Star Wars Outlaws had a less than stellar launch, with the game underperforming critically and commercially. This, in turn, had knock-on effects for Ubisoft's next big open-world game, Assassin's Creed Shadows, which had its release pushed back weeks after Outlaws launched with the company citing "learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release" as the reason for the delay. However, the game's creative director, Jonathan Dumont, told GamesRadar+ that the delay wasn't that deep.
When asked if there were any deeper changes to Assassin's Creed Shadows based on the reception to Star Wars Outlaws, Dumont said, "Not really. We were basically trying to make the most polished game that we [can]" adding, "our game was there, so just making sure that we don't have bugs and that the experience is clean for people." Due to the dynamic weather system (which is extremely impressive to Ubisoft's credit), Dumont also mentioned that "there's a lot of things that we needed to take a look at."
Although even if the majority of delay time was dedicated to polishing what was there, Ubisoft did add "a couple bits of narrative here and there." When the team was playing the game following the delay, there was a realization that "this is a place where we could reinforce the relationship" which resulted in the scene where Yasuke and Naoe are gazing into the clouds and speaking about their futures. "We had a few already, and people love those things. So alright, let's try to get a little bit more in there."
But even when the game was delayed so close to launch, it actually didn't bother Dumont and the Assassin's Creed Shadows team too much, as they said, "It's kind of cool also that we were close to launch, and then we get this extra time to do the things that typically you're doing at the end."
