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Assassin's Creed Shadows

polonyc2 said:
Eric Baptizat, the lead game designer on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and director of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, has returned to Ubisoft after several years away to become game director of the Assassin's Creed brand...

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/assas...oft-to-be-game-director-for-the-entire-brand/
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The guy was the game director for the disappointing Dead Space remake. I have low expectations. Of course there may have been external factors in why made some poor choices.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eric...ic-baptizat-activity-7103052167741067265-jLBF


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Looking at the post-release schedules for Odyssey and Valhalla it seems like Ubi properly abadoned this game?
At this point in release both those games had like a dozen DLC's. Valhalla basically doubled the content in 2 years after release with all its DLC's.

Shadows has been out a year and a half, and all we got was a few QoL patches and the Claws thing. So much for being a smash hit, blockbuster, best seller, etc. I thought Japan was supposed to save this franchise. I was planning on coming back to this game at some point to do a complete playthrough but Ubisoft hasn't done anything.
 
It's a fun game. I got my money out of it. I haven't gotten back to the claw dlc yet but might eventually.
 
When I played through the game (earlier this year), I felt like there was already too much content. Every time I'd do anything, 5 more bad guys would pop up as a brand new cabal. As you work through those 5, they somehow cross-populate with a dozen more. By the time someone clears them all, they've killed half of Japan. That might be amusing in one of the older games, but in Shadows there are only 2 mission types and a bunch of enemies that all fight the same way, so it's a big 'ol pile of no thanks. For whatever reason, nothing they added ever deviated at all, so it's probably a game limitation.
 
Last year they announced there would only be a single story DLC and they cancelled plans for a 2nd. That tells you all you need to know about success. Last I could find it had "5 million players", with a portion of those likely rentals and not full priced or even 50% priced sales. Valhalla did a bit too much DLC, if you're doing multiple 10+ hour long DLCs might be best to make them into standalone games at some point.

Domingo said:
When I played through the game (earlier this year), I felt like there was already too much content. Every time I'd do anything, 5 more bad guys would pop up as a brand new cabal. As you work through those 5, they somehow cross-populate with a dozen more. By the time someone clears them all, they've killed half of Japan. That might be amusing in one of the older games, but in Shadows there are only 2 mission types and a bunch of enemies that all fight the same way, so it's a big 'ol pile of no thanks. For whatever reason, nothing they added ever deviated at all, so it's probably a game limitation.
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Ubisoft is the poster child for bloated open world design. A lot of half assed side quests and activities that generally don't feel like a natural part of the world.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Looking at the post-release schedules for Odyssey and Valhalla it seems like Ubi properly abadoned this game?
At this point in release both those games had like a dozen DLC's. Valhalla basically doubled the content in 2 years after release with all its DLC's.

Shadows has been out a year and a half, and all we got was a few QoL patches and the Claws thing. So much for being a smash hit, blockbuster, best seller, etc. I thought Japan was supposed to save this franchise. I was planning on coming back to this game at some point to do a complete playthrough but Ubisoft hasn't done anything.
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Its obvious they realized how big a foul up they made with this one but, rather than attempt to improve it, they seemingly cut their losses and just went "HEY EVERYONE LIKES BLACK FLAG RIGHT?! BLACK FLAG AGAIN BUT WITHOUT ANYTHING COMPLEX AND CONTINUOUS STORY RELATED". Honestly its disappointing as they could have at least attempted to show "Okay yeah..we get it, we made some big mistakes. We let the wrong people make changes/lead this one. We're trying to show we're listening with the patches, post launch content , and expansions" , but that doesn't seem to be the case. They even cut the collab event they did with Attack On Titan after a certain point (which is annoying, considering how the AC Origins collab with Final Fantasy XV is still there!), though frankly anything AoT/SnK connected to this game is like adding two sore spots together so..maybe that's for the best, but stil ) conceptually it sucks they had to remove collab content when it the past AC games typically kept it forever.

