Four things that look great in Assassin’s Creed Shadows (and two we’re not sure about)
We’ve still got a while to wait before the Assassin’s Creed Shadows achievements arrive, but it already looks as though the next Assassin’s Creed will make a number of changes from the most recent AC games, whether that’s dynamic weather or dual protagonists. Taking everything we’ve seen — whether it looks promising or slightly less so — here’s a few things we liked, and some we’re not sure about, from what we’ve seen of AC Shadows so far.
Shinobi league and hideout
When we first shared our thoughts on how Assassin’s Creed could learn from the past to build a better future for the series and what we’d like to see in Shadows (which was still under the codename Red at the time), the first thing we talked about was how we wanted to see it double down on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s settlement feature.
This is an important one, as although Valhalla had a lot to offer, it often got bogged down by its own overly-bloated map. Having a vast map (or maps with Valhalla) can be a good thing but if it’s not backed up by rewarding exploration then it can get tiring. Valhalla’s Ravensthorpe settlement helped here — instead of zooming back and forth aimlessly across England, we suddenly had a hub area to return to. Ravensthorpe both helped to anchor Eivor’s presence in England, and also grouped together all the merchants and features we needed in one place. It also helped emphasize the story and immersion of the game, giving Eivor something to care about as we built up and personalized the area.
Since Shadows’ initial reveal, we’ve heard repeated mentions of a shinobi league. We know we’ll be recruiting allies and relying on a network of spies, but the Xbox preorder page confirms that we can “Create a fully customizable hideout for your growing shinobi league as you train your crew, craft new gear, interact with key characters, and choose your base’s layout, decorations, and accessories.” Huzzah! There’s no word yet on how this hideout will work, since it is a “hideout” and naturally might need to be a bit less obvious than a settlement or village, but the fact remains that we do have a hideout. In fact, the Ultimate Edition already includes ornaments for it. This might not be great news if you weren’t fond of Ravensthorpe (or endless cosmetics), but hopefully Shadows will improve on what came before.
Dual protagonists
We’ve gone into a lot of detail about how the protagonists will differ in our round-up of everything we know about Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but what’s exciting is the freedom we seem to have with this system to play how we like. The viking background for Valhalla’s single protagonist meant that noisy, upfront open combat sometimes seemed more natural for Eivor than a stealthy approach. It left the game in something of a quandary: how to give the player freedom of choice about combat, while not forgetting that Assassin’s Creed was originally meant to be about stealth?Splitting physical strength, heavier weapons, and an upfront approach for Shadows’ samurai Yasuke while shinobi assassin Naoe can rely on parkour and stealth seems like a neater way of handling the situation. We’ll be able to switch between the two at nearly any point aside from when we’re mid-combat, busy conducting “an infiltration,” or undertaking personal quests. The most recent Shadows footage from Ubisoft Forward gave an example of how the player could choose their approach when hunting down a target hidden in a castle. Naoe and Yasuke discussed how to handle it: full-on combat or stealth infiltration. The choice was then handed over to the player, with the two protagonists then wrapping up their discussion as we moved forwards with the protagonist of our choice. Hopefully this is how it’ll work with every such situation, so that we can weigh up situations and decide how we want to handle it before charging in (or sneaking around for a hidden path).
This distinction between our two protagonists looks like it’ll be even more definitive since Naoe will be the only one with a hidden blade. On that note, hidden blade combat will apparently be coming back: creative director Jonathan Dumont says “the hidden blade has two functions. So it can come out as a regular hidden blade, like for stabbing people. But Naoe can extrude the second portion and flip it so that she has a dual wield, using a smaller weapon called a tanto, or hidden blade at the same time. So, that’s a very fast, damaging situation for most people that are fighting her at that time.” Assistant director of cinematic design Akim Milne adds, “fans have been wanting for a long time to bring back hidden blade combat. Like being able to just fight with your hidden blade. And we brought that back with the Tanto style.”
It’ll be interesting to see how these two end up allied after starting out on opposite sides, and there’s a lot of potential with what Ubisoft’s said about the different reactions and relationships they’ll have with other characters due to their differing social statuses, on top of the potential for personal quests. But it’s also a helpful balance that while Naoe grew up in Iga and will therefore be more knowledgeable about the land we’ll be exploring (and hopefully share this useful info with us), Yasuke is a relative newcomer and will be learning alongside us.
Big open world?
