Assassin's Creed Shadows is delivering on a long-standing request from the community: action unfurling across Feudal Japan. It's an exciting prospect, but I think what really caught my attention is the prospect of the world state allowing for more reactive stealth than we've ever seen in the series before.
"Everything we have done since the first Assassin's Creed, when we created what was probably one of the first open-world games, and everything that we've done since, has been to try and improve the immersion of people in our universe," says Marc-Alexis Cote, vice president executive producer of the Assassin's Creed franchise, following a new trailer revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase.
"You see that in the super detailed crowd-life and interactions – how you can walk around in the world and just observe it, which creates a sense of belonging to that place. We're trying to push that further in Shadows. The main innovation this time around is to push dynamism. There's dynamic weather, dynamic seasons, and these dynamic environments."
How these more dynamic environments impact your play is interesting, with Cote explaining that the state of the world can genuinely change the way you approach missions. "The more detail that we have, the more possibilities that you have, the more that the players can express themselves. In Assassin's Creed Shadows, you can revisit a location in the winter or in the summer, and in the summer it's lush. There's going to be loads of places to hide – you can go prone in the tall grass, that sort of thing, and enemies won't see you coming. But then if you go back and it's Winter?"
xThis is where Assassin's Creed Shadows really delivers on its more reactive world concept. "The snow is crunchy, so as you walk around, the enemies will spot you and they will hear you. So you need to take a different approach. I was playing in a snowstorm the other day and I was like, 'oh god, what's going to happen?'" There are all of these systems coming together, but the snowstorm was hiding the noise that I was making, meaning the enemies could not see me, and then I could stab them from behind. That's where the magic happens. The more detail you have, and the more it's integrated into the gameplay, the more possibilities there are for players."
I'm keen to experience this for myself, particularly as it sounds like a significant game-changer for the series' strives towards absolute immersion. Assassin's Creed Shadows lands on November 15, 2024 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X so we don't have long to wait now to find out for certain.
