20 hours of brand-new mansion game is available for Assassin’s Creed Shadows on March 20.

Release: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that PS5 Pro would have Extended Ray Tracing. The word has since been updated to right this. In anticipation of its March 20 start on PS5, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is just two weeks away. In anticipation of the release of 20 minutes of fresh play, which shows Naoe and Yasuke attempting to invade Nijo Palace, the tower advanced ( also known as a tenshu), in Kyoto, a significant town in the larger Yamashiro area. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, there are strongholds, useful resources, and a single important loot chest. Conquering a tenshu means eliminating any Samurai Daisho on the grounds, which unlocks the treasure stomach, giving you powerful items. When you hover over the tower logo on the map, you can see the contents of these chest. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you can complete a number of activities to raise your Information Rank, which grants you access to higher levels abilities and improvements. Completing them may also make you knowledge and mastery factors, which you can use to instantly update Naoe and Yasuke’s abilities. Also, palaces are filled with resources that you can declare for your sanctuary. Larger supplies can be tagged by Naoe and Yasuke to get picked up and delivered to your shelter by scouts at the change of the times, while smaller tool bundles can be picked up personally. Our tour begins with Naoe’s subtle method at night. She immediately uses her fighting rope to spy out local patrols after dispatching a boundary guard with her Hidden Blade and jumping onto the rooftops. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, unlike new activities in the sequence, you won’t be able to use an insect ally to scouting from the clouds for you. Otherwise, you’ll keep L2 to use the Observe engineer and target Naoe or Yasuke’s perspective on an enemy/objective/loot to label it. Naoe spots a Samurai Daisho, an aristocracy guard who must be defeated to defeat the tenshu and claim its greatest praise, while scouting. Naoe may double deport targets with her una blade, but the Samurai Daisho’s enough health prevents her from doing so with just one hit. Shadows ‘ products not only offers unique graph bonuses but distinct engravings that may change your strategy at any moment. In this instance, Naoe switches out her headgear for a piece that provides additional damage on air assassinations, enough to kill the Samurai Daisho in one blow. Naoe requests assistance from Gennojo, one of her recruited allies, further into the castle. He’s able to stun a pair of nearby enemies allowing Naoe to close the gap and take them both out. Genenojo is only one of a number of recruitable allies that can be summoned for assistance in the open world ( fun fact, each ally is called with a different bird call ). When those security personnel are removed, Naoe uses Eagle Vision to inspect the interior of a nearby structure. Hostile enemies appear in red in eagle vision, while civilians will cast an orange silhouette. However, be warned: just because civilians won’t attack you doesn’t mean they won’t call in when they see you. Thankfully, Naoe is able to make use of a number of new stealth features to decipher information. She starts by extinguishing a nearby lantern, cloaking herself in darkness. Then she drops down and kills a second Samurai Daisho with her katana by using her grappling hook to pull herself up the ceiling to avoid a patrol. Let’s turn to Yasuke as he approaches the palace. Yasuke may be a one-man army in Shadows, but he’s still capable of sneaking around. Without a grappling hook, he uses a nearby low-hanging tree to leap to the rooftops before flexing his bow to unflinchingly remove a guard from the distance. Then, while crouching, he sneaks up on another guard and assails him with a long katana in a brutal assassination. It’s not as inconspicuous as a Hidden Blade, but hey, it gets the job done and doesn’t alert anyone else in the area. Yasuke’s infiltration occurs during the day, so he doesn’t have the advantage of hiding in the shadows like Naoe did. Instead, he can stay hidden while crawling prone by sticking to the rooftops and using the geometry of the pitched roofs. Yasuke makes another ally, Oni-Yuri, a poison expert who can knock several enemies unconscious, in this situation. As he moves into the next courtyard, Yasuke spots a bell tower that can alert the entire tenshu to his presence should he be noticed, but with his bow ( or Naoe’s shuriken or kunai ), he can disarm the bell tower. The time has come to unleash the final Samurai Daisho, so make an entrance