On top of a major graphical update, a new sword fighting system, and three new officers to recruit, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is touching up countless little things about the 2013 pirate game. Alas, it's not adding the one thing I really hoped to see more of—the coolest, and to my memory most challenging diversions to be found in the Caribbean. Those cursed legendary ships.

The video above, taken from the original game, shows a player fighting the apex predators of Black Flag. The level 75 vessels are far greater threats than most of the ships you'll fight throughout the campaign. There's El Impoluto, with its ramming attack; La Dama Negra with heavy side armor and dual mortars; the HMS Fearless and the HMS Royal Sovereign, who fought side-by-side; and the HMS Prince, which lurked in a fog so thick sailors took it for a ghost ship.

In later games, Ubisoft built on these legendary duels to spin up more creative, ultimately even mythological boss fights—like Assassin's Creed Valhalla's legendary animals. They're some of the coolest bits of these games anytime they show up. I'd take three more legendary ships to battle over Resynced's three new crew members in a heartbeat—but game director Richard Knight told me that Black Flag's five legendary ships remains a quintet.

"We still have the same originals," Knight said. "There's another really tough ship in the game that I won't mention, but we still have those guys back."

I also asked Knight about the decision for Resynced to skip over Freedom Cry, the acclaimed DLC focused on Kenway's former quartermaster Adéwalé, and the freeing of enslaved Africans. Ubisoft has said it decided to focus purely on Edward's story for Resynced, but could Freedom Cry end up as DLC once again?

"With Assassin's Creed as a whole, it's got all these compelling stories and characters, so I don't think you can ever rule anything out," Knight said. "But we really hope for now we can give you everything you wanted out of Edward's experience, and we'll see what the future holds."

There's no sign of the gleaming Abstergo Industries office that once served as the modern day framing for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, but playing this game for the first time in 12 years feels a bit like time travel anyway. Before Ubisoft dropped Assassin's Creed's sci-fi conceit, each game was meant to be a strikingly immersive VR recreation of some past place and time, just as your character's ancestor would remember it.

Except, well, this time the ancestor is me circa 2014, and Black Flag Resynced has recreated the best Assassin's Creed just as I remember it.

My memory, it turns out, is about as accurate to the original game as Ezio Auditore da Firenze's battle with the Pope was to real 15th century Italian history. Before I sit down to play Black Flag, Ubisoft highlights everything that it's upgraded. Combat is totally reworked, with much punchier animations and perfect parries and dodges. Loading between cities and the open ocean? Gone now. Weather's dynamic, pirate-turned-assassin Edward Kenway has a crouch button, and you better believe that lighting is ray traced now.

But it still feels intimately familiar as I step aboard the Jackdaw or go parkouring across a lush island, climbing into the crook of a Y-shaped tree. The waves always looked this foamy, right? (They didn't). The sky and sea were always such a welcoming iridescent blue, weren't they? (They weren't). Edward always moved this cleanly from leap to roll to run, didn't he? (Of course not).

This is a textbook remaster: all the ways in which it's better graft cleanly onto the old bones like a top-dollar Hollywood facelift.

Anchors away

For the developers at Ubisoft, making Resynced has been less time travel, more archeology. "I like to say we feel like historians, working on this," says game director Richard Knight. "You dream about a bunch of things when you go through a remake. How do I modernize it, what kind of cool visuals and gameplay changes can I get. But the thing that always sticks with me the most is the quality of life features."

He gives a few examples. As introduced in AC Odyssey, there's now a button on the map screen to fast travel to the Jackdaw, so you don't have to spend 10 minutes swimming back to where you left the ship. There's a shanty player, so you can choose what song to ask the crew to sing. But much of the game remains either unchanged, or changed in ways consistent with the series.

"Sometimes we need to reinvent a system, like ground combat, and look back at the brand and go 'okay, what button was this feature on?' How many games had a blowdart, which one makes the most sense for us? Sometimes there are even animations from past games that we've added to combat for takedowns, where it makes sense. While other things we're like, 'nope, this works exactly as it should, and we should keep it.'"

Black Flag was the last AC I played start to finish, before Ubisoft declared them RPGs and slapped XP and skill trees onto an already stuffed open world frame. The subsequent decade of tinkering (or bloat, if we're being less generous) leaves Resynced strangely both throwback and palate cleanser. Ubisoft has only made it more like its RPG descendents in teensy ways, like an equipment screen with more outfit choices, and a dedicated button for manually raising or lowering the assassin cowl.

"Edward's journey and the gameplay itself is always about rushing forward," says Knight. "He's an action game kind of hero who happens to also be a pirate and an assassin, so it was critical for us to keep that spirit alive and not to change it. I love some of the RPG [Assassin's Creeds] as well, but they go in a different direction, and we want to stay true to Black Flag's direction of always driving forward."

The art of a remaster, in Knight's words, is as much about capturing the emotions of the original game as the facts of it—a perfect analog for tall tales from the Golden Age of Piracy. This one's still waiting to be bettered.

In a not-so-alternate alternate timeline, actor Matt Ryan may well have ended up playing a growling, sweaty pirate on Black Sails, the improbably stellar 2014 TV series prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel Treasure Island. He would've been a good fit for it. But in this reality, he instead ended up playing the lead role of a pirate in 2013's Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, his first and so far only videogame credit.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Ryan said he ended up loving the experience of acting for a game—even though when he auditioned for the role, it was actually masquerading as a show to keep the Assassin's Creed sequel a secret.

"It was pitched to me via my agent as a pirate TV show," he remembered. "Amy Hubbard, a great casting director in the UK, got me into the room, and then they liked me. They asked me for a callback, and then they leveled with me. They were like, listen: this is a videogame. They said it was an Assassin's Creed, and I'd played the first one, so I was like 'great, that's a cool game.' But I didn't think it was mocap—so when it was mocap, I was over the moon. I get to be the character, in the body, you know?"

Ryan saw "all the seasons in Montreal" as he traveled back and forth from the UK and the Ubisoft studio where Black Flag was being developed. A year later he landed the role of John Constantine for a short-lived TV adaptation of the DC Comics series, which he's returned to for a number of animated films.

It was early into his run as Constantine that Ryan discovered how beloved a character Edward Kenway had become.

"I did my first Comic-Con, and that's when people would be coming up dressed as Constantine," he said. "And then there'd be all these Edward Kenways in line. I'd be like, oh, this is great. I knew it was a good game, because I played it, but it was around then that I started getting a sense for the fandom of the character, and seeing the amount of work they put into designing those costumes—some would take a year to build the costume, you know? They'd be coming to me and quoting their favorite lines.

"You know, as an actor, if you do a play, it's one performance it's gone, and there is something kind of wonderful about a performance that's fleeting. And with TV and movies, people watch it once, maybe twice if you're lucky, so they spend a bit of time with you. But with a videogame, they spend a lot of time with you… It's been really, really nice after all these years to be invited back to this role, and to feel that this character is as beloved as it is."

Ubisoft suck at keeping a secret. It's long had a problem with leaks, and the Assassin's Creed series has probably suffered more from that than its other series. Even Ubisoft has joked about Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced being "gaming's worst kept secret" following leak after leak. Much like the Age of Piracy in Black Flag, Ubisoft's age of leaks isn't over either.

Just yesterday, YouTuber xJ0nathan posted on X a supposed screenshot of Assassin's Creed's (codenamed) Invictus, a dedicated multiplayer spinoff. Honestly, there's not even much in the image to go off, just a character holding two weapons in an untextured liminal space. It's kinda exactly what you'd expect from a very, very early look at an Assassin's Creed game.

The official Assassin's Creed Twitter account responded to this leak, saying: "Nice try." While Ubisoft notes that the image "might have started as an image from our private test", it's since been "heavily altered (most probably with AI)."

If you're going to leak, do it well, I guess, as this hasn't got Ubisoft's stamp of approval: "Not great to spread misinformation."

Now, with little actual information on the game to go off, Ubisoft has promised updates on the project in the future, saying that "those genuinely curious" will hear more "when the time is right".

xJ0nathan has since followed up the original leak with a new, similar image that supposedly doesn't have any AI alterations, though there are some inconsistencies between the two images.

Either way, I'm all for a dedicated Assassin's Creed multiplayer game. Ever since its removal after Black Flag (there was co-op multiplayer in Unity, mind), I've missed its unique brand of social-stealth PvP.

Ubisoft has released the first of what it says will be "a series of deep dive articles" into the upcoming Assassin's Creed Black Resynced, serving up a close look at the smooth new moves pirate-assassin Edward Kenway will employ as he murders his way across the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy.

Parkour, stealth, and combat in Black Flag Resynced have all been—you guessed it!—"rebuilt from the ground up" to take advantage of advancements made in the series over the 13 years since the original Black Flag debuted. Creative director Paul Fu said the intent is "to honor the foundations of the original game while enhancing the experience for an action-adventure game."

Much of what's revealed in the showcase is what you'd expect from a remake of a game that's more than a decade old: Fenway's movement will be "snappier and more deliberate," for instance, while the "Observe" feature introduced in Assassin's Creed Shadows will enable him to more easily find clues and objectives, and to tag enemies. Tailing and eavesdropping have been improved so missions won't fail if you lose track of your target,

The update also digs into takedowns, environmental combat, and new "advanced attacks," and warns that "combat in Resynced is more demanding than before," as enemies will adapt to your behaviour, especially if you fall into predictable patterns.

"For example, wait around too much for a parry, and enemies will react by performing Unstoppable Attacks that cannot be parried," Fu said. "Abuse a kick too much, and enemies will quickly dodge them. The trick is to alternate between offense and defense. Varying your combos helps. Rotate between kicks, sweeps, rope darts, pistols and heavy strikes at the end of your attack combos to confuse enemies."

I wouldn't say that charging into a camp in broad daylight and loudly perforating a bunch of guys strikes me as the acme of professional assassination, but dead is dead, I suppose.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resyned comes out on July 9, and is available for pre-purchase now on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

As reported by IGN, Assassin's Creed Hexe game director Benoit Richer has left the project. Richer is the second director-level developer to leave the team this year, with creative director Clint Hocking having departed in February.