This is a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to the AC series. I love open-world games with a big map to explore. I also loved Odyssey and enjoyed Valhalla. But even taking all that into account, the scale of those in-game maps was a bit wearing. This was still more telling with Valhalla — maybe because the memory of traipsing around Odyssey was still fresh, or maybe because of the sheer amount of land you need to cover, but either way the world often felt too bloated. This has been a bit of an issue with the more recent Assassin’s Creed games (not as much with Mirage, which aimed for a more condensed feel) but according to Ubisoft, Shadows is around the same size in terms of scale as Assassin’s Creed Origins. Speaking to IGN, Dumont said that Shadows is “in-line with the latest Assassin’s Creeds that we’ve done,” but that “On a scale level, maybe we can compare it a little bit more to the size of Assassin’s Creed Origins.” Dumont also added, “We did want to have a much closer to real life scale ratio. So because castles took a lot of space, and we really wanted the mountains to feel like mountains, [we’ve made] the environments feel wider in the game… But I would say around the same size as Origins.” Another of our initial hopes for Shadows had been that it would focus on quality over quantity, and Dumont’s comments sound more promising there. The new Ubisoft Forward gameplay also brought us mention of the Torii gates we’ll see, and how that means we’ll know to look for “secrets” in that area; whether loot, targets, or something else. We’ll have to see whether Shadows really does offer more rewarding exploration, which leads us to…
Changing seasons
This might be a smaller thing, but we’re hopeful for what it might mean for Shadows. The worlds of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla were beautiful, but even so they could feel very samey, partly because of the way you move about them. Our characters being parkour experts of course means they won’t have the same sort of weighty movement as, say, Red Dead Redemption 2’s Arthur Morgan, who’ll dislodge pebbles, fall down hills, or send his horse careening straight into trees. But that lack of weighty movement (and the way in which the AC horses are apparently gravity-defying parkour experts too) meant the world could just blur into the background, with the terrain, weather, and even mountains making no major obstacles.
The “unpredictable weather, changing seasons, and reactive environments” that Shadows promises might at least help break into any monotony and give us a chance to appreciate the environment. Especially since this impacts gameplay, too; Ubisoft Forward showed us how doing a mission in spring meant Naoe could hide in bushes and even sneak through a pool, but that doing that same mission in winter would mean the pool was frozen and the bushes were bare, and Naoe would need to look for other ways to hide herself.
Destructible environments
This is another smaller aspect we’re looking forward to. Having just written about how cool it will be to have the chance to play stealthily as Naoe, Shadows’ destructible environments look as though they’ll be fun to test when engaging in open combat as Yasuke.
The NPCs in the latest AC games (those in the towns and villages you pass through, not major side characters) can often blend into the background, or be noticed because of the way they keep getting in the way of your horse. Admittedly, it is quite funny to see elderly NPCs — who were apparently slowed down and bent double by extreme age just a moment before — literally somersaulting out of the path of your horse, but while the NPCs might not always stand out, the Assassin’s Creed cities do manage to convey a sense of being busy and bustling, mostly due to the amount of stuff they have lying around. Barrels of goods, flower petals strewn on the ground, carts laden with merchandise; all add to the idea that it’s a lived-in area. All that to say that being able to absolutely demolish all of this with Yasuke’s kanabo will likely be very enjoyable. That latest gameplay showed off a bit of this aspect, but we’ll have to wait and see how much stuff we’ll actually be able to trash.
Help for the horses
Lastly, the horses… When I wrote before about my hopes for the next AC game, I did say I hoped they’d sort out the horses. This is admittedly more of a personal request for what is a very small part of the game, but after watching the stilted arthritic movement of Ubisoft’s poor Assassin’s Creed horses, their stringy manes, and the fact that nobody (horse or rider) looks happy about the situation, I was really hoping to see some improvement. …Unfortunately, it doesn’t look as though Shadows is going to do much about this. Sure, there are much more important areas for it to focus on (like the actual Assassin stuff we’re playing it for), and there’s still time if Ubisoft did decide to help out its unfortunate equine creations, but from that trailer, it doesn’t seem likely. On the other hand, I did see some cool horse armor, and this seems to suggest I’ll be falling back on the old Ubisoft arrangement: I will accept their sad horses in return for nice armor to put on them.
That’s just a few of the things we’re looking forward to from what we’ve seen so far of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Since we still rank Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as one of the best Xbox open world games out there, we’re excited and (cautiously) optimistic about how the next Assassin’s Creed game might fare.