There were many problems with AC Shadows but its disappointed that especially being "The Japan Game (tm)" they didn't really invest time and energy into at least trying to fix them. From the very beginning, for instance, the issue of Yasuke's superfluousness when it came to gameplay mechanics.Naoe feels like an AC protagonist and has many different ways to interact with both enemies and the environment. The grappling hook works and feels ninja-like, allowing her to get anywhere in the game. Her combat requires more agility and doesn't permit her to take much damage, but she's still quite powerful. Yasuke on the other end is a massive lumbering tank, and viable for combat, but that's ALL he can do. Most egregiously, he cannot get to certain areas - like the tops of various points of interest or other things that Naoe can use her grappling hook to swing/climb up . It would be fine if his method of traversal was different; I personally thought he may have some sort of way to break through locked doors or walls that Naoe could not so, instead of grappling up to the top of the pagoda, he runs up the stairwell inside, bashes through the locked door, shoots down the ladder to the hatch,and emerges on the same roof. That would have been fine, highlighting their different skillsets but ultimately letting them both go whereever was needed. Unfortunately, last I checked it was NOT this way. Instead, many areas are still inaccessible and Yasuke disappointingly mutters some sort of "I bet Naoe could get up there no problem"; this is twice as frustrating if this happens in an area like a fort or castle where you cannot switch characters until you get out of the danger zone, and by doing so may very well respawn all the enemies inside! This essentially puts an end to the "Play as who you want, when you want" marketing they claimed when launching the title. When I saw in an update they gave Yasuke the option of a quiet, non-lethal takedown in addition to his "terror assassination", I thought maybe they were beginning to see and fix some of these issues and would soon redesign areas or give him an ability to reach any location in his own method, but this was not to be sadly.

There are plenty of other potential issues (including a 'canon mode' of decisions to be made, but still limiting some of the decisions , including romances, even if you played without the canon mode being turned on etc) , to say nothing of elements that I admit are preference based (I am not a fan of going back to the AC Odyssey style looter-shooter gear massive amounts of mostly useless RNG gear dropped meant to be turned into currency and would have preferred a Valhalla style system of a reasonable amount of gearsets and resources to upgrade them both stat and visually etc), but the lack of continued support for the game was a real left down. Some may say "Well, it sucked anyway why should they make more content that sucks" but the core of the title could have been better if given the amount of effort that was put into previous titles at very least like Odyssey and Valhalla. One of Ubi's main benefits for all their faults is that they still are one of the few devs that make real expansions for their first party titles like AC. Ever since AC Origins, at very least youi typically got one "historical" DLC, and one "mythological" DLC expansion. Some got way more than that and to their benefit. AC Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade and Fate of Atlantis both had multiple parts (that would have been considered multiple DLCs/expansions in their own right, particularly the Fate of Atlantis where Elysium, Hades, and Atlantis campaigns were all on separate maps independently etc) that added to the lore and even followed up both the historical and present day storylines beyond the end of the base game, as well as other patches and free DLCs that would setup the crossover with Valhalla and one that closed the Eagle Bearer's historical storyline in Greece. Valhalla had SO much content that some thought it may have been too much but the vast majority of it, including various expansions and a roguelike mode, were solid for those who enjoyed the game and wnated more; though I would have liked to see one more expansion for Havi's side of things.

Shadows on the other hand, only gets the Claws of Awaji (which I am told provides a much better and more complete ending to the mainline story campaign for Naoe, so its better to finish it after doing so) and a handful of free patch updates. Lacking the "mythological " expansion, especially given Japanese mythology through FirstCiv lens could have been really interesting, is massivly disappointing as if it was done well I think people would have looked more kindly on the game overlal. In addition, as controversial as it may have been, had one of the expansions introduced a new playable protagonist, perhaps based on the one that was originally intended to be the hero named Yamanuchi Taka, would have been a nice option from both story and mechanics standpoints as well as an admission that they understood some of the disappointment with how the Yasuke situation was handled . While they did apparently add a few free DLC elements that added to the story and are designed to be played at the end (similar presumably to what they did with Odyssey and Valhalla?) I think had they at least committed to one or two more expansions (Yasuke getting a globetrotting adventure on a couple of maps taking him to the Ryukyuan kingdoms and eventually ending up in Goa, India which is where the Portuguese Jesuits ran a colonial outpost; this was also one of the real world references to where Yasuke could be sent after the Honno-ji incident. Yamanuchi Taka and Naoe could get the "mythological" expansion diving deep into First Civ influenced Japanese mythos that could have tons of potential) it would have been worth a shot and showed they were on a new trajectory, trying to improve the issues that came with the base game and putting them on better footing for the next titles.

