It turns out that a major character was not originally planned for Assassin's Creed Shadows during the game's conceptual phase. Shadows prominently features dual protagonists, which highlight different gameplay aspects: one focuses on stealth and parkour while the other is a big, brutish, combat juggernaut. In early development, one of those characters was not originally planned but needed to be added to give players a complete Feudal Japan experience, with characters and gameplay.
In an interview with GamesRadar+, Assassin's Creed Shadows creative director Jonathan Dumont explained that Yasuke was not originally envisioned for the game. The game only featured a shinobi and was lighter on the samurai aspects. Dumont explained that after early conceptualization, it was clear the teams wanted to lean into both shinobi and samurai styles, saying that Ubisoft was "sort of making a stealth tank, but it didn't quite work. It was diluting the fantasy of the shinobi."
On the addition of the samurai character Yasuke, Dumont said:
"It became clear, before going into production, that we'd probably do a story with two characters ... The archetypes were coming out of the conception phase anyway – they were splitting, but it was happening naturally. So we decided...
