Summary
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ final update, Title Update 1.1.11, just released.
- Title Update 1.1.11’s content, along with much of Shadows’ post-launch content, was shaped by player feedback.
- Associate Game Director Simon Lemay-Comtois breaks this down in an exclusive interview.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ final content update is out now, wrapping up the story of Naoe and Yasuke in the Sengoku era. Black Tides is the final narrative installation, offering over approximately two hours of new content and featuring a little bit of deep lore, some Templar action, and [spoiler alert] also a tie-in to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. The update also introduces a new gameplay feature designed to challenge or even break player’s strongest builds. Domains brings hours and hours of additional gameplay, offering complex challenges in a replayable loop designed for hardcore RPG players. Set outside the constraints of feudal Japan, this new feature pushes players to craft new builds to win increasingly difficult challenges for exclusive rewards.
All of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ post launch content, including Black Tides and Domains, has been shaped to some degree by the community response to the game. We spoke to Associate Game Director Simon Lemay-Comtois to learn more about the team’s approach to developing post-launch content, the effect community feedback has had on content, and connections between Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced.
How was your approach to post-launch content in Assassin’s Creed Shadows different than recent franchise installations?
Simon Lemay-Comtois: There was a big shift between Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s post-launch strategy and that of Shadows. Valhalla was known for big, chunky, polished, gigantic updates back-to-back, and the community responded pretty well to that.
With Shadows, the post-launch approach has been more iterative and more responsive to player feedback than for other recent entries. We still had a major standalone expansion with Claws of Awaji, but beyond that, we released smaller, more targeted updates that let us react quickly to what players were telling us and what we were seeing in how they played, with a focus on steadily improving core systems.
This means that the feature efforts that were put into Shadows were more groundwork for everything else that is to come. We took a pause and asked what the community wanted, looked at what they liked and didn’t like about Shadows. From there, we looked at what we could give them more of, what we could change, and what we could repair. And I think that’s a healthy thing to do every now and again. Ultimately, I think it’s what Shadows needed, and it helped us understand and respond to community requests as we developed post-launch content.
What have been some of the biggest impacts of community feedback in Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ post-launch content?
SLC: There have been several big impacts. I would say the most obvious one has been the parkour updates that we’ve done; we basically had an almost complete overhaul of the parkour during post-launch. When we launched Shadows, I had been in charge of the parkour and felt really smug and smart and that people were going to love it. And then they didn’t. I was lucky to get another crack at it and have a lot of discussions with the parkour enthusiasts, content creators, fan base, and community who were extremely vocal but constructive. Through several workshops, discussions, and long sessions of watching hours upon hours of their content breakdowns, we were able to right the ship to some degree.
As one example, we worked with Ropotopolous, who is a parkour god in the community. In Shadows, Naoe’s parkour down mechanic is designed to get her from the rooftop to the ground silently so she can kill somebody and then go back up, which makes sense in gameplay that was all about stealth. But parkour enthusiasts don’t use parkour for stealth exclusively; they parkour for fun. They’d rather have her drop down in steps, such as from the roof to a lantern pole to something on the ground, so they have more agency over where she goes and how she goes there. It’s an important data point to consider for the future, and we’ve got to do parkour down in a way that caters to the parkour enthusiast community without breaking parkour down for the stealth community.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced benefitted from our common game engine, Anvil, and community feedback, as the team in Singapore adopted relevant parkour improvements for Edward. Resynced players will have a more fluid parkour experience, with quicker interruptions between moves.
What content in this final update is a direct result of community feedback?
SLC: All of it. If you want to split it in two, we have a last big narrative update that concludes the story of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and we have a hardcore RPG replayability feature called Domains.
Domains is all about testing the gear that you’ve accumulated, changing your perks, changing abilities, moving from Yasuke to Naoe to try and tackle increasingly difficult challenges that give you more rewards, more gear. These rewards cannot be bought anywhere, found in the world, or appear in the Animus Exchange. If you want those things, you have to go through the gauntlet. Domains is for a very dedicated RPG section of the fan base, who have been demanding something that really challenges them and requires them to craft more interesting builds, and give them the opportunity to analyze stats, and really go in-depth on the RPG aspects of the game.
The story conclusion, Black Tides, is a direct response to the community requests for more Templars in the game and more connection to the wider Assassin’s Creed lore. So this last update is all about Templars, baby. There’s this rank of Templars called the Black Cross, the most elite Templar agents out there. They’ve been in the books and comic books, but for the first time in any Assassin’s Creed game, we’re bringing not one, but two Black Cross Templars to Japan to hunt down Naoe and Yasuke (though they probably have other motives, as Templars tend to do). They’re an interesting pair and work well together, and act as a foil to Naoe and Yasuke. They’re mirror opposites of our two protagonists, and this quest hooks into the deeper tapestry of lore from many other entries in the franchise in a way that Assassin’s Creed Shadows didn’t do in the main game.
In this story update, we wanted to show all the lore as respectfully as possible, in a way that makes sense and doesn’t retcon anything or break continuity, but also paves the way for the future.
You mentioned earlier some parkour learnings will be part of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Is there any connection between this new story content and that game?
SLC: There is.
I would also say we’re referencing three other major titles directly, and referencing a fourth a little less directly. And I’ll say Black Flag is one of the three we reference overtly. When you see it, you’ll get it. It’s hard to miss.
Any final thoughts for the Assassin’s Creed Shadows community?
SLC: To the Shadows community, I would say thank you. We see the hours that the players put in, we see the crazy builds, we see the stealth videos and parkour challenges, we see all the love and care and appreciation for our community that has come out of the game. There’s a lot of work that’s been put into the world of Japan, the characters, the weapons, the way they move, the way they talk, the way they act. And the people who played Shadows are very responsive to and appreciative of that care.
For everyone else who hasn’t picked up Shadows yet, what are you waiting for! Advanced Parkour, New Game+, detailed stats page, Claws of Awaji expansion, headgear in cutscenes – you won’t find a more community-oriented set of features anywhere – at least not until Black Flag Resynced comes around on July 9th!
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ final free update is out now on XBOX Series X|S, and don’t miss Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced when it launches on XBOX Series X|S on July 9.
Assassin's Creed Shadows
Ubisoft