Assassin's Creed Shadows is leaking like a freshly-stabbed Samurai, as main character art sneaks online ahead of imminent reveal

Assassin's Creed Shadows' formal reveal is just a few hours away, but information about the feudal Japan-set sequel is still leaking through the gaps in its Yoroi armour. Two days ago, the game's official YouTube channel accidentally leaked a release date – November 15 this year, while yesterday saw prices for the game and DLC slip onto the Internet.

Now, another leak has revealed what appears to be the game's box art, which also shows what is presumably the game's main characters.

Ubisoft has been frantically removing the leaked images on reddit and various social media sites, but more are popping up faster than the publisher can take them down. If you want to go into tonight's reveal completely clean, read no further.

The leaked box art for Shadows depicts two characters, suggesting the game will have dual protagonists a-la Odyssey and Valhalla. One of these characters appears to be the historical figure Yasuke. Known as the first black Samurai, Yasuke travelled to Japan during the Sengoku era and stayed there for three years , serving as a retainer to Oda Nobunga between 1581 and 1582.

The second character appears to be a female shinobi, wielding a hooked weapon on a rope with a metal ball at the far end. A separate leak suggests that this character's name is Naoe, and that her backstory will be more directly tied into the series' existing Assassin/Templar fiction.

The first trailer for Assassin's Creed Shadows will drop at 5pm UK time tonight, so we won't have long to wait to see if this latest leak is accurate. Either way, I'm keen to see what Ubisoft have in store for this latest Assassin's Creed. Shadows is the first full-fat Assassin's Creed game since 2019's Valhalla, and feudal Japan has long been a dream setting for series fans. That isn't to throw shade on last year's Mirage, of course, which was a perfectly enjoyable throwback to the earlier years of the series.