"Everything is chaos. I was wrong. I chose wrong. I was lied to and manipulated, and now I have nothing." - Naoe
This post is about the little details in Assassin's Creed Shadows that stood out to me. You can check out my Early Impressions of the game if you haven't already. The story in this game involves inner turmoil deciding if you should kill the enemy or let them live, as "violence begets violence." But some evil does need to be ended and some people will not stop being evil. Batman's Joker is one perfect example.
There are also characters in this story that make it very obvious they will not stop being evil. Some do try to change and you actually get to decide if you allow them to or not, if you don't accidentally kill them first, that is. Some characters can be approached to listen to their dialogue that opens the opportunity to forgive them or not and that is not always obvious as it fits naturally into normal gameplay.
- A Deeper Story - "They will only stop when we stop them."
I didn't realize how many new quest chains would unlock as I progressed through the story of Assassin's Creed Shadows. It also happened in Odyssey and Valhalla but it felt more random to me in those games. It could just be because I prefer the story here in Shadows. It's had my full attention for the most part with very few parts that I found slow or boring. Each of the new organizations that unlock are related to the main characters in some way. I imagine it's the same for the previous games? This one just made more sense to me.
The extra addition of the new organizations can be odd at first because some of them will appear "randomly" as you explore the world. You may end up killing an organization target that you were unaware of and the organization will then appear in your Objectives menu. However, if you do not accidentally unlock the organization via exploration, you'll still naturally come across them during the main stories eventually, so far from what I've seen. They're not major story elements but they are tied to them. One of the major story characters will know of or have heard of these people in the organization. All of these people are connected in some way. So, it is side content you can skip, but I like that it ties into the major character stories as well. Some of them do feel more important than others based on the story they offer.
- Character Customization - 'The sword takes life to give it."
The housing element in Assassin's Creed Shadows has received an upgrade from what Valhalla had to offer. This time around, there are many more elements that the player can customize and build into their Hideout. You can place buildings where you want, within limit. You can add pets to it. Some cats and dogs can be earned from petting them in the open world. Other pets can be bought at specific vendors, along with all sorts of decorations. I don't have a lot to say on this element in the game as I have not spent a lot of time in it yet. It's a very cool feature. I just don't normally spend as much time in these elements as I do with the regular gameplay. I would like it if we could zoom the camera out more while placing buildings and decorations. I like that the Objectives menu will show you how many resources you still need to collect to upgrade your buildings at your Hideout.
Equipment transmogs have received an upgrade in Assassin's Creed Shadows. This time around, you can select the style of your weapon hilt, scabard, blade, and ornament. It's pretty awesome. I don't remember when that feature unlocks exactly but it did take awhile. Unfortunately, they did not do the same for the armor. It would have been especially cool if you could also select different color variations of your outfits.
Another thing I like about the gear is how they have a large variation of extra perks including percentage of damage done with certain abilities, extra damage done at certain times of day, and lots more. The Legendary gear has the best perks, of course. One of my favorites is a perk that automatically throws a kunai at a nearby enemy when you stealth kill an enemy, doubling up the stealth kill. It's either buggy or has a built-in cooldown, though, as it doesn't always work.
There are also Engravings that give you the option to select which perks you want to have on your gear. I still haven't really looked into using that feature after sixty hours of playing. I'm also playing on Easy, though. That said, some of these game features do require a lot of grinding as they require lots of resource materials and rare materials to upgrade and forge, so you probably wouldn't be using them early on in the game anyways. Some players do go out of their way for that but I think they're ruining their own game experience by focusing so hard on that grind.
- Gameplay Elements - "Her wrath is justified." - Yasuke
One of my favorite tiny details in Assassin's Creed Shadows is that your character will slip and slide on ice if you are sprinting. I also love that viewpoints now automatically trigger when you climb up to them. I didn't mind clicking the button before or anything, I just think this is a neat little QoL update. I love how Yasuke moves much quicker through snow than Naoe does. It's an interesting small detail as he is normally the turtle of the two.
There's a brief mini-game where you can sneak up on rare animals to have either Naoe or Yasuke draw a picture of them. You get to see a tiny cinematic showing the animals in action, finished with a camera over whichever character you're playing as drawing them. It's neat. There's a part early in the story where your character is taught how to draw to help meditate.