now. Yamasuke begins by firing a gunpowder barrel at his bow, striking a guard in the distance, and then turning his bow inward for a massive kanabo club. The hulking weapon’s blows overwhelm the Samurai Daisho, earning Yasuke another mastery point. We see just how skilled a fighter she can be by returning to Naoe for a combat approach. This involves swapping out her stealthy gear for a more combat-focused headgear and armor, which allows her to attack enemies while sprinting at them and knock them down by sliding into them. Finally, her tanto is replaced with a legendary kusarigama that increases damage to enemies over three meters away. Naoe’s long-range melee weapon, the kusarigama, is great for crowd control and simultaneously battling multiple enemies. By wrapping one end of the kusarigama around them and using it to fling herself forward for the killing blow, Naoe can also use it to rush assassinate her targets ( this passive ability is available whenever the kusarigama is one of Naoe’s two weapons and does not cost adrenaline to use ). Once Naoe gets to an elevated position, she realizes that a servant that spotted her earlier has returned with reinforcements. She calls her ally Yaya, a hulking brawler, to take care of them for her rather than deal with them herself. With the reinforcements in place, Naoe can use the Observe mechanic to scout out Takahashi Shiro, a member of the Twisted Tree family, for whom she has been assigned to murder. This time around, Naoe’s air assassination attempt only does partial damage, meaning she has a fight on her hands. She dances around Shiro, disassembling his armor, and making quick work of his weaker guards while doing so with her kusarigama and smoke bombs before making the fatal blow. Naoe is free to scale Nijo Tenshu and open the chest, earning a new legendary armor set for Yasuke after her target is killed and the Samurai Daisho is slain. Her run ends with her scaling the tenshu for a synchronization point, using the Observe mechanic to scout our nearby points of interest. We wrap up the walkthrough with Yasuke’s signature combat weapon. The katana and kanabo are swapped out for a naginata and teppo ( a single-shot rifle ), just like with Naoe. Yasuke’s last armor was ideal for stealth as it provided a 200 % damage bonus to ranged weapons while out of combat. However, this approach will be loud, so he will require a new armor set, which, thanks to a special engraving, makes it possible for him to dodge unblockable attacks ( red glowing attacks that are typically unavoidable ). The armor complements the accompanying helmet, which in turn causes 50 % damage to the attacker on parry. Not only can Yasuke parry any attack now, but he’ll reflect 50 % of that damage back on the attacker. In an Assassin’s Creed game, it’s not often you can go “guns blazing,” but Yasuke does it by smashing down the door before killing the closest guard with his teppo. Yasuke sprints straight into Takahashi Shiro’s courtyard with a certain boldness ( he can take and cause more damage than Naoe in a straight fight ). Wielding his naginata and parrying nearly every attack thrown at him, Yasuke quickly dispatches all the guards, and even takes out Shiro without too much difficulty. Although he may not be as skilled as Naoe, Yasuke continues to ascend the tenshu to conquer Nijo Palace and claim the prized chest. Two distinct heroes in Assassin’s Creed Shadows have radically different abilities, weapons, and playstyles, but Naoe and Yasuke are adaptable enough to change their approach, allowing you to sneak or fight on the go. Smash through the front door or lurk in the shadows for yourself on March 20 when Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on PlayStation 5. Assassin’s Creed Shadows can be played in Performance mode on both the PS5 and PS5 Pro at up to 2160p and 60 FPS because it was the first Assassin’s Creed game created exclusively for the current generation hardware. The only console that supports extended ray tracing, which provides ray traced reflective surfaces all over the world, is the PS5 Pro. Check out the full breakdown of specs below. In the Hideout portion of the game, PS5 – Performance Mode 2160p upscaled, 60 FPS, Selective* Ray TracingPS5 – Fidelity Mode 2160p upscaled, 30 FPS, Standard** Ray TracingPS5 – Balanced Mode ( requires 120/240hz display and HDMI 2.1 ), 2160p upscaled, 40 FPS, Standard Ray TracingPS5 Pro – Fidelity Mode 2160p
** Global illumination is computed using standard ray tracing for the game world’s diffuse lighting.
***Extended Ray Tracing includes full support of ray tracing to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting and reflective surfaces throughout the game world. 

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