Assassin’s Creed’s Japanese Adventure Can’t Just Go Full Weeb

Feudal Japan has been a consistent setting for action games for a long time, be it a triple-A game or an indie fares. But Ubisoft’s omission of the time period became more pronounced when Sucker Punch released Ghost of Tsushima in 2020. That game became a critical and commercial darling and has a film adaptation in the works. For all intents and purposes, Sucker Punch ticked boxes that waning Creed fans have been pointing at for some time now, such as an open world that’s big, but not padded and combat and traversal that was simplistic but ultimately satisfying. While it tripped up on the stealth aspects, Tsushima won players over by simply being the old school Assassin’s Creed game they’d wanted for years.

Comparisons between Tsushima and Red have already started, and will become more pronounced once Ubisoft makes clear what kind of game it actually is. More than gameplay, what’ll ultimately decide Code Red’s fate will be how little it takes itself seriously relative to Ghost of Tsushima. Recent titles such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey are weird, with entire plotlines dedicated to franchise’s lore with the real world mythology of a specific setting. You could reasonably think Ubisoft was putting these games under the Assassin’s Creed banner more for name recognition.

That kind of storytelling approach been divisive amongst Creed fans, but it may prove to be a boon in helping to make it distinct from Tsushima. Sucker Punch used Japanese director Akira Kurosawa to influence their game, and while that works up to a point, Tsushima also buckles under its own perceived self-importance. Everything feels like it’s coming from the filter of someone who’s seen a handful of samurai movies, which immediately becomes apparent when Tsushima protagonist Jin Sakai goes on about honor and the samurai code while bathed in shadow and talking to a “dishonorable” thief.

Assassin’s Creed has its own self-importance, but it’s also willing to just let loose and be silly as it wants. For every CG trailer of hooded warriors leaping into air to stab someone in the throat, there’s a moment in the game proper where the lead character is just someone who gets in over their head or doesn’t concern themselves with the Assassin-Templar war. Ubisoft’s writing can often feel like it’s clashing with itself, to say nothing of the clash with the studio’s internal struggles, but they more often than not succeed in making the settings of Creed games feel real rather than something you could sketch out after watching some films in the Criterion Collection.

The easygoing vibe that Assassin’s Creed often occupies gives the franchise a certain charm. More than anything, that’s what’ll help Red stand out should it end up brushing shoulders with Sucker Punch’s Tsushima sequel that’s no doubt in development as we speak. Just because we’ll be playing a shinobi doesn’t mean we have to be pompous and self-serious about it.

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