Richer announced his career move on LinkedIn. According to the website for Servo Games, Richer is a cofounder of the new studio alongside three other former Ubisoft devs: Luc Tremblay, Danny Marcoux, and Alex Droun.

On February 25, we reported on the departure of Hexe's creative director, Clint Hocking, who was immediately replaced with Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag director Jean Guesden. Ubisoft has not yet publicly shared Richer's replacement as game director on Hexe.

Any number of things could be going on behind the scenes of Hexe's development, but back-to-back departures in a team's senior leadership is rarely a sign things are going well. Hexe remains a complete mystery otherwise: It's got distinctly witchy vibes, both with its name, as well as the creepy twig version of the Assassin log featured in its 2022 reveal trailer.

Ubisoft has described it as being a different sort of game from the open world, action-RPG era of Assassin's Creed that began with 2017's Origins, but that could mean any number of things. In the more near future of the series, we finally got to see Black Flag Resynced last week, the worst-kept secret in gaming. The long-rumored Assassin's Creed 4 remake will release on July 9, and it will apparently still have blood, if you were worried.

Assassin's Creed's former overall franchise boss, Marc-Alexis Côté, left the series and Ubisoft last year, and that particular break-up hasn't been pretty: Côté has sued Ubisoft alleging "constructive dismissal" (basically getting pressured into resigning through hostile working conditions). Côté is claiming $1.3 million Canadian in damages.

The Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake is just over yon horizon, scheduled to dock this summer, nevermind the leaky hull that Ubisoft always springs when trying to keep a secret. The fourth mainline Assassin's Creed game was an unequivocal pirate game favorite in the years before we had Sea of Thieves. It's still got a place in a lot of hearts thanks to roguish pirate protagonist Edward Kenway and his antics rallying a bunch of pirate legends to a haven in Nassau.

When is the Black Flag Resynced release date?

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launches on July 9, 2026 on PC (via Steam or Epic), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S for $60 / £50.

What's new in Black Flag Resynced?

Remake or remaster?

Ubisoft says that Black Flag has been "rebuilt from the ground up" in the latest version of its Ubisoft Anvil Engine, the version it used for Mirage and Shadows. So let's call it a remake, then. Ubisoft says that the upgrade is bringing modern tech like ray-traced lighting, water rendering, and weather simulation.

Who's making it?

Ubisoft Singapore is leading development on Resynced. Yup, that's the studio that did Skull and Bones, for better or worse, "with many of the original game’s developers returning to bring the game to the latest generation of hardware," Ubisoft adds.

Combat and stealth got a rework

Ubisoft was big on highlighting the way that combat has been updated: mostly the ability to do parries and takedowns. It's been "rebuilt from the ground up", and that combat in Resynced is more demanding than before as enemies will adapt to your behaviour, especially if you fall into predictable patterns.

On the stealth side, it highlights how Kenway can now freely crouch whenever as a stealth approach. That plays into all those many tailing missions, which it says have been updated so that being spotted doesn't just instantly fail the mission and instead just means you'll transition to head-on combat to resolve the situation. So stealth is encouraged, but perhaps not required.

What else is new?

• New story scenes, including one with Edward's wife Caroline
• 3 new recruitable crew officers (Lucy Baldwin, "The Padre", and Tobias "Deadman" Smith) with their own story questlines
• The modern day segments connecting to the animus feature "new moments that focus on Edward's internal struggles"
• 10 new sea shanties featuring French artist Woodkid
• Six hours of new quests, and "similar activities"
• Kenway’s Fleet mini-game no longer trapped on an app, you can now play it in-game
• New weapon upgrades for your ship
• Ziplines scattered across the cities
• You can manually jump whenever you like
• The Observe feature in AC Shadows has been added to Eagle Vision
• Cat or monkey pet to live on your ship (Jackd—awwwww, right?)

What's staying the same?

What's NOT in Black Flag Resynced?

After a year of leaks and horsing around that Ubisoft probably didn't find nearly as funny as I did, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced was finally given the official curtain-lifting today. The reveal of "gaming's worst-kept secret" was pretty much what we expected—it's a remake of Black Flag—but hidden in Ubisoft's big announcement roundup is a fun little bit of trivia: Development is being led by Ubisoft Singapore.

Ubisoft Singapore is one of the many studios Ubisoft has around the world, but it's notable in this particular context because Singapore is also the developer of Skull and Bones, Ubi's other big pirate fantasy adventure—the game whose well-documented difficulties enabled me to do this:

Skull and Bones was the victim of its own Ubisoft curse, you see. Where Black Flag Resync was destined to leak, Skull and Bones was doomed to delays, at least one of which happened less than two months ahead of its planned release in 2022. That date was itself the result of multiple prior delays: Skull and Bones was announced in 2017 and was originally supposed to be out in the fall of 2018. Missed it by that much.

I'm not suggesting here that Ubisoft is going to mash the brakes on Black Flag Resynced until 2032: As much as I enjoy utterly baseless, wild speculation, I'm pretty confident it will make its July 9 release target.

But recall that work on Skull and Bones began in 2013, right on the heels of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag's release, and it was originally envisioned as a multiplayer expansion for Black Flag. After more than 10 years of tossin' on turbulent seas, Singapore finally shoves Skull and Bones out the door, and what do they get told? Yer doin' Black Flag again!

It's a living, as the saying goes, but holy cow. After 13 solid years of working on Edward Kenway and his various legally distinct spinoff adventures, I would imagine the Singapore squad is really looking forward to turning its attention to something different. Hey, maybe Ubisoft can put 'em to work on Beyond Good and Evil 2. Getting that out the door shouldn't eat up more than, oh, another 17 years.

For the record, Ubisoft Singapore isn't working on Black Flag Resynced alone. They're not included on the announcement page but mashed down in the fine print of the actual press release is a list of co-dev studios, and it's basically like someone put Gary Oldman in charge of production: The full roster includes: Ubisoft Barcelona, Ubisoft Belgrade, Ubisoft Blue Byte, Ubisoft Bordeaux, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Chengdu, Ubisoft Da Nang, Ubisoft India, Ubisoft Kyiv, Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Philippines, Ubisoft Quebec, Ubisoft Shanghai, and Ubisoft Sofia.

After more than a year of leaks that got so out of hand they forced Ubisoft's legal department to crack a smile, the big moment is finally upon us: Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has been formally, fully, and finally revealed to the world. And it won't be too long before we get to actually play it, as Ubisoft also unveiled the launch date of July 9.

We've also got the Black Flag Resynced PC system requirements:

• Minimum System Requirements For 1920x1080, 30 FPS, Low Preset, Ray Tracing – Standard, Upscaler – Balanced
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz, AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (6GB), AMD Radeon RX5500XT (8GB) or Intel ARC A580 (8GB)
  • RAM: 16GB (Dual-channel setup)
  • Storage space: 65 GB (SSD required)
  • OS: Windows 11
• Recommended System Requirements For 1920x1080, 60 FPS, Medium Preset, Ray Tracing – Standard, Upscaler – Balanced
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-10600K 4.1 GHz, AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB), AMD Radeon RX6600XT (8GB), or Intel ARC B580 (12GB)
  • RAM: 16GB (Dual-channel setup)
  • Storage space: 65 GB (SSD required)
  • OS: Windows 11
• Recommended System Requirements For 2560x1440 (2K), 60 FPS, High Preset, Ray Tracing – Standard, Upscaler – Balanced
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-11600K 3.9 GHz, AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (10GB) or AMD Radeon RX6800XT (16GB)
  • RAM: 16GB (Dual-channel setup)
  • Storage space: 65 GB (SSD required)
  • OS: Windows 11
• Recommended System Requirements For 3840x2160 (4K), 60 FPS, Ultra Preset, Ray Tracing – Extended, Upscaler – Quality
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K 3.6 GHz, AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D 3 GHz
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (24GB) or AMD Radeon RX7900XTX (24GB)
  • RAM: 16GB (Dual-channel setup)
  • Storage space: 65 GB (SSD required)
  • OS: Windows 11

A Core i7-8700K, GTX 1660, and 16GB RAM struck me as a little on the steep side for a minimum spec—although some of that feeling may arise from the fact that Black Flag originally came out in 2013. You shouldn't need that much horsepower to run a 2013 game, right?

It's not really a 2013 game, of course: Black Flag Resynced is "rebuilt from the ground up" in Ubisoft's Anvil engine, and as PC Gamer hardware writer Nick Evanson noted, the Resynced requirements are quite similar to those of Assassin's Creed Shadows, which he said "makes sense, because they're both on Anvil."

Black Flag Resynced promises "updated visuals and enriched gameplay, including parry driven combat, improved stealth and parkour, deeper naval mechanics, and new narrative content." Among that new content is a trio of new officers who can join you on your adventures—Lucy Baldwin, the Padre, and Dead Man Smith—each with their own unique quest that reveals more about their histories. They'll also bring new special abilities to your ship, like double shots from broadside weapons.

"Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced matters deeply to us and to you," game director Richard Knight said during today's showcase. "That's why we took the time to rebuild it with the care it deserves. This remains a solo adventure and character-driven experience. It is not an RPG. The focus stays on how you play and how you explore the world."

That might seem like kind of an odd thing to focus on, but there's a point: Creative director Paul Fu said that because Ubisoft wants Resynced to be a "pure story-driven adventure" that's "fully focused on Edward's adventures," it will not offer the multiplayer elements that were in the original game.

Here's a deeper dive into the updated gameplay:

And some new screens:

It's been quite a ride, with spoilers coming from merch makers, voice actors, age rating boards, and various "anonymous sources," who probably aren't used to having to stand in line when they want to spill some beans.

Ubisoft didn't take that leakiness especially well at first but eventually had a change of heart about the whole thing and decided to embrace the absurdity of it all. Which was understandable, really: Have to laugh to keep yourself from crying, and all that.

