Assassin’s Creed Shadows Level Design Director Luc Plante revealed in an exclusive interview with Dexerto how the game’s Feudal Japanese setting transforms gameplay thanks to a key new feature.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will finally allow players to dive into the world of Feudal Japan, a location that the franchise has teased for years and has been highly requested by players since the series’ inception.
In an exclusive interview with Level Design Director Luc Plante, the Ubisoft developer broke down how the “unique” setting of Shadows presented a “new challenging opportunity” to reimagine gameplay for the franchise.
As one can expect from an Assassin’s Creed title, Feudal Japan has been recreated with great attention to detail, similar to how Ancient Egypt, Revolutionary France, and The Dark Ages of England were all brought to life in previous games.
However, unlike older entries that were set within European cities and countries, the environment and location of Shadows is a stark contrast, one that completely changes gameplay and elevates immersion to new heights.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is “unique” from other entries
Ubisoft Feudal Japan is a far cry from other Assassin’s Creed settings.
But what makes the environment and setting of Shadows so different from previous entries? For one, the landscape of Feudal Japan is a far cry from what we’ve seen in previous games.
“The setting is really unique and the architecture is unique as well. While in some areas of Europe we have tall buildings and we can have a lot of verticality in terms of parkour, most of the towns in Federal Japan are one or two-story buildings,” began Plante.
Verticality has always been a key piece of the puzzle for the Assassin’s Creed series. From the Pyramids of Egypt to Rome’s Colosseum, one of the most memorable experiences a player can have in the series is climbing up these structures and looking out across the rest of the sprawling map.
While Shadows still has plenty of vantage points to traverse and perch upon, it’s clear the dev team wanted to honor the authenticity of Feudal Japan by making a shift in how the environment informs gameplay.
This in turn completely “changed the approach” the devs had and was pivotal in deciding to add destruction into the game. Something the Level Designer “believed from the start would be a key thing in the immersion for the player.”
How Feudal Japan “transformed” Assassin’s Creed gameplay
Ubisoft Something as simple as opening the wrong door can lead to disaster.
It’s not just the size and scale of the building in Shadows that stands out compared to other Assassin’s Creed games, but the actual foundations of the environment as well. Plante later broke down how a small detail such as paper walls completely reinvented how the team approached navigation and gameplay.
“There are a lot of paper walls, so that was a constraint that we transformed into opportunities to make sure that if you start your way inside a location and wanna fight with one guy, you need to make sure you don’t destroy all the walls because other people outside will see you.”
Stealth has always been a staple of the Assassin’s Creed franchise but having to navigate these factors is a completely fresh concept.
Ubisoft Eagle Vision is back and better than even in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
The possibility of completely blowing your cover simply by opening a sliding door at the wrong time adds a fresh layer of complexity when it comes to completing a mission or infiltrating a castle without alerting enemies.
While this factor could have been a hurdle for the developers working on Shadows, it instead became “a great new challenging opportunity that we didn’t have in any other setting.”
Plante finally added, “That’s the beauty of working on the Asassin’s Creed franchise.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be released on March 20, 2025.