Despite some of the controversy surrounding Assassin’s Creed Shadows, there’s a sizeable number of players who are looking forward to playing the next instalment in Ubisoft’s legendary series. This is evidenced by the “solid” number of pre-orders, reported to be around 300,000.

Despite the challenges associated with the architecture and other cultural pitfalls, feudal Japan is still a highly-anticipated setting among fans. The unique nature of Japanese society during the feudal period is of particular interest, which is why it’s been adapted in media a countless number of times.

Narrative Concerns

In the spirit of this anticipation, a user named Takoshi88 inquired on Reddit if prospective buyers had any genuine concerns about Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Although there were numerous answers, a common answer concerned the game’s narrative, specifically whether Ubisoft is capable of delivering a complicated story with finesse.

As highlighted by oceanking, the non-linear nature of Assassin’s Creed Shadows could prove troublesome. The ability to complete missions and progress the story in any order certainly contributes to player freedom, but it can potentially hurt the narrative. If dialogue and cutscenes are designed in a manner that disregards past events then we never get to see any character development from Yasuke and Naoe until we get back on the “critical” path where the non-linearity ends.

There are certainly ways around this, but they’re all time-consuming for developers. You can add reactivity to dialogue where many voice lines are recorded to account for the different paths a player could have taken to get to a certain point. Or you can “cheat” and trigger certain cutscenes and/or dialogue after a player has completed a set number of quests or perhaps specific quests. It’s certainly something a developer the size of Ubisoft is capable of, but it’s not as simple a task as creating a linear story.

This raises another astute point, mentioned by drunk_ender. The two protagonists in Assassin’s Creed Shadows can be switched between at any moment, similar to Grand Theft Auto 5. While there are character-specific missions, presumably there are also quests that can be completed as either character. This could hurt the narrative since dialogue in the quest needs to account for the fact the player can potentially play as Naoe or Yasuke.

This opportunity could be a narrative triumph for Ubisoft, showcasing the fantastic reactivity of the world and its characters. It could also fall flat, forcing generic dialogue that doesn’t acknowledge that the quest participants are speaking to a 6-foot-tall black samurai or a much smaller native shinobi.

Finally, commenters have raised concerns about the writing capabilities of Ubisoft Quebec which previously worked on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Recomposer writes, “Quebec’s writing has not instilled any confidence in me, even before they took the RPG plunge. Syndicate was lacking in substance and relied heavily on extremely played-out character archetypes.” Likewise, SecondConquest adds “Story seems good so far, but it’s Ubisoft Quebec so I don’t really trust them on making any story good.”

It should be noted that Ryan Galletta is the narrative director for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is his first project at Ubisoft Quebec. Galletta previously worked on Batman: Arkham Origins and Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows releases on March 20 for PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.