A twenty-minute preview of the game from Ubisoft Quebec has arrived, which is no coincidence as the release of the latest Assassin’s Creed is fast approaching. PlayStation 5 Pro support was also mentioned.

Castles in Assassin’s Creed Shadows are strongholds filled with enemy guards, valuable resources, and a precious loot chest. Conquering a tenshu means eliminating every samurai daisho on the premises, unlocking the loot chest and giving you powerful equipment. You can see the contents of these chests by hovering over the castle icon on the map. Castles are just one of many activities in Assassin’s Creed Shadows that you can complete to increase your Knowledge Rank, which gives you access to higher level abilities and upgrades. Completing them will also earn you experience and mastery points, which you can use to directly upgrade Naoe and Yasuke’s abilities. Castles are also full of resources that you can claim for your hideout. Smaller bundles of resources can be collected manually, while larger supplies can be marked by Naoe and Yasuke to be collected by scouts and delivered to your hideout at the change of seasons.

In the video, after dispatching a sentry with her Hidden Blade, Naoe quickly takes to the rooftops with the help of her grappling hook and begins scouting nearby patrols. Unlike recent games in the series, Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t allow you to call upon an avian ally to scout for you from the sky. Instead, you’ll hold L2 to use the Observe mechanic and focus Naoe or Yasuke’s vision on an enemy/objective/loot to mark it. While scouting, Naoe spots a Samurai Daisho, an elite guard that must be eliminated to conquer the Tenshu and claim its ultimate reward. Equipped with her tanto blade, Naoe can double-assassinate targets, but the Samurai Daisho’s abundant health means she can’t take him out with a single strike… yet. Shadow’s equipment not only offers distinct stat bonuses, but also unique engravings that can change your strategy at any moment. In this case, Naoe changes her headgear to a piece that gives bonus damage to aerial assassinations-enough to take out Samurai Daisho with a single blow.

Further inside the castle, Naoe calls for help from one of her recruited allies, Gennojo. He’s able to stun a pair of nearby enemies, allowing Naoe to close the gap and take them both out. Gennojo is just one of several recruitable allies that can be summoned to help in the open world (fun fact: each ally is summoned with a different bird call). Once these guards are taken out, Naoe uses Eagle Vision to check out the interior of a nearby building. Hostile enemies will appear in red in Eagle Vision, while civilians will cast an orange silhouette. Be warned, though: just because civilians won’t attack you doesn’t mean they won’t raise the alarm if they spot you. Fortunately, Naoe can use a variety of new stealth features to avoid detection. She starts by turning off a nearby lantern, cloaking herself in darkness. She then uses her grappling hook to pull herself up to the ceiling to avoid a patrol, before dropping down and assassinating a second Samurai Daisho through a shoji door with her katana.

Yasuke may be a one-man army, but he’s still capable of sneaking around. Without a grappling hook, he uses a nearby low-hanging tree to climb to the rooftops, then pulls out his bow to silently take out a guard at close range. Then, crouching, he sneaks up on another guard and dispatches him with a brutal assassination with his long katana. It’s not as inconspicuous as a Hidden Blade, but it gets the job done and doesn’t alert anyone else in the area. Yasuke’s infiltration takes place during the day, so he doesn’t have the advantage of hiding in the shadows like Naoe did, but by sticking to the rooftops and using the geometry of the pitched roofs, he can stay hidden while crawling prone. Here, Yasuke calls upon another ally, Oni-Yuri, a poison specialist who can knock several enemies unconscious. Moving on to the next courtyard, Yasuke discovers a bell tower that can alert the entire Tenshu to his presence should he be detected, but with his bow (or Naoe’s shuriken or kunai) he can disarm the bell tower. Now it’s time to make a loud entrance and take out the last samurai Daisho. Yasuke begins by shooting a barrel of gunpowder with his bow, taking out a nearby guard before swapping his bow for a massive kanabo club. The hulking weapon’s blows overwhelm the Samurai Daisho, earning Yasuke another Mastery Point.

Switching back to Naoe, we see that her stealth gear has been swapped out for a more combat-oriented headgear and armor that allows her to leap over enemies by sprinting up to them and knock them down by sliding into them. Her tanto is replaced with a legendary kusarigama that increases damage to enemies over three meters away. The Kusarigama is Naoe’s long-range melee weapon, great for crowd control and fighting multiple enemies at once. It also allows Naoe to rush assassinate her targets (rush assassinate is a passive ability available whenever the kusarigama is one of Naoe’s two equipped weapons and does not cost adrenaline to use) by wrapping one end of the kusarigama around her target and using it to propel herself forward for the killing blow. Once Naoe has reached an elevated position, she notices that a servant who spotted her earlier has returned with reinforcements. Instead of dealing with them herself, she calls her ally Yaya, a hulking brawler, to take care of them for her. With the reinforcements taken care of, Naoe is able to use the Observe Mechanic to scout out Takahashi Shiro, a member of the Twisted Tree family she’s been ordered to assassinate. This time, Naoe’s aerial assassination attempt only does partial damage, which means she has to fight. Using a combination of smoke bombs and her kusarigama, she makes quick work of the weaker guards while dancing around Shiro, dismantling his armor before delivering the killing blow. With her target assassinated and the samurai Daisho eliminated, Naoe is free to scale Nijo Tenshu and open the chest, earning a new set of legendary armor for Yasuke. Her run ends with her scaling the Tenshu for a synchronization point, using the Observe mechanic to scout our nearby points of interest.

Yasuke also does a gear swap, replacing the katana and kanabo with a naginata and teppo (a single-shot rifle). Yasuke’s last armor was ideal for stealth, as it provided a 200% damage bonus to ranged weapons while out of combat. Thanks to a unique engraving, the new set allows him to parry unblockable attacks (red glowing attacks that can usually only be dodged). The armor works especially well with the accompanying helmet, which deals 50% damage to the attacker when parried. Not only can Yasuke parry any attack, but he’ll also reflect 50% of that damage back to the attacker. It’s not often that you get to go in “guns blazing” in an Assassin’s Creed game, but that’s exactly what Yasuke does, smashing down the door before finishing off the nearest guard with his teppo. With Yasuke’s size comes a certain audacity (he can take and deal more damage than Naoe in a straight fight), and he sprints straight across the courtyard to confront Takahashi Shiro. Wielding his naginata and parrying nearly every attack thrown at him, Yasuke quickly dispatches all of the guards and even takes out Shiro without too much trouble. He may not be the climber Naoe is, but Yasuke still climbs the Tenshu to claim the treasured chest and conquer Nijo Palace.

This episode will be the first designed exclusively for current-gen hardware, allowing Assassin’s Creed Shadows to take advantage of the graphics capabilities of PlayStation 5 Pro. Performance mode offers 60fps at upscaled 4K and selective ray tracing (only used by global illumination in our lair). Fidelity mode offers 30 FPS at upscaled 4K and extended ray tracing (used in the game world and also for reflections). Balanced mode (which requires a 120/240 Hz display and HDMI 2.1) gives 40 FPS at upscaled 4K and extended ray tracing.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be released on March 20th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC.

Source: Gematsu