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While Assassin’s Creed Shadows brings two playable characters, the game focuses a lot on Naoe for the first dozen of hours before letting you control Yasuke. However, when the samurai enters the action, he does so in an epic fashion. Still, many might want to know when is the time to bring this bastion to their team and have him roam around Japan while he slices enemies left and right. Here, we’ll tell you when you get Yasuke as a playable character, as well as how to swap between the two protagonists.
How To Unlock Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

To unlock Yasuke as a playable character, you’ll need to accept the mission to assassinate the third main target, which we won’t spoil here. However, the mission’s name is The Temple of the Horseman. You’ll have to watch the cutscenes that culminate with you controlling Yasuke and then complete the following mission, Mibuno Showdown. Once that’s done, you’ll have to watch yet another set of cutscenes, do some fighting, and once you return to the hideout, Yasuke will officially be part of your team.
How To Swap Between Yasuke and Naoe

At the end of the Mibuno Showdown quest, Naoe and Yasuke will exchange ideas pertaining to the next steps of their plan. During the conversation, you’ll get an option to play as Yasuke or Naoe. However, that isn’t the only way to swap characters. You can also do the following:
- Fast Travel: When fast traveling to another place, you can select to fast travel as the character you’re not using at the moment, thus swapping characters at that moment.
- From the Equipment Menu: You can open the equipment menu and choose to play as the other character.
- During Specific Story Missions: Some story quests will let you pick between Yasuke and Naoe, in a similar fashion to the above image. Other quests will let you play as both, however.
Overall, the process of unlocking Yasuke and swapping characters in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is quite simple. Also, remember that when you level up with one protagonist, the other will level up, too, while also gaining the same amount of mastery points. So, you don’t have to worry about using both constantly just to keep them equally leveled. The game does all that for you. The only thing you have to worry about is gear, so pay attention to quests and grab the armor and weapons you need for your assassin or your samurai.