User blog comment:Master Sima Yi/Assassinews 03-03-'13 — Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag trailer and screenshots/@comment-203.129.39.74-20130311135538/@comment-4829046-20130312153536

Just for conversation sake: Shinobi and Samurai are neither organizations nor orders. They are individuals that may or may not band together. In other words they are like thieves, mercenaries, hunters in AC. The guilds in AC are only for convenience. There isn't any concrete evidence that all the thieves in a city are part of some guild or anything. So being their "enemy" is slightly off. More like, if you pick a fight with an enemy he will have Shinobi and Samurai fighting for him or maybe you might come across lone Samurai that you can kill and stuff.

I always found it weird that even though in AC the fighters are called "mercenaries", only the Assassin order actually hires them, which actually makes them look like good guys, when in reality they are killers looking for some pay. I would like it if in future games(if they ever bring back factions), both the enemy AND you can have the same archetype, just with different colour scheme.