For combat, the absolute brutality of Yasuke is so obviously different from Naoe. He's a tank that I can walk into a castle gate and shout out, "I'm here. Come face your death," or something like that, and it's so badass! I have never really bothered with the stealth element while playing as him. Sure, I'm playing on Easy ("Forgiving"), but it's still easy to tell the vast difference in combat style and power between these two characters. Yasuke's finishers are far more brutal as well. A couple of his finishers had my jaw drop deep the first time I saw them. If you haven't played the game yet, it takes about an average of fifteen to twenty hours to unlock him as a normal playable character due to the pacing of the story. I've seen a lot of posts discussing how long it takes before you can even play as him, as well as knowing it took me about twenty hours while mostly trying to focus on main objectives.
I have been able to take out several enemies at once while using the smoke bomb. It's not easy and enemies will actualy move out of the smoke as well which is cool. I think it's awesome to be able to take out many enemies in a single smoke bomb again, though.
This may be a tiny bit of a spoiler but it's also something I think a lot of people might skip over and not realize, or not even care about. It's small. I love how Naoe casually states, "It fits perfect," when getting her first Brotherhood robes.
- Side Stories - "It's always like this. The poor pay for the crimes of the rich."
Some of the side missions that usually stand out to me in this series are the ones that involve children. There are cute little stories as well but the one's I remember the most are the ones where the children are kidnapped, exploited, and abused after their parents are murdered by the kidnappers. They're sad stories that I find hard to let go. They give me a real enemy to go after in comparison to normal military stuff that I just don't really care about.
One thing I found interesting in one of these stories in Assassin's Creed Shadows is that when I found out one of the kidnappings happened to a wealthy family, I just didn't care. But then later found out they weren't actually wealthy, people just thought they were. That part isn't exactly believable to me. I think it's an interesting perspective but then I think to myself, "why would people think they're wealthy if they aren't?" I could go into deeper thoughts on that but it would be an article all by itself. F*** the rich. That's certainly not the child's fault, though. It's too bad they'll likely grow up to be a piece of s***.
As a quick follow-up side note to the above, Assassin's Creed Origins has the best writing in the side stories I've seen in the series so far. The stories are just really good. I say that while also really loving the heck out of the stories in Shadows. I guess Origins just reached me even more.
- The Little Things That Annoy Or Frustrate Me - "I just hope I live long enough to see the end of all of this." - Naoe
For this last portion of my post, this is about the small annoyances I found in Assassin's Creed Shadows. First, while Naoe is in stealth, there is always a white outline around her character. I can't stand it. I understand why it's there but it would be great if there was an option to disable that. I don't need a white outline around my character to know that I'm in stealth. Maybe new players do. Please let me turn that off. It reminds me of Assassin's Creed Unity where every character had a red or white outline around them. It is so distracting and ruins any type of immersion.
When climbing ladders, or any kind of minor climbs, the AI is not very good at deciding whether or not I should climb a wall right next to the ladder or climb the ladder itself. This is a repeated issue throughout the series. There are also times I should be able to just drop off of a very short ledge without using the Descend button but the AI will force me to continue running along the wall. It would be nice if these elements were polished up more.
Requiring the katana to perform stealth kills through doors is kind of stupid. Even with Yasuke, it would have been cool to perform brutal stealth openers by smashing through a door to kill enemies with that type of finisher. It is cool that you can smash through those thin doors with normal attacks, it just would have been cooler to be able to perform stealth kills through the door with any weapon equipped.
Some environments are copy/paste, such as the towers and fort areas. It would be nicer if this was less noticeable. I can understand pasting assets throughout the world, but the actual layout design should be different. Of course this type of thing isn't as noticeable until you've done five or more fort clears. I will say this, no game I've played has ever come as close to the insane and despicable amount of copy/paste that Diablo IV put out.
Some of the assassination targets for the main story will be so far across the map from where you are. I do like the concept in relation to travelling the world to get to these enemies and characters. However, what it ends up doing is dragging the story out more and players end up getting way more sidetracked because of it.
While I really enjoy the differences between Yasuke and Naoe such as walking speed and how they interact with the environment, there are times when clearing out a castle where you can't fully complete it if you're on the wrong character. You actually have to leave the entire fortress to get out of hostile territory in order to change characters to go back in and finish that one little thing you couldn't do on the wrong character. That's kind of crappy. I like that they have their own special things, those rare times when you're forced to leave and switch characters suck, though.
I am sure there are other little things that I've left out. I've covered most of the things that are so common that I wrote notes down for them. Most of the other issues I may have encountered or would complain about are so small that I don't feel the need to get into them or just don't even remember because they're not as common.
Thanks for reading. I do plan to write another article on my thoughts on how exactly to "fix" some of these issues I have experienced in the newer games since Origins, including the long distance between assassination targets that I spoke of above, as well as some basic feature requests. I hope you'll be back to check that out as well. Game on.
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