The first Assassin’s Creed Shadows trailer shows off dual samurai / ninja action

The next entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise is almost here: Ubisoft debuted the first trailer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which launches later this year.

The trailer is decently meaty for a world premiere, taking its time to introduce the game’s two protagonists. One is the samurai Yasuke, an African man who became a retainer in service to Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga. The second protagonist is Naoe, a shinobi character whose opposition to Nobunaga’s war initially pits her against Yasuke. It was rumored that Shadows would feature two main characters, similar to Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, and before the official trailer reveal, key art from the game leaked showing off the samurai / shinobi protagonists.

Since 2022, Assassin’s Creed Shadows was known by its codename, Assassin’s Creed Red. Earlier this week, Ubisoft announced the formal name change in addition to the forthcoming trailer. Red / Shadows was initially revealed as a part of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed roadmap, which also featured other in-development titles in the franchise, including Assassin’s Creed Jade and Codename Hexe.

While Codename Hexe remains mostly a mystery, Assassin’s Creed Jade was formally announced at Gamescom last year. It’s a mobile game co-developed by Tencent Games subsidiary Level Infinite and completed its first closed beta last August. However, it may be a while before Jade releases: it’s been reportedly delayed due to publisher Tencent shifting development focus from licensed Western IPs to its own games.

Ubisoft didn’t show off any of Yasuke’s or Naoe’s gameplay, but we’ll be able to see for ourselves soon when Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Mac on November 15th.