When Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches earlier this year, not only is it going to have to do justice to the long overdue promise of an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan, it’s also going to have to meaningfully advance the series’ lineage of action RPG titles in Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla– which, of course, means the open world behemoth is going to have high expectations to live up to in more ways than one. Like everyone, we, too, are hoping that it will improve upon its predecessors – especially the more recent ones – in some key ways, which, in fact, is exactly what we’re going to be talking about here in this feature.
DENSER AND MORE DISTINCT CITIES
When Assassin’s Creed reimagined itself as a massive open world action RPG with Origins, it also stopped focusing on dense, urban maps, instead turning its attention to larger, sprawling, diverse landscapes with dashes of cities and urban settlements found here and there. With that, however, the series has also lost a lot of what used to make its maps so memorable. Cities in Assassin’s Creed games used to be dense, expertly crafted, and laden with unique atmosphere and personality, something that has been significantly less prevalent with the likes of Odyssey and Valhalla. Our hope is that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will bring about improvements in that area, especially with the promise of its historical recreation of cities such as Osaka and Kyoto.
MORE BIOME DIVERSITY
Given how massive the maps in Assassin’s Creed games tend to be, they don’t always boast the sort of environmental variety you’d expect them to have based on their size. That’s not to say that they’re necessarily lacking in this area – that certainly isn’t the case with something like Valhalla in particular, for instance – but often, it can be hard to spot meaningful differences across different areas in recent Assassin’s Creed game. With Shadows taking us to Sengoku era Japan, however, we’re hoping Ubisoft will leverage the natural beauty of the landscapes the game is set in and wow players with plenty of diverse sights and vistas.
MORE REACTIVE OPEN WORLD
Assassin’s Creed games have been flirting with more systems-driven gameplay for a few years now, but clearly, that’s not what the series is focused on in the slightest, with the focus instead being on things such as progression, loot optimization, open world traversal, and more. That open world, however, would be that much more engaging if it were a little bit more reactive. Of course, we’re not hoping for Shadows to suddenly turn into something like Red Dead Redemption 2, but to have the world react and respond more to players’ actions would make it a much more captivating setting. Whether that’s through game-wide systems, narrative-driven choice and consequence moments, or something else, having a more reactive world would make the experience significantly more compelling.
LESS REPETITIVE OPEN WORLD ACTIVITIES
This is an area that open world games frequently stumble in- Assassin’s Creed games in particular, unfortunately enough. Whether you’re looking at instalments that launch prior to Origins or those that have released since, the franchise often struggles to stave off repetition with its optional open world activities. Clearing out bases in Odyssey and Valhalla could be a ton of fun, but after you’ve done it a certain amount of times across the course of multiple dozens of hours, it can lose its charm. Our hope is that this is an area where Shadows will take cues from something like Ghost of Tsushima and introduce more variety across its open world side activities.
BETTER SIDE QUESTS
Assassin’s Creed games love stuffing their worlds full of an almost unreasonable amount of side quests, but though there’s certainly no stone they leave unturned in terms of their sheer quantity, when it comes to quality, the series has often been found lacking. Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla all do have their fair share of solid side quests and questlines to experience, to be fair, but if you are the sort of player that likes to track down every side quest you see, you’ll find that the majority of them will be forgettable, cookie cutter content. Whether or not Assassin’s Creed Shadows will make any meaningful improvements in this area remains to be seen, but we’re definitely keeping our fingers crossed.
IMPROVED STEALTH
Assassin’s Creed was once a primarily stealth-driven franchise, though Origins’ reinventions brought with them a significant deemphasizing of all things stealth. Though last year’s Mirage was definitely a throwback experience courtesy of its renewed focus on stealth, by and large, that’s not something the series is necessarily associated with too strongly anymore. That, however, is something that needs to change with the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows– and seemingly, it very well might. It’s been confirmed by the devs that when players are playing as the shinobi Naoe, gameplay will be much more stealth-focused, with new light-and-shadow mechanics (among other things) also being introduced to bolster that side of the gameplay experience. How effectively all of that has been implemented remains to be seen, but we’re cautiously optimistic, at the very least.
IMPROVED PARKOUR
Again, parkour is something that the series has always been strongly associated with, but has placed much less emphasis on starting with Origins, with the exception of Mirage last year. It would, however, be a huge disservice to the stellar natural and urban landscapes that a Japan map would likely have if Shadows did not strive to have more prevalent and polished parkour mechanics than its recent predecessors. Playing as Naoe, players will enjoy much more agile and nimble movement, while also having access to a grappling hook, which, hopefully, will mean parkour is going to see marked improvements across the board.
MEANINGFUL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CHARACTERS
Assassin’s Creed has made it a habit of having multiple playable protagonists in single instalments over the years. But unlike Odyssey and Valhalla, which let you play as one of two, Shadows is going to follow in Syndicate’s footsteps and have you play as both available protagonists over the course of its story. And hopefully, it will also be similar to Syndicate in having meaningful gameplay differences between its two protagonists. Ubisoft has said that that is indeed going to be the case, with Naoe being the quick-footed, stealth-focused shinobi and Yasuke being the hulking, combat-focused samurai, but until we’ve seen actual gameplay for both characters, it’s going to be hard to be convinced.
LESS LOOT VOMIT
Assassin’s Creed games aren’t the only Ubisoft games that are guilty of the loot vomit problem, but Odyssey and Valhalla definitely stand out as particularly egregious offenders. It’s almost shocking the amount of time you can at times spend sorting through all of your gear as you optimize your build and trash the useless stuff and change your loadout, especially because of how often you have to do it. You should basically never get too attached to any piece of gear in these games, because chances are you aren’t going to have it for more than a handful of hours at most. Though that can be fun in limited doses, especially in an RPG, our hope is that Shadows will dial back on that stuff by several degrees. We’d much rather have more interesting skill trees to work our way through.
LESS BLOAT
Again, this can be said pretty much for any open world game being put out by Ubisoft, but again, Assassin’s Creed always seems to go a bit too far with the sheer size and scope of its maps with each successive instalment. Last year’s Mirage was obviously a decidedly smaller game, but with Shadows being billed as the series’ next big, flagship entry, there’s some concern among fans that like Odyssey and Valhalla before it, it may end up being too big for its own good. Its devs have said that Shadows is going to be comparable in size to Origins, which means it’s going to be smaller than the two aforementioned behemoths- but Origins was pretty damn large as well. Is that size going to feel right for Shadows? Here’s hoping, right?
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