The standard edition of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced goes for $60, and is up for pre-purchase now on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Ubisoft Store. Ubisoft also confirmed during today's showcase that the original Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will remain available for purchase.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced will be out on July 9—I already said that, I know, but a reminder never hurts. In the meantime, why not try our new pirate quiz? I can promise* you that "What's a pirate's favorite letter?" is absolutely not one of the questions.

(*not actually a promise, I have no idea)

Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches and, credit where it's due, Ubisoft eventually leaned into the fact that its Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake became, in the publisher's own words, "the worst-kept secret in gaming."

The remake's existence was revealed ahead of time by countless leaks: everything from age rating boards to anonymous sources to its own lead actor, Matt Ryan—who then said he wouldn't be saying any more because "the company threatened to sue me." It got leaked by the existence of a statue. Twice.

Finally wiser heads prevailed and Ubisoft began meme-ing about the game, and yesterday officially confirmed that the game will be revealed later this week. But wait! There's still time for the leakiest game ever to offer up one more leak for old times' sake, with a clip from what is presumably the reveal trailer finding its way onto X.

The clip gives our first look at in-game footage, with protagonist Edward Kenway alongside Blackbeard during some naval warfare, with lots of explosions and rousing battle cries. It's only a short snippet but there's time enough to see Kenway wielding cutlasses, Blackbeard jollying around with a telescope, cannons being loaded, and Kenway taking the ship's wheel.

It also features Matt Ryan delivering the line "so let the Black Flag signal nothing but your allegiance to man's natural freedoms", so it's nice to know that Ubisoft definitely did call off the lawyers.

Some fans have already stitched together comparison shots, which show the remake does have much more detailed character models and improved lighting. Though if we're being honest this was always a great-looking game: it's a glow-up, sure, but I don't know how many folks who own the original will be rushing to throw their money at Ubisoft.

The official reveal of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced will be during a showcase on Thursday, April 23 which takes place at 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT. Hopefully the hull of Kenway's boat proves less leaky than the project itself.

The long-rumored, many times-leaked Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag remake is official. Ubisoft dropped the confirmation in an email to press laying out the future of the Assassin's Creed series, sandwiched between sparse details about a future co-op AC game and the upcoming Netflix show.

"Speculation around Assassin’s Creed is not new, but it’s worth repeating: 'Nothing is true. Everything is permitted,'" the announcement reads. "Well, except in this case, some whispers have a little more wind in their sails. Keep your spyglass on the horizon."

Attached is a piece of art from the remake, officially dubbed Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced (a triple name-er), of pirate assassin Edward Kenway standing on the mast of his Jackdaw.

Sure man, let's do it. It's still a little funny that the first Assassin's Creed game getting the remake treatment is the sixth one in the series, but if you're throwing your weight behind a full-fledged do-over, you might as well start with everyone's favorite.

Black Flag was a triumphant little comeback for AC after two disappointing years in a row—Revelations in 2011 and AC3 in 2012—that layered unexpectedly fantastic open-world sailing on top of the best version of its sneaky-stabbing at the time. I never loved how it traded signature urban jungles for smaller settlements and actual jungles, but sailing the high seas with my mates while making swiss cheese of the British armada was so fun that I didn't really mind.

Ubi also just clearly has a soft spot for its pirate game—it's no coincidence that the director of the original Black Flag, Jean Guesden, was recently tapped to replace Clint Hocking as director of the next mainline AC on the books, Project Hexe.

Also, is it worth talking about how Ubisoft has erased the "4" from Black Flag's title? That's kinda weird. Do we think that's just some marketing-fu to avoid naming confusion, or is Ubi setting the stage for Black Flag to become a sub-series that gets its own sequels, a-la Modern Warfare?

It's been a rough few years for Ubisoft. Skull and Bones became a $200 million folly, one of several failed attempts to capitalise on live-service popularity; staff are revolting due to layoffs, studio closures and a mandatory return-to-office command; and after years of trying to curtail the influence of Tencent, the Chinese publisher now controls more than 26% of newly-formed Assassin's Creed subsidiary Vantage Studios.

Alex Hutchinson, who served as Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed 3's creative director, before leaving Ubisoft to found Typhoon Studios in 2017, believes the company's fall is down to several factors, which have been hammering the publisher for a while now—it's why he left.

"It's a shame," he tells us. "I think a bunch of things happened. The style of development we pioneered was being able to manage big teams by letting them be individual groups with ownership of their own thing, to allow us to make bigger games faster. But then I think with the recent boom, there's been a weird five year boom in private equity and investment from people which we hadn't seen before ever. So a lot of senior people left Ubisoft and started studios or splintered off. So there was this talent drain that went out."

Hutchinson was among them. He co-founded Typhoon in 2017, which released its first game, Journey to the Savage Planet, in 2020. Unfortunately, Typhoon was acquired by Stadia in 2019, and when Google decided its experiment in cloud gaming had failed, Typhoon was one of its casualties.

With so much talent leaving, Hutchinson reckons, the massive scale of the company "suddenly became a noose". The pandemic only made things worse.

"If you have a team of 800 people," he says, "it's really hard to manage, even if they're in the same building. If they're not coming to work, how do you police them? How do you make sure what's going on is going on? And then juniors don't learn because they like working from home, and they don't like asking questions. So I think they lost that momentum as well."

Back when Ubisoft was fighting fit, it released Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Assassin's Creed 3 and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag in a mere six years. But in the last six years, we've just had Valhalla and Shadows. Mirage, too, I guess, but that was originally meant to be Valhalla DLC.

Fewer sequels isn't a bad thing, especially if it's accompanied by more fresh ideas and new games. But that hasn't happened at Ubisoft, says Hutchinson.

"They always had a history of sequelizing the franchises, but also having a couple of new things coming along. They became very allergic to the new things, and so they killed a bunch of our ideas, like when I was working on Pioneer. They had nothing new to come through."

Pioneer was going to be a sci-fi romp that deviated from Ubisoft's traditionally more violent open-world outings by focusing on peaceful exploration. It was teased in Watch Dogs 2, but never saw the light of day.

Hutchinson and the other leads were pushed out in 2016 and Ubisoft put the project under new leadership. Shortly after, Hutchinson left Ubisoft, along with other former Pioneer leads. In 2019, after years of Ubisoft staying silent regarding the project, Hutchinson confirmed it had been cancelled.

At the same time, Kotaku reported that it was actually still alive, but that Ubisoft had made another change: now this peaceful exploration game would be a co-op shooter. That's so different from the original vision that it might as well have been canned. And seven years later, it's still just a rumour.

Ubisoft's treatment of Pioneer is the reason Hutchinson left, which allowed him to create his own sci-fi exploration game—albeit with some combat. And even when Typhoon was shuttered when Stadia was killed off, the team reformed under Raccoon Logic, giving us the excellent sequel Revenge of the Savage Planet.

The way Hutchinson frames Ubisoft's troubles makes it sound like death from a thousand cuts. "There's a million tiny things, as well," he says. "They're essentially a packaged goods business, and they had trouble figuring out digital as a whole platform." Just take a look at Ubisoft Connect, formerly Uplay, and its impotent struggle against Steam, where you will once again find all of Ubisoft's games.

And Ubisoft's troubles seem far from over. Only last week it laid off 40 people from its Toronto studio, as part of an ongoing restructuring effort that has included numerous cancellations, studio closures and layoffs.

The human cost of this restructuring effort is grotesque, but one of its goals, the establishing of various creative houses, does sound a bit like an attempt to return to individual studios having ownership of their projects. It's not doing anything for Ubisoft's dire public image, though, and even if we're being optimistic, it's going to be years before gamers actually see the results.

Of all Ubisoft's follies, Skull and Bones feels like one of the most significant—a game that took the best parts of Assassin's Creed 3 and Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, and just stuck them in a dodgy live service treadmill.

It took a decade to make, seemed to be perpetually delayed, and just kept changing. It started out as a Black Flag expansion, then a Black Flag MMO spin-off, then something entirely unrelated to Assassin's Creed. It was a huge mess, had no vision, and Ubisoft still charged $70 for it.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot defended the steep price by calling it a "quadruple-A game". Nobody believed him.

The whole saga seemed ridiculous. At no point were we shown anything to justify Guillemot's confidence, and sure enough, the game failed to make a splash. Now imagine how weird it would have been to watch this all unfold if you'd designed the bones it was built on.

Before leaving Ubisoft to co-found the studios behind Journey to the Savage Planet (Typhoon) and Revenge of the Savage Planet (Raccoon Logic), Alex Hutchinson was the creative director on Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed 3, the first Assassin's Creed to give us the naval battles, which would eventually lead to the brilliant Black Flag.

It was "bizarre", he tells us, "to see essentially the same stuff re-shipping 14 years after we made it". Assassin's Creed 3's sailing was an experiment that Ubisoft didn't have a lot of faith in, but it proved to be the game's greatest feature, resulting in it being given top billing in both Black Flag and Rogue. But it was old news by the time Skull and Bones finally launched.

"Ideas have a window, and that's another reason we're trying to do things faster this time," he says. "They age out and become stale. I think the team was junior. They were trying to essentially make Black Flag crossed with World of Tanks or World of Warships. But I don't think they had experience in that. And then they didn't really have experience in making even an Assassin's Creed game down there, because they really did co-development. And then I think it just got away from them."

Ubisoft Singapore was established in 2008 and, by the time it was working on Skull and Bones, had ballooned to more than 300 employees. Prior to that, it mostly served as a support studio, and assisted in the development of every Assassin's Creed from AC2 onward.

While Ubisoft would sometimes send devs from the Canadian and French studios to help Ubisoft Singapore, Hutchinson describes these excursions as holidays.

"For a lot of the French or Canadian developers, they would go down to Singapore for a year's holiday," he says. "They weren't going down there to make that studio huge. They were like, 'Oh, that'd be fun to work for a year in Singapore.' I don't think they were serious. And you couldn't get as many people, the talent pool just wasn't deep enough."

When Skull and Bones finally launched, it found itself jockeying for position with countless other live service games, many of which were free to play. What may have seemed novel and full of potential in 2013 had become rote. The only surprise is that Ubisoft is still maintaining it, but I suspect it will end up in Davy Jones's locker before too long.

