Assassin’s Creed Shadows is coming to PC and consoles on March 20, 2025 and you might be wondering whether you need to play the previous installments or not. You know, to keep tabs on the pretty extensive lore and not miss any important plot developments.

If this is something you’re wondering about, we’ll do our best to give you a reasonable answer to this question.

So, do you need to play any previous entries in the Assassin’s Creed series before AC Shadows?

The answer is: no, not really. Shadows features a self-contained story set in the feudal Japan, in the 16th century. The final stages of the Sengoku period and stuff. Naturally, this is going to be a yet another chapter in the overarching conflict between the Assassin’s Brotherhood – the guys we should root for in this franchise – and the Templar Order, who serve as the series’ primary baddies.

There’s probably going to be a plotline set in the modern times, connected to the Animus and the series’ principal idea of extracting long-lost memories from the descendants of the prominent members of the Brotherhood.

As opposed to the original Assassin’s Creed trilogy, most other releases are fairly self-contained, meaning you can pick up any installment in the series depending on your historical preferences.

By the way, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is going to bridge the two gameplay approaches following the re-imagining of the series in Origins. As you may remember, Origins and later Odyssey dropped most of the traditional stealth/action-adventure shenanigans AC was known for due to the franchise getting stale. Instead, these went in the action RPG direction, which, while well-received as a breath of fresh air, also received some criticism. After all, is this really Assassin’s Creed? Mirage returned to the roots, which was met with praise.

Now, Shadows will offer two protagonists with different abilities, letting players choose whether they want to do things quietly (stealth) or just start blasting. Missions will be non-linear, too, offering gamers multiple ways to complete these quests.

So, as you can see, you can safely pick up Assassin’s Creed Shadows without having played any of the previous games, as the setting is new to the series and the historical part of the plot is a stand-alone one. However, the modern component might make more sense if you played any of the previous installments, at least Origins and anything released after.

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