Ubisoft’s latest look at Assassin’s Creed Shadows focuses on the game’s progression loop

With Assassin’s Creed Shadows on the edge of its March release, Ubisoft has delved into the game’s progression system.

Now this is progress

One of the biggest parts of every Assassin’s Creed game is leveling up with new skills and abilities. That basic theme won’t be any different for the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows either, though in practice things won’t work quite the same way as you might be used to.

Some of that’s got to do with the fact that the title has two characters with radically different skill sets, a first for the series. While Naoe is an agile ninja, Yasuke is decidedly not, but has a power game that his compatriot lacks. As such, Ubisoft’s Julien walked prospective players through just what Shadows‘ reimagined player progression looks like.

And that all comes down to Mastery and Knowledge. Two fresh elements that’ll combine to grant both points and rank respectively, Julien says the game will be looking to the systems to keep player progression “as close as possible to the philosophy of mastery and martial art.”

Mastery looks like it’ll play out with the form and function of a skill tree. Of course, as mentioned, each character will have their own dedicated one in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. There’s a more action-tilted “samurai” one for Yasuke, and a stealthy “shinobi”-centric one for Naoe. Don’t worry about one character moving well ahead of the other though, as Shadows will have parity in that regard. So for example, Naoe won’t become leveled well past Yasuke, as they’ll share their progression through the campaign.

On the flip side, Knowledge is described as “an abstraction of your mind, aka your mental readiness”. Leveling up your Knowledge will occur via radically different means too, and involves engaging in non-violent interactions. Why would you want to do that? Well, because you’ll only be able to get certain upgrades via your Knowledge Rank. It’s an interesting gimmick for sure, and if implemented the way Ubi hopes, might be something for the series to keep around for future installments.

While that’s a brief glimpse of today’s update, there’s quite a bit more on the Assassin’s Creed Shadows website, which you can find here. Click on through to get the lowdown on all of it.