Ubisoft's big restructuring has left the Assassin's Creed series under the control of Vantage Studios, one of five "creative houses" (and still the only one with a name) charged with carrying its brands into the future. What that means in practical terms is unclear: The only concrete impact up to today was the loss of former Assassin's Creed franchise boss Marc-Alexis Côté, who said he was forced out just seven months after the success of Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Today Ubisoft announced who will be taking the reins on the Assassin's Creed series, and it's not one guy but three guys, a "trio of experts of the series, who will bring their expertise, knowledge, and passion to guide Assassin’s Creed into its next chapter." They are:

Martin Schelling, Head of Brand: "He will lead the franchise team, as well as the overall strategy, long term vision, and development of Assassin's Creed. Martin previously worked as a Producer and Senior Producer on many defining titles in the series, including Revelations, Black Flag, Origins, and Valhalla."

Jean Guesdon, Head of Content: "He will lead the creative direction of the franchise, support ongoing projects, and help shape the franchise’s future while ensuring it remains true to its DNA. You probably remember Jean for his work as Creative Director on Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed Origins. But his history with the series goes all the way back to Assassin’s Creed II. His contribution to the brand is immense, and we are delighted to see him return to help shape this next exciting chapter."

François De Billy, Head of Production Excellence: "He will support our teams by strengthening production practices and execution across the franchise. François recently worked as Senior Director, Global Production, and contributed to several major Assassin’s Creed titles, including Revelations and Black Flag, and more recently as Production Director on AC Origins and AC Valhalla."

I won't pretend to fully grasp the distinctions between leading a creative franchise and leading a franchise creatively (which is why I quoted all of the above from the announcement post on Reddit), and it's fun to imagine that the entirety of De Billy's job involves wandering around the office telling people to "Be excellent!" like some kind of game dev Bill and Ted. (That's probably not it, though.)

Regardless of the specifics, all three have long histories at Ubisoft, although as the announcement suggests, Guesdon is the only one with specific Assassin's Creed roots, while Schelling and De Billy have been more Ubisoft generalists over the past several years. Guesden actually left Ubisoft in 2023 after 17 years at Ubi, but said in today's announcement on Reddit that "it is wonderful to be back after all these years."

"Assassin’s Creed has been a defining part of my professional life and being back feels like coming home. This universe, these characters, these worlds, and of course the community have always meant so much to me. I’m especially grateful to be sharing this journey with all of you again, and look forward to sharing more about the next steps ahead for the franchise."

Assassin's Creed is one of Ubisoft's premiere properties, and as it goes, so goes Ubisoft. But this shakeup still feels a bit odd to me. Côté, the previous vice president and executive producer of Assassin's Creed, is a long-time veteran of the series himself, and had overseen a string of successes beginning with Assassin's Creed Odyssey in 2018. He was also a vocal defender of developers amidst the ugly backlash over the presence of Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows, which despite the fevered hopes of some portions of gamerdom proved to be a major success. All of which makes me wonder—why mess with it?

Joining Schelling, Guesdon, and De Billy at the top of the Assassin's Creed pile are Andrée-Anne Boisvert, Producer for Assassin’s Creed’s cross-brand initiatives and Head of Technological Excellence, and Lionel Hiller, VP Brand and Go-to-Market Strategy. Ubisoft said they'll formally join the leadership team over the next few weeks, "where they are set to steer the brand’s ambitious new chapter."

In hindsight, Assassin's Creed 3 is both fascinating and fundamental to the later development of the series. At the time, the expansive wilderness and smaller settlements felt restrictive compared to the series' massive cities, but it gave Ubisoft a model it would carry on successfully many years later in Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla and Shadows. And then there were the ships.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag remains one of the high points for the Assassin's Creed, with its nautical open world and piratical antics, but it was Assassin's Creed 3 that really kicked things off by letting players explore the Eastern Seaboard and parts of the Caribbean in naval side missions. Some of its changes proved to be divisive, but pretty much everyone seemed to agree that captaining a ship felt incredible. So why wasn't there more of it?

"There was a whole fear that the tech [for the ships] wouldn't work," Alex Hutchinson, creative director on AC3 and Far Cry 4, tells us. Even in an Assassin's Creed that was already proving to be experimental, the feature was too much of an unknown quantity for the team to put all its faith in.

"So it couldn't be a huge part of the main story, because we weren't certain it was going to work," he continues. "And then when it was cool, then you're like, 'This is great.'" It was indeed cool. So cool, in fact, that Ubisoft went and built a whole Assassin's Creed out of it, with Black Flag, and then did it again in the Templar-focused Rogue spin-off. Odyssey, and to a lesser degree Valhalla, made ships an important part of their respective adventures too.

Hutchinson says this is "the old AAA model", where the alpha build would come in two months before launch, followed by the beta and final build in quick succession. "I think [Ubisoft is] really struggling with [this] now," he adds. Naturally, he notes, this means the devs don't get a look at the game "in its totality" until it's almost out the door.

When he co-founded Typhoon, the studio behind the excellent Journey to the Savage Planet, it was decided that alpha would happen in the middle of development. "And then that means you have to be hard about what you keep and what you cut, but you can see the shape of the game basically. Then we could have been like, 'Alright, this naval thing is going to be fine, put it everywhere.'"

Typhoon was acquired by Stadia, and then killed off when Stadia closed its doors in 2021. But much of the team were reunited, co-founding Raccoon Logic, which released Revenge of the Savage Planet last year. It's still doing alphas a lot earlier than Ubisoft.

It's not exactly Mirror's Edge, but the robust free-running parkour system has always been a huge draw for Assassin's Creed enjoyers. It changes a lot from game to game, and everyone has their favorite implementation, but it might be time to reassess: Shadows's parkour just got a big upgrade with manual jumping.

"It’s finally here," exclaim the latest patch notes, which you can find on Ubisoft's website. "We've heard your request and are bringing back a fan favorite feature for parkour: the manual jump."

So long as you have Advanced Parkour enabled, you can jump at will to dismount a structure gracefully or hop toward a nearby obstacle. Currently, both comments on Ubisoft's short video demonstration are just the word "peak," so you know people are excited.

It might seem like a silly thing to get worked up about. I can jump in all sorts of games, and if Shadows was perfectly playable without it, what does it matter if they add the button now? Well, AC movement is as beloved for its expressiveness as it is for its functionality—something you can glean by watching any number of parkour montages where players clamber around buildings just to show off—so this is less quality of life and more an extra dose of delicious freedom.

Players on social media are pleased as punch. Reddit user Adipay commented, "Shadows now has one of the best parkour systems in the franchise." A concurrent comment from ZillaJrKaijuKing reads, "I picked a good time to reinstall."

There's other stuff in the new update, as well: critical hits have more detailed visual feedback now, the animus menu can now be accessed via a glitchy portal in your hideout, and a slew of bug fixes have been thrown in for good measure.

It's a good day if you're still on the Assassin's Creed Shadows train, which PC Gamer staff writer Morgan Park scored an 80 in his review; "Shadows is some of the most fun I've had with a stealth game in a decade," he said.

You've just completed one of Unity's black box assassination missions, an infiltration with multiple diversions and entrances to find and exploit. The next mission has you meet up with Elise, your templar girlfriend, on the streets of revolutionary Paris. She's being pursued by a mob of templar thugs—her faction aren't fans of her or you at this point in the story—and you get roped into the chase. Literally. Her escape route leads to a demonstration of a hot-air balloon, the same model the Montgolfier brothers used just nine years previous in the first manned balloon flight. Of course, she jumps in. It's your job to cut the ropes while fighting off the first wave of pursuers.

It's a perfect setup for the kind of over-the-top pseudo-historical hijinks the Assassin's Creed games specialize in. This is Ezio piloting Leonardo da Vinci's prototype tank, or Lydia Frye shooting down biplanes over London with an experimental anti-aircraft gun. The Montgolfier springs into the air with Elise in it, but not you. You have to parkour after it while Elise leans out to shoot snipers. When the Montgolfier gets tangled on a rooftop you cut it loose, with just enough time for a dramatic leap into the basket and a romantic moment as the wind whisks you far away from the chaos of Paris in 1792.

For a few moments, Assassin's Creed Unity is perfect. It'll come crashing back down to Earth eventually, but you've probably already heard about that.

The framerate. The clipping. The instability. The floating NPCs. The texture load-in delay, and the infamous screenshot of a character's teeth and eyeballs appearing before the rest of their face. The NPCs who interrupt cutscenes. The haycarts you could get stuck in. The one sidequest that can't be finished unless you quit out then go back in. The hassle connecting and staying connected for co-op. The extra dose of problems if you ran it on AMD hardware.

When it launched, Unity was in an absolute state. But where more recent games with troubled releases have been given the grace of critical reconsideration after patching, Unity remained a punchline even after Ubisoft put in the effort to repair it and then gave away the DLC for free.

In my last playthrough I saw a few NPCs hover off the ground, it's still a crapshoot whether you can hand in the sidequest to collect all the pieces of the guillotine, and flickering white lines appear if you use TXAA, but otherwise it runs well—better than most of the open world games I've played recently. They even patched out the requirement to engage with a mobile app so you can open the blue treasure chests, which was an infuriating bit of "second screen experience" madness at the time.

Play it today, and Assassin's Creed Unity is a reminder of what the series can be when it focuses on a single city. You can tidily wrap up Unity and its expansion Dead Kings in 40 hours without rushing. By contrast, you'll need that much time for just Valhalla's DLC, and nearly 100 more hours for the actual game.

Unity is about Paris—with brief excursions to Franciade and Versailles—and that means it can do Paris justice. The city looks like a painting by Nicolas-Jean-Baptiste Raguenet, all blue roof tiles and boats on the Seine, and when you freeclimb down to street level (downwards parkour being a Unity innovation) then you realize, merde, that's a lot of people.

