Naoe is a shinobi assassin in Assassin's Creed: Shadows.

Assassin’s Creed: Shadows preview | hands-on combat with both heroes

I previewed what could very well be one of Ubisoft‘s most important games of all time: Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Set in the ideal assassin’s world of feudal Japan, this game has been delayed a couple of times so that Ubisoft’s developers can whip it into shape.

The company’s reputation is on the skids with gamers after the weak launches of Star Wars: Outlaws, Skull and Bones and more. Ubisoft has had under-performing games like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and it canceled games like The Division: Heartland and its free-to-play shooter XDefiant.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.