Introduction
Ubisoft needs a win. 2024 was not a good year for them financially. It was the year that many of their less-than-popular design practices finally came home to roost. It was the year that everyone finally decided to collectively turn on the company. And honestly, justifiably so.
Fans’ Complaints Finally Manifested
Fans have been complaining about the state of Ubisoft’s formula for years. But for whatever reason, we are now at the point where those complaints have finally manifested into mainstream disinterest. Ubisoft games just aren’t selling like they used to, which is a big problem for a company as big as Ubisoft, as they need to sell big numbers to keep their international chain of developers working at max capacity.
Underperforming Titles
And those sales did not happen in 2024. It was one financial disappointment after another. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and Star Wars Outlaws all underperformed according to Ubisoft. And it’s not necessarily that those are bad games. The Avatar game was surprisingly good.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown as well. It was kind of unfair to expect what they expected there, but it’s a great game. The less said about Skull and Bones and Star Wars Outlaws, the better right now. The situation has been so bad that they’re actually considering a buyout or selling the entire studio to whoever is willing to pay.
Failed Deal with Tencent
A recent deal with Tencent fell through because the founders wanted to keep control of the company. And when you’re owned by somebody, that’s not how it works. So honestly, yes, you can say there were some big problems with some of the games. Exclude Skull and Bones and all the games I mentioned are decent games.
Exclude Star Wars Outlaws and, well, they’re actually very good games. Some of the best the studio has put out in years. They’re finally starting to evolve their formula. But it’s kind of too little too late. So with all that said, there is a pretty big question mark on top of the new game about the oath that murderers take.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Make or Break
Hi folks, it’s Khizar Ikram, and today on Curious Craze we’re gonna talk about how much is riding on Assassin’s Creed Shadows. A lot. I mean, this game needs to be a success. Assassin’s Creed is their premier franchise. And while Valhalla may have been responsible for a lot of fans giving up on Ubisoft in the first place, it was, without a doubt, a massive hit.
It sold over 20 million copies and earned over a billion dollars in revenue. That game’s success has been a double-edged sword. It made a lot of money, but for, I guess, lack of a better way of putting it, also just bludgeons you with endless content. Using the word very deliberately here to convey what people think of the word content.
I can see why for a lot of people enough was enough. It was a game where people were finally getting fed up with the Ubisoft formula, full-blown. The funny thing is, I don’t think Valhalla is bad at all. I think it’s a good game. It’s just really long, really bloated, and ultimately pretty formulaic.
Endurance Test
It wears out its welcome, I guess, is the way to put it. To really enjoy Valhalla, you have to play it until you’re sick of it and then put it down for like a week, and then play it until you’re sick of it, and then put it down for like a week. And you’re gonna do that at least twice. You’re gonna put it down for a week at least twice while playing it to really enjoy the game, which is not good.
The game was an endurance test. It did not do enough to advance Assassin’s Creed as a series. Shadows, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the new one, is supposed to be that evolution. The game where Ubisoft finally innovates their stale gameplay systems and updates all the tired cliches. I don’t know if it’s actually going to or not, but from all the previews going around and all the pre-release information, it does seem like Ubisoft really wants us to think of this game as a new beginning for the series.
Desperation to Succeed
It’s not just that Assassin’s Creed Shadows desperately wants us back, either. It needs us back. The future of the entire company is riding on this game. It has to make a splash, or else. And there’s a certain desperation around the release of this game that you usually do not see from Ubisoft. They pushed it back to March 20th in order to release the game with no competition.
They’re offering DLC with pre-orders. They’re finally releasing day one on Steam again. The things the old Ubisoft would never do. They knew they had your money, where they were 100% confident in their success. So they released their games whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted. Expensive DLC passes be damned.
Learning the Lesson
In this new punished Ubisoft era, they’re actually doing things people like. And while it’s clearly all from a place of desperation, I mean, it’s nice to see somebody learning the lesson. There’s 100 different things I could point to right now of people who just refuse to learn the lesson. Just do what people want you to do and it’ll work.
So I mean, to some extent, we do have to look at this as an aberrant situation. Desperation or not, I don’t really care why. They’re doing what we want them to do, at least. So let’s at least hear them out. One thing they’re trying to do is show they’re pretty serious about PC support. On top of just straight-up releasing the game on Steam day one, they recently put out a trailer specifically to show off all the PC support features, including the stuff you’d expect, like access to all the AI upscaling tools and ray tracing features.
But they also mentioned stuff like built-in benchmarking tools and a wide range of support for low and medium-end systems, meaning optimization, perhaps. I don’t know, we’ll see. But another highly requested feature that’s finally in Shadows is an immersive mode, where you can set it so that characters actually speak their native language.
Immersive Mode
It’s just an option. Default’s still English or whatever your local language is. But it’s a welcome feature. I’ll probably play it in English, if I’m completely honest, at least the first time. Assuming there’s a second time, I’ll probably go through with immersive mode.
But for AC fans, Shadow sounds, on paper, like the game we’ve all been waiting for. A game set in Japan with more complex stealth systems and more visceral combat. It promises an immersive open world with things like changing seasons and a focus on actual investigation, where you don’t just find your target simply by following a series of linear quests, but actually searching the world and discovering things naturally.
Execution is Key
On paper, it sounds like the dream Assassin’s Creed game. Right? But what matters is the implementation. We’ve seen Ghost of Tsushima already, for one. In a lot of ways, I am describing Ghost of Tsushima. On that same hand, it’s also pretty hard not to be cynical about a new game from Ubisoft, which is one of the most cynical game developers out there.
But from everything I have seen, this new game does look like a genuine step up for the series, perhaps even a big one. But whether it’s big enough is yet to be seen. A lot of what they’ve shown so far is pretty exciting. Almost all the changes to stealth sound like huge improvements: finally being able to hide in darkness, noise being a concern with things like creaky floors, and being able to crawl and go prone.
Long-requested Changes
It’s all very intriguing, and these are long-requested changes. You can put out lights like in Splinter Cell, or even just stuff that existed on PlayStation and Nintendo 64. I don’t know why, for whatever reason, you couldn’t put lights out. I don’t understand that. I like that you’re gonna be able to do it here, though.
There are servant NPCs. They’ll run and call guards if they see you. It all sounds a lot more complex, and even, like I kind of mentioned, old school. Like, there’s stuff here that reminds me of, like, PlayStation 1, N64 to PlayStation 2 and GameCube-era stuff. I like that. Combat looks more intense here too.
They’re clearly taking inspiration from, and I mentioned this already, the more fast and brutal fights of Ghost of Tsushima. I do kind of think they realized they were out Assassins Creeded by that game. But they aren’t just trying to, you know, copy that. They’re also giving us a much wider array of weapons to play with, which potentially I think makes that fast and brutal combat a lot cooler sounding.
Split Protagonists
The thing a lot of people still aren’t entirely sold on are the split protagonists. There’s Naoe the shinobi and Yasuke the samurai. Naoe basically plays like your old-school AC protagonist, where you’re sneaking around rooftops, sneakily stabbing people, while Yasuke is a big bruiser who sucks at stealth but excels at combat.
It’s an interesting concept. And from all the previews, I actually respect that they’re trying to make each character actually play differently rather than just be reskins.