Unity's crowds are something you don't see in other videogames. There are mobs of people burning effigies and waving flags or pikes with heads on them, dancing, drinking, proffering leaflets, stretching their arms for a garment-fitting outside the boutique, propositioning sex workers, arguing about politics, and singing La Marseillaise everywhere you go.

Thanks to Casablanca I can't hear La Marseillaise without having an emotional reaction. I don't care that some of Unity's early missions take place in 1791 and La Marseillaise was written in 1792, any time I'm walking the streets of Paris and I hear it start up I feel a wild swell of national pride for a country I have no relation to, and love for a city I spent a nice afternoon in once. Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

If you get sick of the revolution, you can jump in a rift and travel to a different time period. I'm pretty sure the the rifts exist as an excuse to let you climb the Eiffel Tower, which was built to mark the 100-year anniversary of the revolution and would be an anachronism too far even for Ubisoft, but they're also a replacement for the modern-day stuff the Assassin's Creed series outgrew long before Ubisoft finally ditched it.

Instead of bouncing out of the simulation to spend time with that boring Desmond dude, you bounce around inside the simulation to a jumbled and glitchy Belle Epoque version of Paris with the Statue of Liberty in it, and of course you ascend that too. Which is neat, though nothing beats hopping to occupied Vichy France in the 1940s to parkour up the Eiffel Tower while being shot at by German planes.

Between the spectacle setpieces and the Paris sandbox are actual stealth missions. Unity was the first Assassin's Creed game to have a crouch button, which is the central tenet of my argument that it's the first actual stealth game in the series. It's also the one that added separate controls for freerunning up and down, and one of the few that trusted you with a wealth of tools quickly accessible on the number keys (like Black Flag), making truly wild feats of skill possible.

It also made combat harder, with the automatic melee counter swapped for a parry that you need to follow up with a riposte yourself, and bullets that can drop you in no time flat. You feel fragile in a way that's valuable in a real stealth game, that makes you actually want to engage with semi-obscure mechanics like using berserk blades to immobilize guards just long enough to get a stealth kill in—useful if you run out of phantom blades—or ducking just to bring up enemies on the minimap, or throwing smoke bombs at enemies instead of yourself then using eagle vision to pick them out of the cloud for a projectile kill.

Assassin's Creed Unity released in 2014, and received a trial by social media like Mass Effect 3 had two years before, which outlasted any actual impressions of the game. The complaints about its shonkiness and lack of playable women in co-op were valid, but play it today and it holds up better than a lot of other Assassin's Creed games do. Still, the crowd bayed for blood and off came its head—leaving just the teeth and eyeballs.

If you're unaware that, somewhere in the bowels of Ubisoft's offices, an unannounced Black Flag remake is almost certainly bubbling away, then congratulations on waking from your coma.

It's perhaps the most open secret in videogames right now, spoiled ahead of time by everything from age rating boards to anonymous sources to its own lead actor, Matt Ryan—who subsequently told a different fan pressing him for info that'd say nothing more, because "the company threatened to sue me".

I guess Ubi's loosened up since then, because the official Assassin's Creed X account is now posting GTA memes about yet another possible leak. AC fan account Zephryss posted images of a statuette of Black Flag protagonist Edward Kenway, writing that it "might be the new Edward Kenway figurine for the Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Remake" and had been found by fans on second-hand site Vinted.

In response, the AC account posted that old classic: CJ returning to San Andreas with the subtitles "Ah shit, here we go again." For reference, this would be the second time this remake has been leaked by a statue, if genuine.

Which is quite funny, to be fair, and makes sense: as I've written in too many headlines to count, the Black Flag remake is so clearly real that it's baffling Ubi hasn't just copped to its existence at this point. The AC account is hardly letting anything slip by engaging in a bit of social media bants over yet another leak.

Still, I do feel a bit bad for Matt Ryan (who was really quite good as OG Black Flag's beautifully Welsh protagonist): he gets an angry letter from the lawyers while others get a CJ meme.

Ubisoft announced sweeping changes to its business today, confirming more layoffs, major internal restructuring, and the cancelation of seven projects including Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time. At the same time it renewed its pledge to double down on generative AI.

In a document released today Ubisoft describes its "radically new value-creation" business model, which it claims will help it become "a more gamer-centric organization" thanks to a "rightsized and more agile organization".

It goes on: "The new operating model will further empower the execution of the Group's strategy, centered on Open World Adventures and GaaS-native experiences, supported by targeted investments, deeper specialization, and cutting-edge technology, including accelerated investments behind player-facing Generative AI."

Ubisoft's embrace of generative AI is nothing new. Last year the company revealed Teammates, a "playable generative AI research project" featuring AI-powered NPCs capable of dynamically interacting with the player. Teammates was an evolution of an earlier experiment dubbed Neo NPCs, and it's easy to see how it could be implemented in future Ubisoft games, especially its sprawling open world affairs.

But Ubisoft's "accelerated investments" in gen AI come at a time when studios are facing pressure to move away from the tech. When Larian revealed last month it is experimenting with AI, the blowback was so severe that the studio had to host a damage control Reddit AMA all about it. Arc Raiders' near perfect launch was clouded by its implementation of gen AI.

Attitudes towards gen AI will undoubtedly keep shifting with time (though it's hard to imagine it'll go the way of NFTs, which Ubisoft also embraced), but if Ubisoft announced Far Cry AI right now it's fair to say the backlash would be enormous.

Still, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot seems extremely enthused by the tech, claiming last year that it's "as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D."

It's no secret that major studios are struggling to put out successful games. Between increasing development turnarounds, ballooning budgets, cancellations and mass layoffs, the industry is finding it harder to reliably bring projects to conclusion, leading to fewer blockbusters coming out each year.

Various reasons have been aired for these problems, ranging from overeager profit chasing, to mismanagement and the malign influence of private equity, alongside broader market influences like audiences playing fewer new games. But former Assassin's Creed director Alexandre Amancio thinks the problems are more fundamental than these influences. Indeed, he believes they go right to the heart of how gaming's biggest studios are currently structured.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Amancio, who directed both Assassin's Creed: Unity and Assassin's Creed: Revelations, said that the sheer size of modern development teams makes both sustainability and innovation extremely difficult:

"There's this theory that says whenever humans create something that surpasses a hundred people, it completely changes the dynamic of it. As soon as you surpass that, the ratio of management to people working on the game explodes. You start having a very management-heavy structure: You need to have people to coordinate the people coordinating.

"Something that a lot of AAA studios mistakenly do, or certainly did in the past, is think that you can solve a problem by throwing people at it. But adding people to a problem stagnates the people who were already being efficient on it. It just creates a lot of variable noise.

"So I think the future lies in smaller teams."

Specifically, Amancio believes the industry could solve some of the problems it has by working more like the film industry, where teams are brought together for specific projects rather than being maintained as a consistent studio. "The gaming industry has treated itself as being part of the software industry, but it is kind of a weird hybrid. I think the future lies in taking that learning from the film industry, where you have core teams that are complemented with either outsourcing or with co-dev for specific needs. You get the right crew for the right project at the right time."

To a certain extent, this would simply be making official what the games industry often does anyway. Completed projects are often followed by layoffs at a developer as it reverts to a design phase and attempts to cut its production expenditure. But formalising this would at least allow developers to prepare for such eventualities. A big difference, however, is that film production generally takes weeks, sometimes months, whereas game development takes years, even in its most rapid form, meaning developers have little choice but to put down roots.

Amancio also shared some insights into his work on Assassin's Creed: Unity, which he says he would like to make differently if he could go back now. "When we began making Unity, two games started emerging. One game was a traditional Assassin's Creed game, with the main protagonist carving his path through the French Revolution, but we also wanted to make a co-op game:

"We found a clever way of hiding a character creation system within Assassin's Creed. Instead of having just one blood ancestor in the Animus, it's a database of millions of people, and you're searching for an ancestor. So the more you describe that ancestor, the more it reduces the search until you find a match."

"At one point, we needed to choose to make one game or the other…so we made the decision to make the title that people would most recognise. But somewhere inside of me, I still wish we would've gone for that other one."

If you've somehow managed to avoid Assassin's Creed up to this point and are looking to dive in, (or, as is more likely the case, you're looking to fill a gap in the vast library of historical murder simulators Ubisoft has created since 2007) now might be the time to do so. Ubisoft is running a franchise sale on its stabby depictions of human civilisation, offering impressive discounts on some of the best games in the series, as well as its newest entry at half-price.

The best offers in the franchise sale are, jointly, Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Both games are available for 90% off, bringing the price of each down to $6 (£5) apiece. If you have to choose between them, Valhalla is the larger and more comprehensive game of the two, featuring numerous systems and ideas that don't appear in Origins.

That said, Origins arguably has the more interesting setting and story. While Valhalla does impressive work with dark age England, and raiding Monasteries with your Viking horde is tremendous fun, it's hard to compete with exploring the Great Pyramids in Roman-occupied Egypt.

After those, the next best deal is probably for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey at $9 (£7.49). Odyssey is properly massive, letting you explore the whole of Ancient Greece, fight in the Peloponnesian War, and even do battle with Medusa and the Minotaur. I do think it spreads its systems quite thin compared to Valhalla and Origins. But really, the main separator here is that it is just slightly more expensive.

If you want to see what Assassin's Creed has been up to most recently, then Assassin's Creed Shadows is half-price at $35 (£30). In many ways, Shadows is the ultimate Assassin's Creed game. Not only does it take place in feudal Japan, arguably the most coveted setting in the series, but it also features the most sophisticated stealth of any Assassin's Creed game (i.e. stealth that works). If you've never played an Assassin's Creed game before, this is probably the one to pick up provided you can afford it.

If you're interested in exploring the series' back catalogue, then the best deal among the older games is probably for Assassin's Creed: Unity, which is 85% off at $4.50 (£3.89). While Unity was famously derided at launch due to an abundance of technical issues, it is actually a great Assassin's Creed game, with a fantastic setting of revolutionary Paris, and an underrated story and characters. It's also probably the easiest older Assassin's Creed to return to today, partly because it still looks astonishing 11 years on.

