, Feudal Japan.

Check out the first gameplay trailer below

For the first time since Assassin’s Creed Syndicate in 2015, players will take control of not one, but two protagonists, Naoe the shinobi and Yasuke the samurai.

Players will have almost complete freedom over which character they want to play as during the main story, though if you’re looking to play an Assassin’s Creed game in a totally different way, Yasuke is going to be your guy.

While Naoe plays like your average assassin, though of course with a few new tricks up her sleeve, Yasuke is like Ubisoft took your typical FromSoftware strength-build and inserted it into the world of Assassin’s Creed.

Yasuke towers over his opponents, and carries a variety of weapons that only he can use, the majority of which are anything but subtle.

During the gameplay showcase at Summer Game Fest, Ubisoft treated us to a full mission as Yasuke, which saw him relentlessly mowing down groups of enemies with ease. At one point in the demo Yasuke stabbed an attacking samurai through the chest, before hoisting him up into the air and throwing him away like a ragdoll.

Another stand-out moment was when he was faced with a door blocking his path to the next area. A character like Naoe could simply scale a nearby wall and advance with ease, but Yasuke isn’t exactly light on his feet, so he opted to charge head first into the door and shatter it into a hundred pieces. Later in the demo this destruction mechanic was shown off again when Yasuke charged through about three solid walls in order to get to his target, knocking down several guards in the process.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is aiming to be a unique entry in Ubisoft’s flagship franchise, and Yasuke’s character and gameplay style are the perfect example of that desire to stand-out, and I can’t wait to go full hulk-mode on whoever stands in my way when the game launches on 14 November.