You Won’t Believe How Assassin’s Creed Shadows Breaks the AC RPG Mold

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Over the past eight years, the Assassin’s Creed series has predominantly featured open-world RPG titles, and the most recent addition to this category is Ubisoft Quebec’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Starting with 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, each subsequent mainline Assassin’s Creed game has delved deeper into the open-world RPG genre. For example, Origins introduced a large open-world setting in Ptolemaic Egypt, Odyssey added romance and dialogue options, and Valhalla included customizable hair, war paint, and tattoos – just to name a few RPG features. However, unlike these other games, Assassin’s Creed Shadows does not focus on the growth of the Assassin Brotherhood or Templar Order.

How Assassin’s Creed RPG Titles Developed the Assassin Brotherhood and Templar Order

In line with its title’s meaning, Assassin’s Creed Origins predominantly delved into the origins of the long-running clash between the Assassin Brotherhood and Templar Order. Here, players joined Bayek of Siwa, a former Medjay, and Aya of Alexandria, who would later become Amunet, as they established the Hidden Ones. Throughout the game, these characters were deceived by Pharaoh Cleopatra VII and uncovered that her associate, Roman General Julius Caesar, was a powerful member of the secretive Order of the Ancients, also known as the Father of Understanding.

Following the tragic death of their son at the hands of the Order and subsequent betrayals by both Cleopatra and Caesar, Bayek and Aya established the Hidden Ones as a clandestine force to safeguard innocent lives and preserve freedom from power-hungry individuals. The game “Origins” introduced the origins of the Assassin Brotherhood through its predecessor, the Hidden Ones, while “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” transported players 400 years back in time to observe the emergence of the Order of the Ancients and the initial deployment of a Hidden Blade. In 465 BCE, a figure named Darius was the first to employ the Hidden Blade when he assassinated King Xerxes I of Persia, an early member of the Order of the Ancients.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Origin of the Templar Order

For almost a millennium by the 9th century CE, the Hidden Ones and Order of the Ancients were engaged in relentless conflict, vying for supremacy among nations and control over potent ancient artifacts created by the Isu, known as Pieces of Eden. Although numerous members of the Order revered the Isu and their inventions, one leader, Alfred the Great, deemed this worship as contradictory to Christian beliefs. In the narrative of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, both Eivor Varinsdottir and Alfred managed to eradicate the Order’s influence in Europe. However, Alfred later reconstructed the remains of the Order of the Ancients into what would eventually become the Templar Order, which continued its struggle against the Hidden Ones and Assassin Brotherhood for another thousand years across the globe.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Exploration of the Assassins and Templars

700 years following the occurrences in Valhalla, Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place at a time when the Hidden Ones and Order of the Ancients have fully transformed into the contemporary Assassin Brotherhood and Templar Order respectively. Interestingly, these factions do not directly feature in the events of Shadows. The story eventually uncovers that Fujibayashi Naoe’s parents were members of the original Kakushiba ikki, the Japanese Branch of the Assassins, founded by Alvaro Catarribera, a Spanish excommunicated Assassin. On the other hand, Yasuke is discovered to have been a slave belonging to the Portuguese branch of the Templar Order and gains knowledge about the fall of the Italian Borgia Templars as depicted in Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood. Later on, Yasuke orchestrates the assassination of several Portuguese Templars and their Japanese recruits.

In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Naoe and Yasuke cross paths with the Assassins and Templars, but these factions are not as central to the game as they were in earlier Assassin’s Creed titles. The game does provide backstory about the foundation of the Assassins and Templars in Japan, but it doesn’t delve deeply into their development like previous RPG games in the series. However, future expansions such as Claws of Awaji or upcoming entries in the Assassin’s Creed: Shadows – Iga no Monogatari prequel manga may focus more on these factions.

In the narrative of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the action unfolds approximately 74 years following the events portrayed in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and around 70 years after those depicted in Assassin’s Creed Revelations.

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2025-04-18 17:36