Elsewhere, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag is 70% off at $12 (£10.19). This is probably the best of the old Assassin's Creeds, thanks to its excellent pirate ship sailing. If simulated piracy is what you're after though, you might be better off grabbing Assassin's Creed: Rogue, which is the same game mechanically, but is also a lot cheaper, down 85% at $3 (£2.54).

Finally, Assassin's Creed 2 is also reasonably cheap at $5 (£2.14). Personally, I'd recommend spending a little extra for one of the newer games. But if you want to experience the point at which the series became good, this represents a cheap way to do that.

While we're hardly short on Assassin's Creed games at this point. It's all but certain we'll see more from the series in the coming years. The latest reports suggest that Shadows is over-performing financially, and Ubisoft has reportedly begun work on the next Assassin's Creed game already.

There's also a heavily rumoured remake of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, which has leaked more often than a cannon-blasted pirate ship. And let's not forget Assassin's Creed Hexe which is supposedly set in the Holy Roman Empire and is being codirected by Watch Dogs: Legion director Clint Hocking.

I'm at the point now where I can't honestly say without checking whether the Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag remake has been officially revealed or not. It's happening, obviously, but has Ubisoft actually said so? Apparently it has not—yes, I checked—but it has, as PC Gamer wordsmith Joshua Wolens put it in September, reached "unprecedented levels of leaked." Yet somehow, it now is even more leaked.

The latest leakage comes by way of PEGI, the Pan European Game Information agency, which has helpfully provided an 18 rating for something called Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. There's little more to be gleaned from the rating at this point, except that the game has violence, bad language, and in-game purchases.

I've reached out to Ubisoft for comment, because as far as I know it has continued to steadfastly refuse that any of this is happening. And while I typically cast such requests into the ether with no real hope that my existence will even be acknowledged, much less responded to, in this case I feel like maybe Ubisoft is ready to throw up its hands and finally cop to the whole thing.

Just consider what's happened over the past six months alone:

• Assassin's Creed: Black Flag remake is such a badly kept secret it's been leaked by a statue maker who just assumed we all knew it was coming
• Ubisoft can't button its yap about the not-so-secret Black Flag remake—now Edward Kenway's voice actor is telling AC4 fans 'You might have to beat it again'
• Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag actor says Ubisoft threatened to sue him for blabbing about the remake that everyone and their grandma knows is coming (That one's not really a leak, but if you're yelling at a guy to shut the hell up about the leak, well, you might have a leak.)
• Assassin's Creed: Black Flag remake reaches unprecedented levels of leaked, despite Ubisoft's best efforts to stomp on yapping actors

Unprecedented levels of leaked! But not unsurpassable, it seems.

This latest gaping hole in the hull doesn't necessarily suggest that a release is imminent. There's no sign of Black Flag Resynced on the ESRB or Australian Classification websites, and the leak prior to this one pointed toward a March 2026 launch date, still a few months away.

But it would be nice if Ubisoft would quit horsing around and at least admit that it's happening—although given how it's gone with the Splinter Cell remake that's been twisting in the wind since it was announced four years ago (four goddamn years!), maybe this Circus of Leaks is better. At least we can have some fun with it.

Ubisoft did get back to me on this one, by the way, but it's not ready to raise the white flag just yet: A rep said the company has "nothing to share at this time."

Assassin's Creed Shadows got its first expansion in September: Claws of Awaji. Bringing a new region, new storyline, and new icons to sprawl your objective board out even further, it was a meaty chunk of game in the vein of AC DLCs that went before it—Wrath of the Druids and Siege of Paris for Valhalla, or Fate of Atlantis and Legacy of the First Blade for Odyssey.

Those of you hip to pattern recognition might note that those predecessor games seemed to get multiple expansions (Origins, likewise, got multiple), but it seems that won't be the case for Shadows. In a chat with JorRaptor (via IGN), the game's associate director Simon Lemay-Comtois said that, "at this moment for Year Two, there is no expansion on the size of Awaji that is planned, currently." Which is a tad surprising, given Ubisoft's recent statement that the game is "Overperforming" against its expectations.

I think the wording here is worth bearing in mind. Ubi's got no mondo-size expansions in the pipe, but Lemay-Comtois notes that "We're still working on content for post-launch, and supporting it," so it's not quite as though the game is just being dropped. Still, many moons ago—before the game's release—Shadows did have a season pass planned. It was eventually scrapped, but it seems that this move not to release an additional expansion is a volte-face both from previous games in the series and from Ubisoft's original plans.

"Any content we want to do in Year Two will probably be more sparse," says Lemay-Comtois. "I'm not announcing anything at this point, but the strategy for year one was to be quick and reactive, so it means smaller drops, often.

"For year two, okay, we've got a handle. We don't need to put fires out or anything, so it's more like, 'Okay, what good chunky little piece of meat we can drop and have people come back to it and enjoy it? … Not to the size of an expansion, but something like Yesterday's Update Plus."

Honestly? Suits me. I still haven't played Claws of Awaji. Hell, I still haven't beaten AC Shadows, despite having tens of hours in it. It has the same disease of all modern AC games—it's just too damn big to hold my attention.

Another expansion with another region would just make me feel even more fatigued than I already do. Some smaller updates, tweaks and changes to the game as a whole? Well, I don't know that they'll reinvigorate my passion for the game, but they stand a much better chance of pulling me back in.

Desmond Miles? Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Assassin's Creed's original protagonist stood at the centre of the series' story from the 2007 original to Assassin's Creed 3. I remember him being pretty roundly mocked at the time, and wasn't much of a fan myself. This was partly because players only controlled him during the series' divisive Animus sections, where the games would yank you of their gripping historical settings to wander around sterile laboratories while NPCs yammered exposition at you.

But it was also because poor Desmond had all the charisma of a boiled cauliflower. This despite being voiced by Nolan North, best known for playing Uncharted's effortlessly charming thief Nathan Drake. Ubisoft tried to spice up Desmond's adventures in later games, but never really achieved this, ultimately opting to bump off Desmond in Assassin's Creed 3. Apparently, this came as a surprise to North, who didn't find out that Desmond was dead until a fan told him on Twitter.

Speaking on the Fall Damage YouTube channel (via GamesRadar), North was quizzed about some of the most famous lines he's voiced across his career. When Desmond's final line from Assassin's Creed 3 came up, North recognised it instantly. "That technically was Desmond's death scene," North explained, adding. "And I didn't know it."

North reveals that Ubisoft neglected to inform him that Desmond was dead. Instead, he found out "on Twitter" after a fan messaged him with "Are you upset Desmond's dead?" Needless to say, North was shocked. "And I'm thinking 'what'?" he said. "There's nothing that you'd expect [there] from a main character's death."

It's not wholly clear what North meant by this. The scene in which Desmond dies makes it pretty clear that he's dead. Maybe he just wasn't all that keen on how Ubisoft approached it. As he explained in the video, he also expected to play Desmond for considerably longer: "I think the original idea was eight or nine games with Desmond."

Meaning no disrespect to North's considerable talents, such a notion puts a shiver down my spine. Not that Assassin's Creed's modern day segments have been improved by Desmond's absence. In fact, Ubisoft's handling of the modern day storyline in subsequent games has led to some revisionism around his character. I was surprised to see so many people saying the series died with Desmond in the death-scene video's comments, which really goes to show how badly Ubisoft has bungled things since.

It is possible this could happen. As North noted in the video, Desmond is not "technically dead" thanks to yet more plot shenanigans on Ubisoft's part that reveal themselves in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. But North has yet to reprise his role as the character. "As it so often goes in the entertainment industry, different developers, different creative directors come in, and they have their own way of continuing the story," he explained in the video.

North concluded the segment by saying he was "very sad" to step away from playing Desmond, as "Assassin's Creed is one of my favourite stories that I've ever been a part of." Which…really? I like a lot of things about Assassin's Creed, and it has featured some endearing characters over the years. But let's face it, the story has been hokum since day one.

Maybe he was just being nice. Or maybe Assassin's Creed's Gordian plot is secretly brilliant in a manner that's gone completely over my head for nearly twenty years. Either way, Assassin's Creed's story hasn't hindered it from being successful in any way. Ubisoft's historical murder series from being successful. Assassin's Creed Shadows released earlier this year to a generally favourable response, with Morgan Park calling it "some of the most fun I've had with a stealth game in a decade" in PC Gamer's Assassin's Creed Shadows review. That said, he did criticise the "disjointed main story" and "bland cast" of characters. Smells like vindication to me.

Remember the Assassin's Creed: Shadows controversy? I barely do. If you listened to a very particular crowd back when it was revealed the game would feature Yasuke, a real historical figure who's been referenced a whole bunch in Japanese media anyway, you'd have thought it was the end of days. Initially, Ubisoft tried to mollify said crowd, calm them down which… Well, it went about as well as you'd expect.

The sky didn't fall. What actually happened was that the game sold pretty well as an entertaining open world romp, and we all moved on with our lives. In other words, Ubisoft made an Ubisoft game. Nothing exploded because a Black samurai was in it. Gaming survived.

Part of why Shadows' release was uneventful was, in part, because of Ubisoft's sudden pivot to, essentially, 'stop feeding the trolls.' Speaking at a BAFTA event last year, former franchise head Marc-Alexis Coté put his foot down:

"When we self-censor in the face of threats, we hand over our power, piece by piece, until freedom and creativity both wither away. We cannot let that happen. It's time for us as creators to stand firm on our commitment to our values, by telling stories that inspire, that challenge and that help people connect. Our silence cannot become complicit."

Coté did, however, recently get slowly encouraged to leave the company, which will go some ways to explain the level of cynicism I'm about to apply to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot incoming words here—which don't necessarily match up to actions taken by Ubisoft in the ensuing months. More on that later.

Guillemot more-or-less agrees in a transcript shared by GameFile of an internal company video that more-or-less goes over this process of inviting the culture warriors to vote with their wallet. Which, as mentioned above, nobody did, so it was all a bunch of (upsetting, racially-charged) hullaballoo.

