Assassin’s Creed Shadows: The Game-Changing Feature You Need to Know!

by

In an exclusive chat with TopMob, Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ Level Design Director, Luc Plante, explained that the game’s Feudal Japan backdrop significantly alters gameplay due to a significant novel aspect.

At long last, Assassin’s Creed Shadows offers players an immersion into the realm of Feudal Japan, a place that the series has hinted at for years and fans have eagerly anticipated since the beginning of the franchise.

During an exclusive chat with Luc Plante, the mastermind behind level design at Ubisoft, we learned about the fresh and intriguing scenario of Shadows that offered an exciting chance to innovate the gameplay experience within the franchise.

Just as you’d anticipate with any Assassin’s Creed game, the setting of Feudal Japan is meticulously crafted, much like how past titles have vividly depicted Ancient Egypt, Revolutionary France, and The Dark Ages of England.

Instead, Shadows breaks away from the tradition of earlier games, which took place in European urban settings. Its unique setting offers a drastic shift, enhancing gameplay and intensifying immersion to unprecedented levels.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is “unique” from other entries

However, Shadows stands out from its predecessors with a distinctive change in atmosphere and location. Unlike past games, it’s set in Feudal Japan, which offers a stark contrast to the landscapes we’re used to seeing.

As Plante explained, the atmosphere and building design here are quite distinct. Unlike certain parts of Europe that boast towering structures allowing for extensive parkour opportunities, many towns in Federal Japan primarily feature low-rise buildings, typically one or two stories high.

The aspect of vertical exploration has consistently played a significant role in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. From the towering Pyramids of Egypt to Rome’s Colosseum, one unforgettable moment for players is scaling these landmarks and surveying the vast game world from their summit.

Although Shadows offers numerous spots for traversing and perching, it’s evident that the development team aimed to preserve the authenticity of Feudal Japan by altering the way the environment influences the gameplay experience.

Consequently, this shift significantly altered the developers’ strategy, and it was instrumental in introducing the element of destruction within the game, an aspect that the Level Designer had always believed would greatly contribute to the player’s immersion.

How Feudal Japan “transformed” Assassin’s Creed gameplay

In the game “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows,” not only is the grandeur of the building that stands out compared to other games in the series, but also the very base of the environment itself. Later, Plante explained that even a seemingly minor detail like paper walls significantly altered the team’s approach to navigation and gameplay design.

The numerous partitioning walls posed a challenge, but we turned it into an opportunity. This means, when venturing into a place and intending to engage in combat with just one individual, care must be taken not to knock down all the walls. This is essential to prevent onlookers outside from seeing your activities.

Navigating the unique aspects of stealth, which is a key element in the Assassin’s Creed series, presents an entirely new challenge.

Opening a sliding door at an inconvenient moment could potentially expose your secret identity, making mission completion or castle infiltration more challenging due to the risk of alerting adversaries.

Although this aspect might have posed as an obstacle for the Shadows’ development team, it turned out to be “an exciting and unforeseen chance to overcome challenges not encountered elsewhere.

Plante finally added, “That’s the beauty of working on the Asassin’s Creed franchise.”  

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be released on March 20, 2025.

Read More

2025-01-24 02:19