Ubisoft has let the cat out of the bag with an extensive Fall Roadmap for Assassin’s Creed Shadows that supercharges the game with a plethora of new features like Advanced Parkour, Corrupted Castles, and narrative content. The announcement made through the official Assassin’s Creed Twitter account has certainly piqued the community’s interest and the community is now revealing a very specific and yet wild mix of demands along with the hype.
So, what comes with the new roadmap? The upshot of the whole thing is the Advanced Parkour system. This will be the update that entirely revolutionizes the movement across the map of feudal Japan. The developers have so far claimed that the new world will be more controlled and fluid than ever before and this is exactly what the players have been asking for since the series moved to more RPG-style open worlds. But one of the users, BlkNtvTerraFFVI, made the crucial point: “Very happy the ‘advanced parkour’ is OPTIONAL bc I really don’t want to deal with accidental side ejects to nowhere.” This is a smart move from Ubisoft; they are giving the players the choice of having a more sophisticated movement system or not and they are not enforcing it on everybody.
Next, we have the Corrupted Castles entering the stage. This is an area that might be related to a novel kind of activity or dungeon which will make the endgame more exciting by injecting some diversity. BlkNtvTerraFFVI was somewhat flattering in this regard as he remarked it “looks fun”, which indeed is a good sign. However, there are still people that are doubtful. Aiden, or NJWebCrawler, remarked, “Advanced Parkour is cool and all, but it means literally nothing when the map isn’t designed for Parkour like Mirage / older AC games were. What are you guys going to do to solve that issue?” This is the main question to be addressed, right? You may add as many parkour moves as you want, but if the area is mostly open fields with very few buildings then what is the point? It is a core tension in modern Assassin’s Creed design.
The community’s response is a very interesting spectrum as usual. There are on one hand people like MagGamerInc who are extremely excited and even said about a developer “looking like a body builder while being a bit goofy and still being a true gamer.” And Tanner just said the advanced parkour “really intrigues me.” On the other hand, there are players who have been for years crying out for features that have been community requests for years. The term “enemy scaling turn off option” was brought up several times in the comments with users like Jamie Faingnaert and Recker specifically asking for it. This option which was in fact in Origins and Valhalla, let players turn off leveling scaling, which means that the enemies would not necessarily match your power level. Its nonexistence in subsequent games has been a sore point for some of the players.
And then… the classic Assassin’s Creed debate resurfaced once again. Would it be an AC announcement without it? Mike (mksystem74) bluntly said, “We want the classic AC gameplay back.” Others agree and nostalgically look back to the more linear, dense cityscapes of the earlier titles. Jamie Faingnaert’s response was pretty straight to the point: “Then play classic AC. Simple.” This interaction perfectly illustrates the divisive nature of the Assassin’s Creed fanbase in 2024. One group can never have enough of the gigantic RPG direction, while the other group yearns for the more focused, assassination-centered gameplay that was a decade ago.
Other questions that were random but still very intriguing popped up in the thread. Kade asked about the prospect of cross-platform saves between PS5 and the still-unannounced Switch 2, which is a very common question. Jake Ryan wanted to know if the game is “ever coming to iPad???” And Irving Vasquez took the opportunity to make a demand that we have already heard so many times: “What everybody wants is a full-on remake of Assassins Creed Black Flag.” Do we, though? I mean, I wouldn’t say no… but still.
A few questions were raised about the storyline, too. Alessandro Canavese put forward a series of penetrating questions about the series’ going back to the storyline “which is more consistent with the saga” that would be about the Assassin vs. Templar wars and the offering of “substantial content for the present,” which has been neglected since the end of Layla’s storyline. This indicates that there is a part of the audience that still believes that the modern-day story and the fundamental philosophical conflict is what makes Assassin’s Creed, well, Assassin’s Creed.
So, what is the verdict? Ubisoft is definitely considering the players’ thoughts and opinions, at least on certain issues. The advanced parkour being an optional feature was a direct response to those players who look for greater complexity but do not want to be treated as outcasts by other players. The developers are relying on the new content drops and activities such as Corrupted Castles to keep the game engaging for months. However, the roadmap also exhibits the difficulty developers face in trying to cut the cake three ways by the competing interests of a huge, heterogeneous player base that has very different expectations from an Assassin’s Creed game. It is absolutely impossible to please everyone. The Fall Roadmap for Assassin’s Creed Shadows is loaded with content that certainly will delight a lot of players, especially those who have already embraced the RPG era. But what about the old-school aficionados? Their quest for the entire truth of the return of form continues. At the very least, the physical movement is being elevated and who knows, perhaps those corrupted castles will turn out to be a fun experience. For now, all we can do is wait and see how it all plays out this fall.