That's not to say Guillemot is quite as impassioned as Coté was, though he stabs at roughly the same jist: "In September 2024, we had our backs against the wall, and that's when it clicked. To get out of the corner, we had to stop focusing on those who hated us. We had to start firing up our allies. So we stopped trying to win the argument, and leaned on what had carried us for 18 years: The Assassin's Creed brand."

Which, as Guillemot states a little earlier in the video, "quickly eliminated the fights, which were just fake fights."

That pivot included a delay, which Ubisoft took not just as an opportunity to tweak stuff based on internal feedback, but also to ignore the game-is-woke-because-Yasuke crowd more effectively: "We started by doing the last thing anyone would have advised. We delayed the game. The extra time allowed the devs to polish, optimize, and reach the high standards fans expect from an Assassin's Creed game.

"It also gave us time to rebuild the Assassin’s Creed brand pact, putting the markers of the franchise back at the center." Guillemot, somewhat hilariously, classifies this as "more hood, more stealth, more leap of faith, more lore." I, too, love it when things from a videogame like hood and leap of faith are in a videogame. Much lore, big stabs. Yum yum.

Still, Guillemot states, "Fans came back, conversations started shifting, and everyone who built, played, and loved this game could be proud again."

Honestly I'm glad the plan worked, though I'm a smidge cynical of Guillemot, here. Not because he immediately starts talking about how cool the brand is, or how everyone wants more hood and stealth and lore in their Assassin's Creed games, but because Ubisoft also reportedly cancelled a whole planned Civil War-era game where you went up against the Ku Klux Klan due to the US political climate. And then there's the Coté thing.

There are actions Ubisoft also might've just done so for financial reasons—but it's probably a good reminder that Ubisoft's 'Operation: Stop listening to the racists' wasn't done entirely out of the goodness of its heart: It just happens that not feeding the trolls is the most effective way to, well, starve them.

Ubisoft has confirmed that Assassin's Creed boss Marc-Alexis Côté has left Ubisoft after more than 20 years at the company, a stretch that saw him climb from a software engineer on PSP games to vice president and executive producer of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Côté's departure, initially reported by IGN, comes just two weeks after Ubisoft unveiled a new subsidiary called Vantage Studios that will be responsible for all future development of Assassin's Creed, as well as Far Cry and Rainbow Six.

"Following the organizational restructuring announced in March 2025, Marc-Alexis Côté has chosen to pursue a new path elsewhere outside of Ubisoft," a Ubisoft representative said in a statement provided to PC Gamer.

"While we are saddened to see him go, we're confident that our talented teams will carry forward the strong foundation he helped build. We are deeply grateful for the impact Marc-Alexis has had over the years, particularly in shaping the Assassin's Creed brand into what it is today. His leadership, creativity, and dedication have left a lasting mark on our teams and our players. We thank him sincerely for his many contributions and wish him continued success in all his future endeavors."

Côté has a long history with the Assassin's Creed series, going back to a design credit on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood in 2010. He oversaw a resurgence of the series as executive producer beginning with Assassin's Creed Odyssey in 2018.

Maybe more importantly, he was also a strong defender of Assassin's Creed developers in the face of backlash against the inclusion of Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows: It was Côté who called out Elon Musk in June 2024 for "feeding hatred" with his attacks on the game, and in November of the same year Coté pushed back more broadly on "attacks driven by intolerance," a position that stood in sharp contrast to the milquetoast response from Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.

The IGN report says Côté was offered a role at Vantage Studios, but opted to depart instead. Vantage Studios co-CEO Christophe Derennes said in an internal memo to staff that he was "disappointed" by the decision.

There's no indicated connection between the launch of Vantage and Côté's decision to leave, but the timing is, well awkward: It's been only seven months since the release of Assassin's Creed Shadows, a major and much-needed success for Ubisoft which should by rights be something of a moment of triumph; but it's also been just two weeks since the debut of Vantage Studios, the Tencent-backed "creative house" that's now responsible for the "development and expansion" of the Assassin's Creed brand. Vantage Studios is being led by Ubisoft veteran Christophe Derennes, who's been with the company for more than 35 years, and Charlie Guillemot, who comes to the job with extensive experience in being the son of Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.

The surprise Assassin's Creed Mirage DLC announced by Ubisoft in August will go live on November 18, adding a new main quest, sidequests, assassination targets, and other new content in the ancient valley of AlUla, a place Ubi calls "charged with history and home to stunning and diverse landscapes."

Assassin's Creed Mirage: Valley of Memory will add an additional six hours of gameplay, Ubisoft said, that takes place ahead of the finale of the core game when Basim discovers that his long-lost father might still be alive in AlUla. Off he goes to the (potential) rescue, as one does, "only to discover that the valley of AlUla is threatened by a dangerous band of robbers and his father is missing."

"You will have the chance to explore a variety of points of interest in the region, from the old town of AlUla and the Musa Ibn Musayr fortress to the Valley of the Stones and the impressive necropolis of Hegra," Ubisoft said. "Be careful as you explore the sites, as the Robbers have set up ambushes across the desert to catch unwelcome visitors."

You may recall this DLC as the one reportedly being funded by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which is presumably what enables such a big, beefy DLC to be released for free two years after the game's debut. That didn't sit well with at least some Ubisoft employees because of the country's well-documented record of human rights abuses, in particular the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, widely believed to have been carried out on the orders of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Ubisoft declined to comment at the time on whether the PIF—which is headed by bin Salman—fully funded development of the DLC, but we got a closer look at possible connections in today's reveal stream. Among the featured speakers is Dr. Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani, the VP of culture at the Royal Commission for AlUla in the real world.

In a message posted to LinkedIn last week, Alsuhaibani said he recently participated in a panel called "Capitalizing on Heritage—Turning Cultural Icons into Economic Powerhouses" at Saudi Arabia's first Cultural Investment Conference, which focused largely on the country's plans for AlUla, where the new Assassin's Creed Mirage DLC takes place.

"My message was clear: heritage is a living asset, not just a preserved past, but a driver of economic, social and cultural value," Alsuhaibani wrote. "AlUla is demonstrating this in practice. From the regeneration of Old Town to adaptive reuse projects like Chedi Hegra, we are showing how heritage can stimulate the creative economy, attract global visitors, foster cultural dialogue and enable meaningful livelihoods.

Alsuhaibani said a new agreement with the country's Ministry of Culture was announced at the conference, which "will grow AlUla’s creative economy by positioning AlUla as a global film hub, supporting cultural entrepreneurs and SMEs with enabling solutions and expanding pathways for the skilled artisans of Madrasat Addeera," the first school for girls in AlUla.

Using popular media to export cultural hegemony is nothing new: The Americans have been doing it for generations, so as far as that goes I really can't hold it against the Saudis. But Alsuhaibani's message does point pretty clearly to bin Salman's participation in the project. The "principal partner" of the Cultural Investment Conference is Saudi Arabia's Cultural Development Fund, part of the country's National Development Fund—which, you probably guessed, is chaired by bin Salman.

For my money, that's what makes this DLC interesting. Saudi Arabia is a common target for complaints of "sportswashing"—using the popularity of videogames to cover up or distract from allegations of human rights abuses, just as it has with professional sports leagues and fading comedians—and it hasn't denied them. In fact, bin Salman said in 2023 that "if sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by way of one percent, then I will continue doing sportswashing. I don't care."

But that sort of thing has been fairly overt in the past, as seen in the PIF's multitude of investments in or acquisitions of major game studios, most recently and famously the $55 billion takeover of Electronic Arts. The Valley of Memory DLC is far more subtle, developed and released entirely by Ubisoft, with no officially confirmed connections to any Saudi government agency—just a real solid for Assassin's Creed fans that happens to be about that place Saudi Arabia wants to turn into the next big money thing, right? That doesn't necessarily make it sinister, but I suspect we're going to start asking "why does this exist?" with increasing regularity as gameswashing becomes a more common source of funding.

In a surprise announcement last month, Ubisoft revealed that 2023's Assassin's Creed Mirage would be receiving a hefty free DLC. A new map and quests for a two year-old game, and no charge? Such largesse is only possible thanks to the involvement of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which has made many gaming investments as part of its mission to detoxify the image of the brutal petrol state.

The DLC will see Basim, Mirage's protagonist, visiting AlUla, an ancient city key to Saudi Arabian culture. It was also announced by Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot in Riyadh at the New Global Sport Conference, an event that ran alongside the Saudi-funded Esports World Cup.

"We are working with AlUla, which is a UNESCO site, which is not known yet very much," Guillemote said at the time. "But we are creating content that will be given for free to players that play Mirage, and they will be able to go in that site.

As to the question of whether the DLC is being fully funded by the PIF, Ubisoft says it does "not comment on rumours."

It appears that Ubisoft staff are not particularly happy about the publisher getting into bed with the Saudis. In an internal Q&A first published by GameFile, one employee came right out and asked: is partnering up with Saudi Arabia, specifically in the context of the murder and subsequent dismemberment of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, really worth the hit to the company's image?

The response is uninspiring. Guillemot's visit was as part of a French delegation, including president Emmanuel Macron, and was described as a "classic diplomatic tool for expanding France's influence and reach around the world" that would help spread its values. I'm not sure that such contemporary values would necessarily include the French revolution's darker excesses but hey… plus ça change.

Ubisoft also says, somewhat unconvincingly, that Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the PIF are different things. "The latter's money is not MBS's, and talking with partners who do not share our democratic values ​​does not mean abandoning them," says the publisher. The PIF is controlled by the crown prince, so not sure I'm buying that one.

Ubisoft has subsequently sought to emphasise that it retains "creative control," telling IGN the DLC was "made possible thanks to the support of local and international organisations [...] through access to experts, historians and resources to ensure the creation of an authentic and accurate setting." And those bags of cash in the corner? Forget about it. And have you tried these canapes?

Black Flag Remake leaks can only be called that if they come from the Montreuil suburb of Paris—otherwise they're just sparkling Assassin's Creed gossip. But good news: the games industry's most open of open secrets (but that Ubi is still willing to threaten to sue its star over) has let a little more info slip ahead of its proper reveal, thanks to anonymous sources who spoke with France's Jeux Vidéo Magazine.

