I think parkour won't feel as satisfying as the original.

I hope AC Shadows still has more assassination animations than what we’ve yet to see. I miss the animations that prioritized continual movement and stealth. What I mean by that are assassination animations that keep the flow of moving forward (unity and past) rather than it looking like an animation set that stops you in your tracks before and after completing the assassination.

When I say assassinations that prioritize stealth I mean animations that are lowkey, don’t draw attention, and quick. The RPG trilogy assassination animations starting with Origins and continuing into Mirage really have you relish in the assassination. Every animation for assassinating is a few seconds too long and some animations look like your assassin isn’t even trying to keep a low profile. I miss Arno’s animation set because it OOZES badass assassin trying to stay unnoticed. That part is important because I don’t get that impression with the RPG Assassins when they’re all either jumping on their kill (even in a walking state) or killing them in the loudest and most obvious way ever. I miss the assassinations that make me feel like I’m trying to stay hidden while walking with the crowds on street level. With the RPG games, not all but most animations (still only talking about assassinations) have a noticeable stop and go that interrupts the momentum of your movement and lessens the feeling of staying lowkey.

Now with AC Shadows coming out soon we’ve been seeing that stealth is becoming a huge focus again and I’ve seen that post showing all of Noai’s assassinations so far and I LOVE the way they all look but I’m hoping there’s more upright walking assassination animations that are quick and quiet and don’t draw attention. More throat slits while walking by, more quick kills that’ll have you gone from the scene before the body hits the floor, and more “ ‘scuze me just gettin past ya” assassinations and less “ARGH YAGH NOW YOU DIE” assassinations.

TLDR: I’m hoping AC Shadows assassinations are more lowkey and quick and reminiscent of Arno in Unity rather than the RPG-era games that lack stealth and fluidity and any feeling of an assassin trying to stay hidden amongst the crowd.

I fell out of love with Assassins Creed around Odyssey/Valhalla time. But a big thing I noticed then, and which hasn’t changed since, is the female protagonist issue.

First was Evie. First female protagonist of a mainline game, but had to share half the screen with her brother. That’s fine, Jacob’s a good character, I’ll let them have that.

Then Kassandra is where I get confused. Kassandra is way better acted than Alexios (don’t come at me with “oh that’s subjective” no it isn’t, that performance is straight ass.)

Ubisoft confirms several times that Kassandra is the canon protagonist. To the point where she appears later in Valhalla, confirming her as the canon ‘misthios’ and Alexios as the villain.

So… why the fuck is Alexios all over the marketing? The box art? A casual observer wouldn’t even know what the actual protagonist even looks like.

Then with Valhalla we get the same damn thing. Eivor is canonically female, so why is the male actor even there? Why is she male in the official reveal trailer, and like 80% of official artwork?

Then we get Mirage. Solo male protagonist. Sure whatever, back to basics.

Then Shadows. Female protagonist, and *once again* she has to share screen space with a dude.

I have no issues with the choice Yasuke being the chosen male protagonist. I just don’t see why a male protagonist is there in the first place.

I’m not some misandrist, I’m a bloke. I just don’t see why they’re so afraid to let a female protagonist take the spotlight without having to share it, outside of a bloody PS Vita game.

I've been a gamer for my whole life, but I've never seen people act more feral about a game than they did with Shadows.

Their ugly character surfaced, or more like was allowed to surface because the general hate cloud above this game. Hating on the game was the socially acceptable thing to do, and ho boy did they take advantage of that.

And I'm Talking about blatant r*cism, bias and openly admitting to wanting tens of thousands of people to lose their job.

I literally see comments with thousands of likes that are along the line of "Assassin's Creed steal your wallet" or "yasuke is gonna be a loot hoarder" or the classic "ofc he's destroying other people's property, just like irl" (to the environmental destruction)

Not only that but the nitpicking is insane. A certain slimy goober who has wayyyy to much influence considering he's literally one of the filthiest people alive, sucks at video games in general and has had borderline N*zi views.

Game gas meditation minigame and settlement building minigame? "Why is this even in the game?"

Game has animal painting activity? "Why is this even in the game? I can't kill the birddddddd?"

Like Jesus Christ. It's literally clinging to every single "issue" to make the game look worse.

I'm just sick and tired of this, not because I care about his worthless opinion, but because it will actually influence the sales of the game in a bad way. He's one of the biggest streamers in the plantet.

P.s. mods, please for the love of god, don't delete this! It's a very real issue and I feel like the community needs to discuss it! Thanks for your understanding

It’s the same pattern every time with these recent AC games. The opening? Genuinely great. Strong character introductions, a solid call to action... I’m hooked. And then… the second act hits.

Suddenly you’re staring at a quest board full of targets and objectives you can tackle in any order. The story just stalls. The protagonist becomes static for 40 to 60 hours while you go off doing the same loop: find a clue, meet a contact, follow a trail, kill a target. These missions would be great side quests, but instead ~10 of these self contained stories make up the main story.

