Assassin’s Creed Shadows

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[Maf]

Perched on a rooftop and now called Shadows? 🤔

 

Blend of classic assassination gameplay and open world RPG? 

[Maf]

First trailer. Nice, but all CG, no gameplay.

 

Looks to me they’re trying to bring stealth back in to the series by having 2 playable characters. The samurai who I expect plays like the new trilogy characters, and the ninja who will be more stealthy.

 

They clearly show a huge area so presumably the structure is still like the new action RPG games. But hopefully there’s some towns/cities for the ninja to do her thing

 

They also show and hang on a image of big boats at a dock… please no 😓

 

Assuming this tone and aesthetic is true to the game then it could be very cool. Very Ghost of Tsushima-y.

 

But it could just devolve to running around grass fields for 80 hours opening chests, who knows 

[one-armed dwarf]

The timing for this could not have worked out better for them, considering how popular the Shogun series has been this year

 

Apparently the samurai guy is real as well, and he served as a retainer to Nobunaga

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke

[one-armed dwarf]

Mild interest obliterated

 

 

🤔

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crew_(video_game)#Server_shutdown

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, every game of theirs is doing that now, even singleplayer stuff like Avatar, PoP or Star Wars. This looks really cool and if they can avoid the bloat of something like Valhalla it might turn out really well, but as long as it's locked to an online connection Guillemot can shove it where the Eiffel Tower doesn't reach.

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah to be fair, I have Valhalla and it also does this I think

 

I did not know that though when I bought it, just happened to start it up one day and see that I wasn't allowed to play without downloading a 60GB update, which would take me hours

 

So I stopped playing it, deleted the whole thing and moved on. But the situation with The Crew just reminds me that lots of their games are going to be impossible to play at some point, so why buy any of them if they're clearly not afraid to shut them down so quickly? The Crew was not an old game 

[Maryokutai]

At least on console Valhalla is playable offline in its entirety. I remember installing and playing it in offline mode when I got it – on Xbox no less, which usually doesn't even have all the files on the disc.

 

The forced connection is just egregious for purely SP games. 

[Maf]

Also not coming to Steam?

 

Quote

ASSASSIN'S CREED SHADOWS

Coming November 15 on Xbox Series X|S & PlayStation®5, Ubisoft+, Amazon Luna,
Macs with Apple Silicon via the Mac App Store, as well as Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store and the Epic Games Store.

Play 3 days early by pre-ordering any Premium Edition.

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/shadows?isSso=true&refreshStatus=noLoginData

[Maf]

Wow the trailer got 1.6mil views in 3 hours on the main Ubisoft YT. Err, I think this game is going to do ok 

[Maf]

There’s some really interesting sounding stuff with this game. It’s going to have Splinter Cell style light/dark stealth system. So killing light and being harder to detect in the shadows. It’s also going to have changing seasons which will affect gameplay. Examples are in the summer guards will cut the tall grass to find you, but in winter stay closer to fires and heat sources. Also in the winter ponds will be frozen over so can’t hide underneath the water.
 

I didn’t see this in the article just speculation. But wonder if it’ll be Forza Horizon 4 style where the seasons changes weekly? Also explains more why this game is online only. 
 

Kind of obvious but yes, samurai guy plays like recent AC protagonists but the ninja girl is more classic AC style gameplay 
 

https://www.ign.com/articles/assassins-creed-shadows-inside-ubisofts-ambitious-open-world-japan

I like this 

 

Quote

The fictional daughter of real historical figure Fujibayashi Nagato, Naoe is a very different character to Yasuke. Where he is a bold fighter, she’s the hidden blade in the shadows. It's through her that Ubisoft are seemingly rediscovering the series’ stealth roots in a manner that surpasses even last year’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage. 
 

“The thing that shines the most, I feel, in Assassin's Creed, it's really the hidden blade, the assassination, being able to stay hidden,” says game director Charles Benoit. “So that's the core that we want to keep. What we needed to push forward [was to make it] feel a bit more modern in the approach.”

All sounds promising to me. I will play this game for sure. IGN also has in game screenshots. Hard to say, but it looks like the tech is the same from the latest versions of the game, but the art and environments look really nice.

[Maryokutai]

8 hours ago, Maf said:

Also explains more why this game is online only. 

 

Harvest Moon had changing seasons on the Gameboy. Just saying.

 

But I promise I'll stop now, let people speak about the game. I'm clearly not part of UbiSoft's target audience anymore for reasons beyond the games themselves.

[Maf]

If it’s basic as that then the online only thing is pointless. But if they’re going to have literal seasonal content then it makes more sense, although if it’s not online co-op does it really matter.

 

Have to wait and see. I do think there should be an offline mode in any case 

[one-armed dwarf]

Based on the IGN article the seasons are connected to campaign progress, as they say they want certain historical battles to be 'seasonally accurate' I suppose. Then your sidequests are the things which will offer dynamic outcomes based on the point at which you activate them, eg hiding in the fields during harvest seasons, making some use of a frozen lake during winter

 

I hope this always online thing isn't as it appears, or that there's a bit of a Helldivers 2 blowback that causes a change. The game does sound really good, more interesting than recent Ubisoft stuff. It's just for me this stuff isn't disruptive purely as a hypothetical, it's actively annoying when I can't play a game cause of some network quirk that's out of my control and for a game which does not require it. It's also why the 'just a launcher' stuff misses the point

[Maf]

It just struck me that Valhalla came out in 2020, which means they’ve been working on this for around 4 years. 
 

with all the details that came out in previews yesterday, there were interesting bits of info like towers don’t reveal icons on the map anymore, stealth doesn’t mean bushes make you invisible it has to be dark  etc. I liked the sound of these things but there’s always the chance of, oh, is it just a few light ideas sprinkled on the same base. 
 

But given the time, maybe they’ve had time to actually sit back and think about AC and these ideas make meaningful change to the game
 

I know it doesn’t pay to be optimistic around here 😅, but they’re talking the talk convincingly to me so I’m in and hoping this’ll be a great game

[Maf]

Can be played offline, but requires online to install

 

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Day 0. So up for this.

[one-armed dwarf]

Great that it isn't online locked

 

Nextlander talk about the icon stuff, specifically that Ubisoft themselves expressed a wish for less icons. You can actually see the genesis of this design shift a bit in Avatar, which tried to embrace a more naturalistic form of exploration and used survival mechanics to disincentivize excessive fast travel (you get hungry when FT-ing, but you don't gather supplies, therefore you should wander around more) and gave you directions to objectives that requires you to follow rivers and sightlines, not waypoints. Though you could set your own waypoints, but you had to read a map to do so. I don't think it was fully successful, but it's what made that game interesting to me

 

The tower system here sounds more BOTW than Ubisoft also, more manual plotting of POI

[DANGERMAN]

On 15/05/2024 at 19:22, Maf said:

Also not coming to Steam?

 

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/shadows?isSso=true&refreshStatus=noLoginData

The last Far Cry launched first on epic, so maybe this is the same. Feels like leaving money on the table to me but tbf I don't care if Ubisoft make money