Assassin's Creed Shadows' Game Director Charles Benoit On Split Protagonists, Stealth & Breaking The Rules

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Assassin's Creed Shadows

Assassin's Creed Shadows, like most games in its franchise, comes down to the details. Set in Japan's Sengoku period, the upcoming title is taking the typical broad strokes of the Assassin's Creed franchise and layering on a generous dose of new systems. While some of its ideas are big — dual protagonists that lean heavily into different playstyles are an obvious selling point — others shake up the series in subtler ways.

Those details are the product of many different developers, but if there's anyone qualified enough to touch on them all, it's game director Charles Benoit. As the director of Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry and a designer for Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Odyssey, Benoit has plenty of experience behind the wheel. Screen Rant sat down with Benoit at an Assassin's Creed Shadows preview event in Ubisoft Quebec to discuss the split protagonists, stealth, and breaking the rules of Assassin's Creed.

One Game, Two Protagonist Experiences

What Makes Yasuke & Naoe Work

Screen Rant: The Assassin's Creed Shadows gameplay sessions really highlighted how different Yasuke and Naoe feel and how their physical interaction with the world differs. What was the process of building two very different gameplay experiences like?

Charles Benoit: First, I'm happy that you realize that they are quite different because that was the goal. So first, the game direction, we have that in our DNA. From day one, we wanted to have this split between the stealth and combat to really make players choose with strengths and weaknesses.

So we established a couple of levers of what can affect stealth and what can affect combat in terms of hurt reaction or damage or health. And then we kind of pulled back on one and increased the other to make each of them really different.

Screen Rant: The game gives some hints about what an upcoming gameplay segment might entail when you're choosing between one character to the other. Is there a sense in designing that, okay, this mission's going to be a little more for Yasuke, this one's going to be a little more for Naoe, or is there an imperative to try to make that just very equal overall?

Charles Benoit: It's more about when something is playable by both characters, we wanted it to be doable for both characters. And sometimes, yes, it will be a bit more in favor of Yasuke because you're forced into a fight, so that would be more, it's easier with Yasuke. But we try to not put all the strongest archetypes, so it's still manageable with Naoe. But habitually, when we make you choose, we have something that is a bit more stealth with Naoe and a bit more fight with Yasuke.

Yasuke from AC Shadows next to the collector's edition

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Screen Rant: Have you, or has the team as a whole, tended to gravitate towards one character over the other at all?

Charles Benoit: I would say depending on the way we're structured. Like, we have a team about stealth. So yes, of course, definitely more with Naoe because it's what they're doing. But let's say the fight team, it's really split. Some prefer Yasuke, some prefer Naoe. Sometimes it's just the look and feel more than the gameplay aspect.

Screen Rant: Was there any consideration, in Naoe's role, of using a historical figure there as well, or was the idea always to have Yasuke and then pair him with a more traditional fictional Assassin's Creed character?

Charles Benoit: I don't remember exactly the event where we chose both characters, but it was not a necessity for us to use a historical character, or two historical characters, or two fictional. It's just doing the step by step, the research, and okay, this character is really standing out, and the fact that we wanted to isolate two types of gameplay aspects, having combat and stealth, making the difference obvious on the visuals. Like, if you look at those two characters, okay, there is no mistake you can make, like, he’s the fight guy.

Borrowing & Remixing For A New Experience

Every Game Informs The Next

Screen Rant: With these two very different combat styles and a robust RPG system of upgrades, what inspirations went into fleshing those out? Did you reach out to any specific groups or research any specific martial lineages?

Charles Benoit: Inspiration always comes from different sources. Obviously, we use what we did in the past. We always start from the previous AC. So, the experience the old team had on Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Syndicate, and all those games we did. And we have a lot of people in the team that are inspired by other games also. We kind of mix what we learned from other games, what we played, and also what the setting inspires in us, because we want it to feel Japanese in a way.

Screen Rant: There are elements here, like quest tracking, that feel in line with what Mirage was doing. Did the development of these two games intersect in any interesting ways?

Charles Benoit: It’s funny because Mirage and Shadows were in production in quite the same time frame in a way. And we didn't know what Mirage was doing, and at some point when we start talking between each other, we realized that we were aiming at the same type of pillar with the menu that looked quite similar in the aspect of more visualization of a quest log.

So we kind of learned from them, and also from playing Mirage, to adjust some of our concept. Yeah, it's just funny how the two games converged without knowing that.

Screen Rant: Stealth in Shadows should feel very familiar to long-term Assassin's Creed fans, but it adds some major new ideas. How do you go about reinventing things while maintaining the core sense of what Assassin's Creed stealth is?

Charles Benoit: I feel if you, if you use the core thing, like assassination, the leap of faith, and the eagle sense — eagle vision, I don't know how games are calling it differently — but those three things are really iconic for Assassin's Creed.

And we add a couple of things that make it a bit more versatile and a bit more modern in some way with the dynamic shadows, dynamic light. So I think this merge of modernizing some aspects while keeping the core features there really makes the stealth more complete and appealing the whole time for the fans.

Screen Rant: Is that focus on light and shadow something that you think will be coming back in Assassin's Creed in the future? Or is that something that was really just, this is for Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Charles Benoit: Well hopefully — I cannot talk for other projects, if they will use it — but for sure, if I'm doing another AC game, I will continue in that way. A funny thing that happened to me when I was playing Odyssey and working on Odyssey, I was doing the stealth with the shadows, like it feels natural to go okay, I won't go in the corner, but it does nothing.