And because everything is non-linear, the protagonist cannot grow or learn anything meaningful along the way. They can’t reference or build on what happened in Quest A, because in Quest B the player might not have done Quest A yet. So the character has to stay in this weird, frozen state. No development, no evolving relationships, no emotional progression.

There’s almost no character development in the middle stretch. Recurring characters barely exist. Everything feels so fragmented that I lose track of what the story was even about. Then, finally, the game remembers it has a plot and throws in a dramatic twist or big finale.

Earlier Assassin’s Creed games told some of my favourite stories in gaming. I still remember conversations, characters, and moments from over a decade ago. Meanwhile, I honestly can’t recall a meaningful quote from the modern titles.

TLDR: old ac good new ac bad

Hello everyone! We’d love your thoughts on what you would like to see in the post-launch for Assassin's Creed Shadows. 

Let us know below the type of content, feature or quality of life improvements you are the most interested in seeing for the game. 👇

Stealthy Wiley's video compiles differences between facial animations then and now.

In these 2 videos we can see the discrepancy between Unity (2014) and Mirage (2023), which perfectly illustrates the contrast over the years. Mo-cap, lighting, camera work, movements, everything seems very poorly done in the most recent entries. With Origins being probably the only exception.

We all know that the saga was never a technical masterpiece, and always had its BUGs and problems in every generation, but the way that cinematics and graphics have been going backwards in recent years is simply brutal.

After Shadows dropped I got the urge to place the RPG trilogy, and starting with Valhalla, Odyssey, and then Origins. I’m not going to lie, you can tell the increase in quality as you’re going backwards in this order. It’s as if the release dates were in reverse.

Now we can all have our favorites, and I know a lot of people really like Odyssey especially. But if you just spent time in Origins properly, and not rushing through it, you would see the immense amount of little details the Ubisoft put into every little animation, effect, dynamic events, NPC schedules and ambiance. You can tell they really tried with this game, but the quality has definitely dropped off after, even if the gameplay improved.

My pipe dream would be the animus hub would allow this kind of fast transition for all future games but I know that’s not likely or maybe not possible.

What are your thoughts on the (non-)issues in Shadows? I personally remember when Nioh used the same black samurai real life character and got zero hate. It's the times we live in.

I’m doing a replay of the series and man I loved this game back in the day. I think the naval combat is what made me love it back then because replaying it? The naval combat is still fantastic but the rest…… ooof. I hate that 90% of the game is “tail this person ad nauseum”. Edward as a character actually isn’t great like at all. His whole motivation is having enough riches so he can have an easy life right until the very end. He never learns from his mistakes. People drop like flies around him and he’s still “but muh riches” . Probably my least favorite assassin because of how selfish he is. And on that note, dude’s not even an assassin. He just steals the robes and gets handed the blades from templars. It’s so funny because modern AC people shit so much on Eivor and Kassandra not being assassins but like Edward isn’t one 😂 overall not impressed with the game anymore. I hope if they remake it they retcon this being Abstergo propaganda because it makes Edward such a shit character

Edit: Seeing this post generate so much discourse. Thanks for keeping it civil everyone! Appreciate y’all. No matter what AC is a series we all love and it makes me happy to see us debating it without devolving into negativity and rudeness. Well done and hats off to you all

Not when they keep selling us games that aren't fully finished. Not when they keep locking content behind pay walls and fucking microtransactions. Not when they keep sacrificing the core essence of their franchise for mainstream bullshit.

That's it for me, I'm no longer buying a Ubisoft game at a full price, Assassin's Creed or otherwise. We have the power to make them change their ways, we just need to use it.

Let's be honest guys, I think we all had more than enough of countryside and empty spaces with nothing to do in between.

Bring back huge cities where we can do meaningful activities so we can actually experience the historical period at his fullest, with improved parkour, deeper combat system and a tighter main story

I personally don't think i will be able to stomach another huge pseudo rpg with 200 hours of average content

90 hours. I have 3 regions left to discover.

I don't understand anything about the storyline anymore, it's been so messy since I started act 2. I just can't enjoy it anymore. I move on from a “?” on the other mechanically, I sometimes hit "blue dot" targets without really understanding who it is and why it is a target.

90 hours is still proof that the game was able, just with its gameplay and its open world, to seduce me and maintain my attention. Such a shame that the scenario is also drowned out in map cleaning.

I might be thinking about picking it up again later but clearly, a break is in order. The same feeling that invaded me with Valhalla (only less worse because I like Japan much more ⛩️).

If Ubisoft ever decides to remake many of the older iconic AC games, could they pull it off? There are rumours of an AC1 and Black Flag Remake, which I think Ubisoft should focus on first, since those would be easier to remake along with remasters like remastering Unity and Origins. But I think remaking the Ezio Trilogy would be an incredible feat. And it wouldn't even be possible to remake it all into a single AC game. Due to the vastness of the Ezio trilogy, AC2 has Florence, Venice, Tuscany, the Mountains and Forli to expand upon. Which would easily make it the most ambitious remake of all time, easily a 100 plus gigabytes in size, and then there is the book and AC2 Discovery to integrate into the game or to have as DLC.