Its really too bad that things were so poorly handled, especially when intransigence meant that it seems a percentage of development refused to listen to any negative criticism and brushed it all off as culture war babble, despite many issues (notably the lack of traversal with Yasuke I discussed, which was mentioned even from the demos before the game's first delay, so a known issue!) being legitimate concerns. The hypocrisy and lack of long term support only undermined the game further which is a pity as I think there was real room for improvement had they put forth the effort properly at least equal to previous AC titles.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Looking at the post-release schedules for Odyssey and Valhalla it seems like Ubi properly abadoned this game?
At this point in release both those games had like a dozen DLC's. Valhalla basically doubled the content in 2 years after release with all its DLC's.

Shadows has been out a year and a half, and all we got was a few QoL patches and the Claws thing. So much for being a smash hit, blockbuster, best seller, etc. I thought Japan was supposed to save this franchise. I was planning on coming back to this game at some point to do a complete playthrough but Ubisoft hasn't done anything.
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I'm not sure why this surprises anyone. Shadows, was not profitable. Whenever studios talk about engagement and not sales, it's a flop. When a game has long development cycles and comes from a AAA studio, it cost a lot of money to make. Meaning, it needed to sell a lot of copies to make it profitable. Now, to be clear, this thing may become profitable eventually, as it may perform well on sales and as part of the back catalog. Some games do take a long time to make their money back. That being said, Ubisoft has been in dire financial trouble for quite some time and needed a win here. They didn't get it. Making its money back in five years isn't how you run a business.

The thing about DLC's and expansions are that the player base who bought the game originally are pretty much your customer base. If a game didn't sell a lot of copies, it's not really worth further development. That's just more putting good money after bad. And, this game would have printed money if it had been done without all the stupid and controversial narrative and design choices. It would have done well had they done it more like its previous games. They also made a lot of missteps with the marketing.

Basically Ubisoft screwed the pooch about as bad as it could have with this game.
 
does it really matter in the end?...disappointing sales or blockbuster sales it won't stop Ubisoft from making another AC game
 
Dan_D said:
I'm not sure why this surprises anyone. Shadows, was not profitable. Whenever studios talk about engagement and not sales, it's a flop. When a game has long development cycles and comes from a AAA studio, it cost a lot of money to make. Meaning, it needed to sell a lot of copies to make it profitable. Now, to be clear, this thing may become profitable eventually, as it may perform well on sales and as part of the back catalog. Some games do take a long time to make their money back. That being said, Ubisoft has been in dire financial trouble for quite some time and needed a win here. They didn't get it. Making its money back in five years isn't how you run a business.

The thing about DLC's and expansions are that the player base who bought the game originally are pretty much your customer base. If a game didn't sell a lot of copies, it's not really worth further development. That's just more putting good money after bad. And, this game would have printed money if it had been done without all the stupid and controversial narrative and design choices. It would have done well had they done it more like its previous games. They also made a lot of missteps with the marketing.

Basically Ubisoft screwed the pooch about as bad as it could have with this game.
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When they cancelled the season pass months before release I guess it should've been obvious.
They saw the writing on the wall in preorders.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
When they cancelled the season pass months before release I guess it should've been obvious.
They saw the writing on the wall in preorders.
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The pre-orders were atrocious. There was also tons of backlash due to the advertising campaign. From people bitching about being able to destroy things in the temples, to being upset on behalf of Japan, to the Tori gate controversy and even the Boba Tea tie ins. To be fair, I think people overreacted to some of this stuff, but the Boba Tea tie-in and tori gate statues weren't a good look.
 
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