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Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an awesome game with some very glaring flaws. The game’s dual protagonist setup gives players the ability to play the bulk of the game as either the nimble and stealthy Naoe or the massive tank-like Yasuke.
While Ubisoft has pitched the game as giving players the ability to choose when they play as either character, that’s not quite the case. As it so happens, there’s a considerable wait until you can actually unlock Yasuke in-game.
How long does it take to play as Yasuke?
Weirdly, Assassin’s Creed Shadows actually opens on Yasuke. After a short cutscene introducing the game and a ten-minute tutorial section, the game then cuts to Naoe for an extended tutorial and hours of gameplay and cutscenes until you actually unlock the second playable character.
Once you start playing as Naoe and complete her hours-long intro section, you then have to assassinate a number of main story targets before their paths intersect. There’s no back-and-forth between the two before that moment, just one central moment that combines their story.
It does make for a jarring beginning if you’ve been following the game’s marketing. Since the very beginning, Shadows has been pushed as a joint story where players can choose when and where they play as either character, and as the game evolves that does become the case, but that’s not how it starts out.
Depending on how you play, it might take between five or fifteen hours to actually unlock Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed Shadows – even more if you’re focusing on mopping up all possible side content in the starting area.
In the past, it’s been said that every achievement can be nabbed as either character. It’s worth noting that this isn’t something that Ubisoft itself has said, but what others have taken from comments claiming you can get every achievement in a single playthrough.
Now, none of this is bad, but it does feel jarring compared to the game’s marketing in a similar way that Assassin’s Creed 3 did back in 2012. If you know that you have to wait until Sequence 4 to play as Connor, spending about five hours as Haytham Kenway doesn’t drag as much, but if you’ve only seen marketing of Connor tomahawking Templars, it kinda sucks.
That’s why the hours you’ll play as Naoe – around twelve in our case – before unlocking Yasuke feels so weird. The game has been pushed with the ability for players to choose between the two whenever and wherever, but that’s something that becomes true later on. It’s also weird that the game opens on Yasuke for all of fifteen minutes before shoving the character into the background for over ten hours.
Nevertheless, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a fun game, but players who are buying it simply to play as Yasuke have a bit of a wait on their hands. You can speed through missions and skip cutscenes to your heart’s content, but it’ll still be hours until you can play as the massive samurai.
For more on Assassin’s Creed Shadows, read about how Ubisoft is seriously supporting Steam Deck with its latest release.
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