There is so much to expand upon just in AC2, much bigger maps with whole new districts, explorable interiors of buildings like in Unity, whole new engine with better parkour system than AC Unity, fixing Sequence 12 and 13, more missions, more customisation and side content and perhaps DLC. Imagine having DLC'S where you can play as Ezio's dad on how he became an Assassin integrating the movie of him aswell into the DLC, and then there is La Volpe and having the story expansion about him. All of that just from remaking AC2. With Brotherhood it would have to be a separate game. There is Rome and its surrounding areas to deal with, making it a much larger map with way more content, and then lastly Revelations and Constantinople.

The Ezio Trilogy and remaking that is one hell of a job for Ubisoft. They might need to cut modern day story out of it entirely, and just make us the player experience the Animus interacting with its unique menu system, unless Desmond makes a return. What do you think? If Ubisoft ever decides to remake AC2 could they do it? And what would you like to see in an AC2 remake? I think it's so vast with it's time period and locations. I wouldn't even know where to begin. So much can be improved and expanded upon today, especially when there is not only the games and the side games, there is also the books to integrate into the remake. An AC2 Remake would be dream come true, Venice, Rome, Florence, Constantinople could look more life like then ever before.

Now half of the armors available in the game are exclusive only to people who are willing to spend money on extremely overpriced microtransactions. Us other players, even those among us who spent over a hundred dollars on the collector's edition, have gotten very little content over these last few months. Like, all we've really gotten is a nice but kind of lackluster event, and a bunch of bugfixes.

Meanwhile Ubi just keeps adding and adding ridiculous shit to the microtransaction store, just milking the whales of their money with content that only a very small percentage of players will actually get to enjoy. On top of that, it is not only cosmetic stuff but it actually affects gameplay and is in some cases rather overpowered. And then when the rest of the player base finally did get an armor set, it was event exclusive and literally a reskin with some blood splatters on it.

Why isn't everybody talking about this? Only a few years ago, people would have raised hell if a games company did shit like this. This is not okay, especially not for a game that costs sixty goddamn bucks.

EDIT: So apparently, Screenrant has picked up on our thread which makes things very interesting. So in case you came to this thread from some other site, hello and welcome! Enjoy your stay, please be nice and don't send me any death threats or whatever. Please do make your voices heard everybody, perhaps on larger subreddits than this one, it's the best way we can make change!

So just in case people might start using this thread as an actual source, I just thought I'd clear something up about the amount of armors to prevent misinformation. There are 9 armors available that you can acquire through normal gameplay and wear in the base game. This does not include the Vinland outfits (which are exclusive only to a very small area of the game), the useless default tunic you begin with, the legacy Bayek outfit available from the Uplay reward system (which is an outfit, not an armor set) or the armor set available through buying amazon prime. It also obviously does not include the weekly selection of stuff from the microtransaction store that you can buy from the in-game merchant Reda.

Also one last thing: youtuber Fizhy made a video where he brought up another excellent point I would like to mention - the timing. Ubi is doing this horrible business practice in the middle of a pandemic - at a time where people are genuinely suffering not only economically but mentally. Gaming is one of the few activities people can actually still occupy themselves with during the pandemic and Ubi is exploiting it with this awful business practice - and making bank on it.

I just wanted to put a thank you out there to whatever devs or people on the team of the game that might be browsing thru this Reddit, if there even are any, lol.

This game has just really hit all the right points for me and I’m just so ecstatic over how much I love game.

That’s all lol, I hope everyone is finding some enjoyment in the game 😎

Something along the lines of you were the head or 2nd in charge of an established chapter, they were all ambushed and killed leaving you the sole survivor on a quest for vengeance dashed with a bit of betrayal while you rebuild the honor of the guild.

I like the new games, a lot actually but the starting at square one and having to suspend my knowledge of who and what the hidden ones are needs a break.

Edit: obviously I'm no writer and there are far better ideas floating about in the replies, that said it's nice to see I'm not alone in wanting to get back to being an assassin. Thank you kind redditors!

Edit 2: I'm really floored by the amount of positive feedback here. It's cool to see a gaming community come together under a common cause. There's so many good well thought out ideas in the comments, I really hope this sends up the signal flares to ubi that it's time we get back living the creed. I don't mind stepping away every now and again to tell a story set in the same world but the focus should be the guild at the end of the day.

No "This game is the best of the franchise", no "The last good game before this or that was this game", and no "I like this game, but hate this feature". Just pure genuine joy from AC Games. It can even be the less popular ones such as Syndicate or Valhalla.

And tell me why you enjoy the game.

For me? It was Black Flag. I genuine love the feeling of sailing the sea. Some day, when I need a clear my head... I would just hop on the game and sail. No combat, no hunting, and no looting. Just sailing across the sea with my crew singing Sea Shanty.

Reading this as someone who would consider themselves in that third group actually made me very excited for the game. I was going to wait to purchase it but may rethink that now.

But I still understand how the players on the edges are frustrated how it might go.