Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a classic Ubisoft identity crisis
Impressions after ~2 hours
Your army destroyed, your Lord killed. Your reckless mission for vengeance lays, like your samurai armour, shattered on the shore. After a long period of recovery, you mount your horse, Kage, and ride through the forest. You burst through the trees. You lean to the side to dip your hand through pampas grass. The music swells as the sun rises on the horizon. A new dawn, a new life. The title appears: Ghost of Tsushima.
I pay a lot of attention to title cards. I consider them to be the first time the director speaks directly to you. Think about “ALIEN” revealed one line at a time or the melancholy, weathered bronze of “THE LORD OF THE RINGS.” It’s an opportunity for a director to welcome you into their vision, to set the stage for the story they’re going to tell you.
Shadows does have a title drop but, despite the swelling orchestral fanfare and preceding emotional moment, I’m not sure why it’s delivered there and that way. It doesn’t feel intentional or crafted—and so far that’s the vibe of the game in general. Shadows makes a strong first impression with a lengthy narrative sequence heavily inspired by Shogun. It then dumps you into two classic “abilitease” sequences: one focused on combat, the other on stealth. For all the goodwill it builds in the story sequences, the gameplay previews are very similar to all the AC games since Origins. In the combat sequence, you fight spongy enemies with health bars who barely react to your strikes. In the stealth sequence, you kill near-sighted, hearing-impaired guards with ridiculously bloody and brutal “stealth” kills leave massive blood stains on the walls and floor and would be heard from a mile away IRL.
The prologue ends with a Tarantino-inspired rogue’s gallery roll call that is about as far from the thoughtful court intrigue of the first scene as Kill Bill Vol. 1 is from Ran. You’re faced with a lineup of future boss fight characters so ridiculously overdesigned because you probably won’t see some of them again for dozens of hours. You make a promise to your dying friend, yadayadayada, title card drop.
Actually, I’m not sure that is where the title card drops—that’s how little of an impact it makes. So far, Shadows is perfectly fine. I just finished the second prologue and have been let loose in the first area, but it’s not hard to see where things are going. It’s also extremely difficult to avoid comparing Shadows to Ghost of Tsushima which, so far, did everything Shadows is trying to do but better, smarter and with more intention—right down to the in-game meditation sequences. Shadows turns these into a rhythm game? I know that sounds horrible but they’re actually pretty effective.
Ghost feels authored: a small team led by tight creative direction and a clear vision. Shadows feels, like every Ubisoft game, assembled. There’s clear creative direction and vision at work, but it’s buried by content, gameplay, and franchise requirements. (I groaned out loud at the new Assassin’s Creed franchise logo. Avowed did this too so I guess it’s 2025’s New Thing.)
Shadows feels like what I call a whiteboard project. On the first day of concepting, a bunch of executives and creative directors sat in a boardroom and wrote down everything an Assassin’s Creed game needs to have on a big whiteboard. That board was screenshotted, tapped, referenced, and translated for years. It haunted development.