All in the name of historical authenticity: a reputable insider revealed the main reasons for the postponement of Assassin's Creed Shadows
Last week publisher Ubisoft announced unexpected, but quite natural news: Assassin's Creed Shadows release has been postponed from 15 November 2024 to 14 February 2025.
Recall, immediately after the announcement of the long-awaited game in the setting of feudal Japan, it faced harsh and not always justified criticism, and the main stumbling block was a samurai of African descent Yasuke. Despite the fact that he is a real historical character, the details of his biography cause heated discussions not only among gamers, but also among Japanese scholars.
Surprisingly, the Japanese public was dissatisfied not with Yasuke as the main character, but with the inconsistency of the architectural and cultural content of the game.
Here's What We Know
In his article on Insider Gaming Tom Henderson said that the developers have long insisted on the need to move Assassin's Creed Shadows, but Ubisoft management listened to them only after the unsuccessful release of Star Wars Outlaws (according to the media sales of the novelty could make only 1 million copies in the first month).
According to Henderson, the main purpose of Shadows' postponement is to revise some plot and narrative elements. He is confident that Yasuke will not be removed from the game, but his story will be tweaked a bit to make it more in line with real-life events and to better represent him in the game.
In addition, the overall technical state of the game needs significant improvement, which is still too far from ideal, and if the action game was released on November 15 - it would definitely be subjected to huge criticism.
Some important game mechanics are also in an unfinished state and a few months of extra time could play a crucial role in how the game will be received on release.
Henderson mentions that there was miscommunication between different Ubisoft departments about what the game should be, and that the historical consultants got involved too late and didn't have time to correct significant historical errors.
In the material Tom Henderson said that despite all the criticism and information noise, gamers are actively pre-ordering Assassin's Creed Shadows, although their number is inferior to Valhalla, but Ubisoft believes that closer to the release of the situation will improve somewhat.
Recall, after a series of failures, which, in addition to Star Wars Outlaws, included two failed projects XDefiant and Skull & Bones, as well as unclaimed action game Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and excellent conditionally free-to-play shooter The Division Heartland, the French publisher had a collapse in stock value and even demanded the dismissal of CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is Ubisoft's only major project for the near future, and if it fails, the French publisher will have a very hard time.
But there is good news: now all games on the release day will be available on Steam as well.
Assassinʼs Creed Shadows will be released on 14 February 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series.
Source: Insider Gaming