Assassin's Creed Is Finally Doing Japan

And no, it's not Ghost of Tsushima.

Author

Robert Scarpinito
May 17, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Ninja! Samurai! And so much more!

It’s finally happening: Assassin’s Creed is making its way to the land of the rising sun, and all the dreams anime-loving gamer teens of the 2010s have come true. No shade—I’m one of them.

This upcoming iteration is more in line with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla, with a vast open world for you to explore. In Shadows, it looks like you’ll have two protagonists to play, and both will cross paths and interact with each other throughout the story.

Naoe, the shinobi, likely falls in line with more classic Assassin’s Creed gameplay, using the stealth and shadows to her advantage. Yasuke, on the other hand, is a full-on samurai who can take enemies head on, much like Jin Sakai in Ghost of Tsushima.

Yasuke’s also the first franchise protagonist based on a real-life person from history. He was the first Black samurai under Oda Nobunaga, the Great Unifier of Japan. While this game probably won’t be the most historically accurate retelling of his story, there will likely be lots of events, places, and people rooted in Japanese history.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is coming out this November, and you won’t need to be always online to play it, thankfully.

Investing in the next household name

RYSE has just launched in 100+ Best Buy stores, and you're in luck. You can still invest at only $1.50/share before their name becomes known nationwide. They’ve patented the only mass market shade automation device and their exclusive Best Buy deal resembles that which led to other past billion-dollar buyouts like Ring and Nest. Learn more + earn bonus shares →

Reading Between the Headlines

Our opinion writer Anson Chan analyzes where all the studio closures and shifts in strategy has left Xbox’s flagship subscription service. This is all in the wake of Activision (owned by Microsoft) recently announcing they opened a new studio in Poland that would focus on “a new narrative-based and genre-defining AAA franchise.”

In just a few months, you can say hello to the first college football video game since 2013. More details from EA should be coming out today, the day you get this newsletter.

Ghost of Tsushima will have a fully playable single-player campaign on Steam Deck, but it's still technically listed as “Unsupported” due to PSN (and Linux) shenanigans.

This isn’t the first time in recent memory PlayStation has had some rocky moments on PC. If you’ll remember, Helldivers 2 was very recently delisted in over 100 countries because of PSN requirements. This is yet another victory for managed democracy.

And Nintendo is celebrating by releasing three Game Boy games for the Nintendo Switch Online library, all of which were launch titles for the handheld that started it all.

Our writer Austin Suther stumbled upon a wild game on Steam today: Arctic Eggs. In his words:

Literally everyone in Arctic Eggs is a freak. You've got people spouting the most random string of words, like this one girl comparing cooking to cleaning toilets, or how they used to use my character's nose as a sundial when the power was out. Then in comes folks spouting deep philosophical truths, and I'm just like, "Man, I am not prepared for this."

Austin Suther

Hot off the success of Fallout, Prime Video has announced a Tomb Raider live-action series, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge on board as a writer and executive producer. Hopefully it’s a little more Fleabag and a little less Dial of Destiny.

The Geekify crew have announced an official Neopets Tabletop RPG adaptation will be coming to Kickstarter. This is in celebration of its 25th anniversary. Oh, and go feed your Neopets.

Podcast: D&D Is Back!

This week, we’re kicking off our four-part actual-play series through Vecna: Eve of Ruin! We dust off our d20s and dive into the latest campaign for Dungeons & Dragons. I made a human fighter named David Harbour (strange, huh?), and our party goes on a quest to rescue four kidnapped high-value targets.

It’s on the start of our journey into the mausoleum—but will we make it out alive? Find out on the TechRaptor Podcast!

If you’re not as into tabletop, you can also check out their crossover with Dead by Daylight, where you can play as or against Vecna there.