So I feel it's something quite easy to understand. It's natural. Even if we can balance the impact of it. But I think it should stay there, and hopefully we'll see other projects, how they use it. But it's there, and the way we're structured, it's easier than ever to take what we build on a project to use it on another one.

Building A World & Changing Rules In AC Shadows

How Shadows Places Opportunities On The Horizon

Naoe with a dog in the Assassin's Creed Shadows Thrown To The Dogs Preorder Quest

Screen Rant: How do you balance action and the surprisingly brutal violence at times in this game with those smaller moments and the space to breathe in between?

Charles Benoit: I think the world, the way it's structured, it kind of helped that. You know, the big castle town, it's a clear sign that, okay, you see the walls, you see, okay, this place, there is action that will be engaging there, and on the road, you have this more peaceful place that you're not necessarily attacked at in each corner. And it's why we added those kinds of activities along the way. So like the sumi-e that you might have seen, and going back to the hideout where it's more peaceful. So we can balance it just by the visuals and the attraction of it.

Like temples and shrines, even if we would like, we cannot put a big fight there. It's not what Japan was. So, yeah, we were driven by the world a lot more.

Screen Rant: One of the most striking images, in that realm of seeing something and kind of understanding what it is, was that there was a towering atakebune ship offshore in the preview session. I wasn't able to go there within the bounds of that, but you can see that and go, "this is an Assassin's Creed location. This is something exciting that's going to happen if I go there." How often does something come along that has that kind of great presence and feels like, oh, this is a perfect opportunity for an Assassin's Creed game?

Charles Benoit: Well, like I said, all the camps, or the castle town, the way it’s built, there is always this big tension in the place. And they are often on top of mountains to have this big view of the land. So as a player, it's easy to just look around, and the things that break the horizon, you can tell, okay, there is something there, and there is always something there. Even, sometimes it's more about finding loot, finding another viewpoint, but often it's like a gameplay thing, like the ship that you talk about.

Screen Rant: Yeah, it's become very heavily oriented around that process of looking over the horizon and not just, you synchronize, and then you have your map points, but you take the vantage point and you see on the horizon — there's a point of interest. There's a point of interest.

Charles Benoit: Yeah, and when we were building this game, that's something we start to realize when we were playing. When you go on a viewpoint, we were like, okay, what would be a viewpoint from my perspective? And we kind of changed the rules of what would be a viewpoint, and it's why now we have viewpoint inside the red zone.

In previous ACs, we were trying to not have that, to always spawn in some place where it's safe. But it's such a call to action, like it's a big tenshu high enough that you see everything. So we needed to have those as viewpoints. So really, the exploration and how the world looked really drove some of our decisions.

Screen Rant: With many of these buildings, how did the game’s implementation of the grappling hook come about? Was that just a necessity with the overhanging rooftops or…?

Charles Benoit: A bit of both? When we think about shinobi, we have this, we wanted a bit of this fantasy of like ninja movies of the eighties. And a grappling hook is something that you think about. So we wanted to have that and while looking at the, yeah, the structures and especially the big pagodas, they have very big roofs, and it's kind of impossible to just run and grab it. So the grappling hook is the perfect tool for the architecture.

Finally Bringing Assassin's Creed To Japan

Assassin's Creed Shadows Is A Long Time Coming

Yasuke and Naoe in combat-ready poses in a screenshot from Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Screen Rant: With titles like Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima, there have been a lot of games that have attempted to tackle the shinobi fantasy. What does doing that as Assassin's Creed bring to the table?

Charles Benoit: Well, I feel Assassin’s Creed is kind of the perfect game for a shinobi experience. Just the whole background that we have on stealth experience, the parkour, the fluidity. I don't feel there are many games that have this feeling of parkour and fluidity mixed with the assassination, the tools, the grappling hook, the way the world is structured. I feel it's a pretty good stealth experience, and it's why, when we were looking at Japan and Assassin's Creed, it's kind of a perfect match. It's kind of one on one.

Screen Rant: How did the studio reach the point of, it's time now to make the Assassin's Creed Japan game? Because that's something that I think many fans also always had in their mind, like, well, it's a perfect fit.

Charles Benoit: Yeah, it's hard to tell why it happened now because it's like also four years ago, but I think it's a mix of what the fans want, what the studio wants, what kind of technology we have, what was the previous game, because we always take a bit of the previous game to build on over it. So I think it was kind of a mix of the perfect circumstances that align and, okay, yes, let's do it.

Screen Rant: In the last few months, we've had a couple of delays and that's granted some additional time for polish. Have there been any big shifts late in the process at this point, or is it fundamentally, this is what would have come out in November, it's more refined now?

Charles Benoit: I would not say a big shift. The real addition we did, it's a bit of more going back on the parkour and seeing, okay, what can smooth out the parkour on those roofs? You saw the roofs — there is a lot of complexity in the architecture. So, how can we make it smoother? How can we speed up some transitions?

And the fights, same thing. Can we polish the realization, make it more impactful? And so, it was more tweaking and polishing more than okay, let's redo this or adding that. We did some change on the progression balancing, but it's a really minor. We felt we had the experience, but just polishing it and making it more balanced, it really helped for that.