Assassin's Creed Shadows has reviewed well, folks are into it, it's trending on social media; all of that is great, because I'm loving it as well. But looking over a lot of people's reviews and general feedback, I can't help but wonder where some of you have been for the last ten years.
For all the cool stuff Shadows does around the edges of the Assassin's Creed formula, the core experience–the way the game feels and plays and what it has you doing moment to moment–feels largely unchanged from Origins, a game released all the (relative) way back in 2017.
This is not a criticism. That makes sense! Of course they feel the same; a lot of the same tech is underpinning both games, which is why Bayek and Naoe move with largely the same momentum and stick to walls and doorframes the same frustrating ways. These aren’t the only familiar things, though; even Shadows' missions, quests and, most important, sandbox playthings are much the same.
For all of Ubisoft's efforts at making elaborate, scripted story missions for the game's two playable characters, the centrepiece of Shadows--and the last few Assassin's Creed games, but Shadows does it slightly better--is its open world, sandbox mayhem. It’s those personally-curated, freestyle moments when the game shows you a city block, farm or entire castle full of bad guys, a number of different ways you can approach them and says "have fun".
These are the moments that the game, and indeed much of the series, was built for. When every button press and inventory item is geared towards player expression, whether they’re opting for stealth or combat. Every sandbox encounter, from its scale to its architecture, is designed with the multiple paths towards the same goal: You can sneak your way through and steal some loot; you can sneak your way through killing everybody; you can try to sneak post everybody, fail and have to fight who's left; or you can just kick the front door open, say "surprise motherfuckers" and kill everyone.
Assassin's Creed has always had some iteration of these playgrounds (Black Flag's fortress battles were great), but they started getting really good in Origins, which was the first true open-world Assassin's Creed, meaning it was the first to really flood the map with staged encounters and let you have at them however you wanted. And while the quality of these sandboxes has ebbed and flowed slightly over the years as settings and characters have necessitated slight changes, for me they've remained the highlight of each successive game.
The flexibility you're given, the freedom of expression, the possible strategies lying before you, the satisfaction of a self-imposed job well done, I love it all. Ubisoft know exactly what it is that's best about this series–not long horseback rides or eavesdropping, but the act of sneaking up to a guy, shanking him in the ribs then dragging his body into the bushes. Wash, rinse, repeat.
In Shadows these moments--its towering castles especially--remain the highlights. Especially since our creative impulses have been spun off into two distinct characters, each with their own strengths and approaches: Naoe for more traditional stealth and Yasuke for when I just want to kick a man to death.
I get the impression they're the highlights for a lot of other people out there, too. This is anecdotal, but three out of five co-founders here at Aftermath didn't unlock Yasuke until around 15-20 hours into the game, because we were all too busy climbing viewpoints and rinsing castles and just generally doing cool assassin stuff. (The other two co-founders...haven't played the game.)
I'm happy for everyone finding out that these skirmishes are the best part of the game but, as someone who put over 100 hours into each of the last three main games, I just wanted to say here that Shadows' highlights aren't substantially different to those found in Origins, Odyssey or Valhalla. Assassin's Creed has been this good for a long time, and I don't think enough people either remember that, or were aware of it in the first place.
There's a feeling on the wind, especially now that everyone is having so much fun with Shadows and that Ubisoft has been in such trouble lately, that the last few Assassin's Creed games have been bad. But that's not true. The last three (four if you count the glorified spin-off Mirage) have been fantastic, full of memorable characters and breathtaking locations and extremely cool missions. Their reviews at launch were as glowing as Shadows’ have been.
Their problems aren't that they suck, but that they were just too big. Too long. Odyssey and Valhalla especially vastly overstayed their welcome with drawn-out (sometimes multiple) storylines and DLC, meaning a lot of people parted with those games on poor terms. Those negative views have perhaps coloured both game's legacy in ways unfair to their core experience.
Shadows was supposed to be different. This was hoped/believed by many to be some kind of silver bullet, a fix for the series' woes, a game that could not only weather a culture war storm but also restore people's faith in a series that had supposedly grown stale. But for all that, and its delays, Shadows is just another Assassin's Creed game. You climb the towers, upgrade the stuff, shank the baddies. It's not a reboot, it's not a retool, it's literally the same game we've been playing for almost a decade now, just set in Japan.
And that's fine? Long-running series ebb and flow all the time, they have highlights and lowlights, and Shadows was never going to be some singular act of salvation. It's just a cool video game, and if you're liking it and slept on--or have forgotten about--the last few, you should go play them too! Just don't feel the need to play all the way through them.
