If you’ve been noticing that many video games of a certain type are focusing on relationships and the many ways you can get with certain characters, you aren’t alone. Many titles are coming out that try to have “fleshed-out relationships” with the characters you meet on your journey. Baldur’s Gate 3 still sets the tone for everything that comes with that “metric,” but other games are attempting to catch up. Assassin’s Creed Shadows won’t be the first game in the series to have love interests for its protagonists, but according to associate narrative director Brooke Davies, the game will have “more developed” relationships than the series has had in the past.
What exactly does that mean? Well, as you’ll see in the tweet below, one thing that will be unique is that protagonists Yasuke and Naoe won’t simply be romancing the same person from two different perspectives. Instead, they’ll have love interests that are unique specifically for them! Furthermore, both of them can have relationships with someone of the same gender.
As if that’s not enough, Davies highlighted that there are numerous “platonic” friendships that Naoe and Yasuke can develop over their journeys. And if that’s STILL not enough for you, you could make the protagonists a kind of “player” by having “flings” with various characters, apparently. The choice is yours. Oh, but you don’t have to worry about your choices costing you the chance to meet your love interests; you’ll encounter them all without issue:
While this may not seem like the most important thing to add in something like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, it does speak to Ubisoft’s desire to flesh out the world beyond simply adding more quests and other similar content. If you think about the game’s plot, based on what we’ve seen in trailers and such so far, we know that Yasuke and Naoe aren’t just trying to save Japan but connect with its people. They’re trying to right the many wrongs that they feel have been going on in the land. To do so, they can’t just fight their way out of everything; they need to build bonds of trust with the people that they help so that they all know there is still some good in the world.
So, if that “bond of trust” builds up to a relationship that they can take in many directions? Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, right?
For the full interview, check the video below: