Director Jonathan Dumont spoke about wanting to keep the gameplay between both characters distinct, with one being nimble and the other being strong.

With Assassin’s Creed Shadows slowly sneaking up to its March 20 release date, Ubisoft developers have been revealing quite a few details about its design and features. In a new interview with Screenrant, director Jonathan Dumont spoke about the title’s dual protagonists, how they will affect the game, and how players will experience the story through their eyes.

Dumont also emphasises the fact that both protagonists – Yasuke and Naoe – will be different characters in gameplay terms as well. Naoe, for instance, will be light, nimble, and more focused on speed, while Yasuke will be strong and more likely to overcome his obstacles with brute force. This was done, according to Dumont, to encourage players to frequently switch characters up for gameplay variety.

“It’s complicated because we didn’t make it easy,” said Dumont. “So we really wanted both of them in gameplay to have advantages and strengths and weaknesses, and really sort of try to be true to the archetypes as well. So that’s why Yasuke is not the best in parkour, and he’ll be limited in some capacity there. But in combat, he’s a samurai and he’s an explosive samurai.”

“And then the same, the opposite a little bit more, for Naoe, which is super speedy. And then she can hide a little bit everywhere. She’s like a gymnast almost. She just jumps around. But if she faces multiple enemies, it’s a little bit trickier for her, right? So we try to capture that sort of balance between both.”

Dumont also spoke about how the previous Assassin’s Creed title with dual protagonists, Syndicate, helped the studio better distinguish between its two characters. He spoke about Yasuke and Naoe fulfilling two distinct roles, while Syndicate‘s protagonists were much more similar to each other.

“I think here and there, there are things that will, some concepts that we have,” responded Dumont to a question about lessons learned from Syndicate. “I think trying to have them not too different voices […] two sort of different archetypes and one needs to be fire, the other one is a little bit ice, a little bit, trying to get that into the game so that you can have some negative banter, but make them complementary. So that was something that we took a little bit more from Syndicate and moved into Shadows.”

“But from Syndicate, they were already twins that knew themselves all their lives, they knew each other all their lives, so they add more of a history,” he continued. “Here in Shadows, they learn to be together, but it’s a tough time at war in Shadows, so they don’t necessarily start off as friends. So that’s building the relationship is I think it makes for a very interesting story, though.”

Ubisoft has previously spoken about distinguishing between Yasuke and Naoe from the mechanical point of view in the past. Back in January, associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois spoke about how Yasuke won’t have iconic assassin abilities like Eagle Vision, and how his perspective as an outsider to not only the game’s Feudal Japan setting, but to the assassins organisation itself will be an important aspect of the game.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on March 20.