It turns out that the biggest gameplay feature of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, it’s dual protagonists Naoe and Yasuke who comes with two highly distinct playstyles, has been one of the most divisive parts of the newest entry in the long running series of games. In a recent interview with Gamesrader+, associate game director for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Simon Lemay-Comtois opened up how the choice of dual protagonists was received by the players at large, while also comparing how different it made the overall gameplay experience than Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, a previous title which also featured two protagonists.
“The differences between Evie and Jacob were mostly cosmetic,” Simon Lemay-Comtois stated, “They play very, very similarly, except with very few select skills.” Shadows, by comparison, was specifically designed to be “an exercise in contrast” — something that “can split our fan base a little.”
“Dual protagonists can be divisive along very strange lines, right?” Lemay-Comtois added. “It’s not just a ‘well, I prefer a war, therefore I prefer Yasuke.’ Some people just don’t like one character over the other, and they don’t like to spend time with one. It was true with Evie and Jacob, but with Naoe and Yasuke it’s more divisive,” he continued. “And we knew this. We knew going into it, but I think it can split our fan base a little too.”
The dev also confirmed that we’ll possibly see more dual protagonists in new entries of the series as well:
“I think the learning for us is that, yes, we could do more dual-protagonist games in the future – if we have a good reason to do it narratively and for the setting,” Lemay-Comtois concluded.
What can be a downside of having two protagonists with a highly contrasting set of gameplay is that they can be a bit too limiting and end up offering a bit of a ‘boxed-in’ type of gameplay. And what many players enjoy is the balance of things which means as Naoe is too much stealth oriented and Yasuke is built for intense close quarter fights, picking either of them can mean getting closed off to another aspect of gameplay altogether and that, can indeed be divisive in the long term.
Lemay-Comtois also stated that future games in the Assassin’s Creed series will make parkour a much stronger focus than what it has been in Shadows:
“Pay more attention to parkour in future games as its own pillar. We’re trying to rectify that in post-launch with Shadows and push that narrative internally to say, parkour matters. Let’s really push parkour forward.”
