Mar 19, 2025, 08:00 PM ET
Karl-Anthony Towns might be a five-time NBA All-Star, but he’s an all-time Assassin’s Creed fan. During a press preview phase for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, we spoke to the New York Knicks center about his love for the hidden blade.
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Towns has always followed the video games industry, predominantly through Game Informer Magazine and the E3 convention, so the open-world Ubisoft series has been on his radar (and in his console’s disc tray) since the first game launched in 2007. His interest shot up with the experimental multiplayer mode in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
“Brotherhood solidified my love and passion for Assassin’s Creed,” Towns told ESPN. “I was in college and able to play with my teammates — Willie Cauley-Stein and Derek Willis — for the first time and experience the world with my teammates.”
Brotherhood’s multiplayer involved teams of players blending into crowds and attempting to draw out enemy players who could be disguised as anyone. This created a tense game of hide-and-seek and required teamwork to sniff out the bad guys. It’s easy to see why it’d make for such a good bonding experience.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set during the Azuchi-Momoyama period in 1579, in feudal Japan, where players take on the roles of Fujibayashi Naoe, a shinobi, and Yasuke, a samurai.
Playing as Naoe, your focus is stealth — tiptoeing across rooftops and hiding in the dark with a dagger readied. As bulkier Yasuke, you’re encouraged to stand and fight. It’s this “versatility, being able to do what you please” that’s most appealing to Towns, who is as fluid at the game as he is on the court.
“Obviously, another Assassin’s Creed game gets you excited regardless, but I was always a big history buff,” he explained. “Social studies was my favorite class. So being able to have a game that really strives to be historically accurate allows me to learn.”
The game is set during a period of great upheaval, where the East was trying to retain its values and culture despite the Western world encroaching. These dueling ideals are best represented by the characters you play as, with Naoe being a Japanese woman who lurks in the shadows, while Yasuke, an African man based on a real historical figure, embraces the old traditions of honor.
“What surprised me about AC Shadows was the ability to change characters at any time,” Towns said. “I’ve never seen that before. That’s the cool part. There were times when I was ready to walk through the front door and start getting aggressive. But then there are other times you’re like, ‘I can really save myself a lot of time by being sneaky and getting exactly what I need to get done and getting up out of there.'”
During the demo, the New York Knicks star found himself constantly distracted by the world.
“I was looking at the animals around and drawing animals,” he said. “So that was right away. Then it started showing me I could do it more, and I was like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t got enough time to keep going around.’ I’ll do my 100% completion route when the game comes out. The world’s so beautiful. They put so much detail into it.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows releases Thursday.