The leaks, all communicated inexplicably in French, suggest that, well, this is very much an AC game, folks. But not an AC game in the old style—as the original Black Flag was—rather, Ubi is crowbarring its new, Witcher-3-by-another-name RPG style onto the classic pirate sim. Anticipate loot and an inventory, and combat that hews closer to a (much easier) soulslike than the choreographed combat of yore.

Which I gotta admit, I'm a little sad about. As one of perhaps seven people worldwide who maintain that AC: Unity showed the direction the series ought to have gone in, I rather liked Ubi's old approach to AC, and only grudgingly tolerate the new, RPG-flavoured direction.

On the plus side, JVM's sources suggest that Ubisoft will use the horsepower of our current generation of hardware to cleanse the Caribbean of loading screens. Plus, the studio is apparently adding even more stuff—littering the game's smaller islands with content they didn't have in the original. Which is… good? Maybe? It depends on the content, I suppose, but I'm not sure I've ever accused an AC game of not being big enough.

Another thing I don't like (I'm pitching a column called that, by the way): the remake is said to be nixing a bunch of modern-day content in favour of more piratical adventures, some of which are made up of cut content from the original game, like a story starring lady-pirate Mary Read.

Now, I'm a-okay with piratical adventures and Mary Read, but AC4 had the rare honour of being one of the only times I cared in the slightest about the series' modern-day plot. It was clever: you played a dev at not-Ubisoft working on not-AC, gradually uncovering the whole thing as a sinister Templar plot as you went.

It was honestly pretty great, and I'm hoping Ubisoft hasn't carved out too much of it in favour of more nautical fun.

Anyway, JVM's sources suggest tentatively that they're aiming for a March 2026 release, which means there's still a few months for a big, splashy reveal. There's also enough time to threaten to sue another actor or two for chatting about something everyone knows is coming.

Six months on, and Assassin's Creed Shadows has long since faded into the general live-service background susurrus that underlies all of videogames. It has its players, its haters, its curious onlookers—but the fires of capital-d Discourse have been burnt out for a while.

Which is quite nice, honestly, but it doesn't mean Ubisoft doesn't have a crack squad of dedicated and alarmingly French (or so I like to imagine) developers working on updates and DLC for the game. Its first expansion—Claws of Awaji—is due out on September 16, and to lay the groundwork, the studio put out a big ol' 1.1.1 update for the game today.

There's actually a whole bunch of stuff in this one. The level cap continues its inexorable crawl upwards (it's 100 now), you can now advance the time of day at-will once you have a certain hideout upgrade, and scouts have gotten better—upgrade them enough and they'll be able to spot viewpoints and safehouses when you dispatch them to foggy areas on the map. Which seems like quite a big deal, really, as by paying a pittance on the map screen you'll presumably be able to unlock those safehouses and immediately fast travel to them.

Both the whizzy new scout abilities and the time-of-day magic are the product of new hideout upgrades. "Each unique [hideout] building now includes 2 additional upgrade levels, bringing a total of 20 new enhancements, alongside 3 new Hideout levels." That's probably for the best, as I ran out of things to build in my hideout long, long before I finished with the game.

Anyway, I've really buried the lede on this story because 1.1.1 also gives you a big stick and a cat dressed like Ezio. Videogames are incredible.

The big stick is a bo staff, a new weapon for Naoe that you can unlock by pursuing a new free questline: Go With The Bo. Honestly? I'm way into it. In a world of katanas and kusarigamas, I just think there's something incredibly cool about your weapon being essentially a pool cue. It belies a quiet confidence, I think.

The cat, meanwhile, you unlock as part of the game's new pseudo-battle-pass system in the Animus Hub. You know the one: it's the thing you sometimes accidentally click into from the main menu, realise you've accumulated a bunch of currency for from somewhere, and then use it to buy some dumb cosmetic nonsense. Well, now that dumb cosmetic nonsense is a cat dressed like Ezio Auditore da Firenze, and I won't pretend I'm not thrilled.

I can confidently predict the update will get me to return to AC Shadows for perhaps 20 minutes. Any more than that? We'll have to see. Like all recent AC games, I ran into the problem whereby I was done with the game long, long before it was done with me. Perhaps a break and the new content is just what I need to get back in? Or perhaps not. But at least I have a stick now.

Ubisoft has announced that 2023's Assassin's Creed Mirage will not only be getting a substantial-sounding surprise DLC before the end of the year, it's going to be a completely free update to the game.

Details are scant, but Ubisoft said the DLC would consist of a "new story chapter and missions" set in a new zone separate from the base game's representation of medieval Baghdad. This addition of a new open world area is particularly surprising given that Mirage was the first single-city Assassin's Creed game since 2015's Syndicate.

And Ubisoft's choice of locale really got my history nerd juices flowing: Al-Ula, an oasis city in modern Saudi Arabia that has been inhabited by a succession of cultures since 5,000 BC. Most notably for cool videogame setting purposes: The Nabataeans, who left stunning monolithic rock-cut buildings in al-Ula that resemble their more famous cousins at Petra in Jordan.

We're talking primo climbing and tomb delving territory here, and adding a full, separate zone like this almost feels like expansion pack territory, which further contributes to my shock at it being a free update. It's particularly odd given that Assassin's Creed Shadows released to good reviews and strong sales earlier this year. PCG's foremost AssCreed expert, Morgan Park, particularly loved how much Splinter Cell DNA was in the stealth this time around.

Morgan was a bit cooler on Mirage back when it launched, writing that it felt more like a "stepping stone" to the series returning to form⁠—and it seems to have been just that, given Shadows' reception. The timing makes me wonder if Mirage's DLC was meant to be a paid expansion, but a lengthy development time verging into Shadows' big success inspired Ubi to write it off as a goodwill gesture. I'm willing to bet that the influx of new Mirage purchases in a post-Shadows plus free DLC glow could very well exceed what Ubisoft might earn selling a DLC to current owners of the game.

Initially, the Assassin's Creed games were about a mythological rivalry between the Assassins and the Templars—and the ways in which that historical conflict bled into the present day. It seemed, in the series' infancy, that Ubisoft was ramping up for a full-blooded modern-world game where this conflict would reach its apex. Then it, uh, didn't do that. But hey, pirates! Pirates are cool, right?

While pirates being cool is an indisputable fact, it does feel a smidge like Ubisoft's fallen off the old wagon. Well, there's just the barest glimmer of hope in a recent Reddit AMA. Responding to one player as to the topic of Assassins vs Templars, level designer Luc Plante writes:

"The Assassins vs Templars conflict has always been a core pillar of Assassin's Creed. With Shadows, we wanted to properly set our protagonist in the setting before expanding on the Assassins vs Templars. Now that it's done on the main game, we scratched the surface with the Critical Role story drop, and you can expect more [of a] deep dive [into] this conflict in the near future."

That "Critical Role story drop" refers to a sponsored one-shot done by D&D livestream Critical Role—which Ubisoft then decided to make canon, for some reason.

But what about that modern setting stuff? Well, it's slim, but Plante also replied to a separate question to the affirmative, though he's being incredibly coy: "While Modern Day is not the main focus of the story we tell with Shadows, it remains important for our community, so you can expect it to be expanded at some point, in some fashion…"

So there's a chance. And, look—while I was never that much of a fan of Desmond, partially because of his mid-2000s era videogame protagonist buzzcut—I did always feel like the series was just waiting to do a fully fledged modern day sequel. And like, sure, that'd be massively less interesting than exploring another period of human history with your science fantasy series, but consider this: I want to eagle-dive off a skyscraper into a pile of trash.

To hear it might (maybe, possibly) be expanded upon in Shadows gives me some hope. Until then, I guess we've got Watch Dogs or something.

If I were writing the big book of maintaining morale, my number one rule for keeping the talent happy would be: don't threaten to take them to court. But those mavericks at Ubisoft have always done things their own way. According to Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag voice actor Matt Ryan (who played protagonist Edward Kenway), Ubi was a tad miffed when he got loose-lipped about the unannounced Black Flag remake we all know is coming. So miffed that the company threatened to sue him.

If you don't recall, Ryan was signing fan autographs recently when he cheekily announced that they "might have to beat [AC4] again" in the near future. Everyone and their dog took that as a hint at an upcoming remake of Black Flag, the same one that was also leaked by a merch-maker pretty recently. Heck, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot was about and about last year saying he wanted to make some AC remakes, so it couldn't be more of an open secret at this point.

And yet, apparently, Ryan kinda-sorta blabbing about it set Ubi on the warpath. In another, more recent video of Ryan signing autographs at a con, a plucky fan asked him for word on an upcoming remake. This time, a chastened Ryan simply said "I don't know, mate."

The fan, naturally, brought up the prior video where Ryan certainly seemed like he knew something. "The thing is," answered Ryan, "when that happened, someone was doing this," and gestured at a person recording the interaction. "I was being very free and open, but I didn't know that they actually were recording me on their phone. And then the company threatened to sue me. Yeah, so I say nothing."

Now, presumably (I stress presumably: this is all supposition on my part), Ryan would have signed an NDA with Ubisoft about any work he's done for any upcoming Black Flag remake, but you've gotta admit: that sounds like a pretty draconian response on Ubi's part. The Black Flag remake is the worst-kept secret in videogames right now; everyone knows it's coming, it's been leaked in multiple different ways, and even the company boss was gaily chatting about remaking ACs in the recent past.

The blowback from threatening the game's main (and popular) actor with legal action seems way worse than the blowback of that actor chatting about a game everyone basically already knows is coming. But hey, what do I know? Perhaps Ubi felt it had to put its foot down pour encourager les autres. It certainly seems to have done the trick: Ryan sure as hell wasn't letting anything slip in that most recent video.

I enjoyed my time with Assassin's Creed Shadows but, much like I did with Valhalla, I had my fill long before I ever reached credits. These games are too big, and their content becomes familiar too quickly, for me to get all the way through them without a break of at least a year or two between sessions.

So it's with some alarm that I report that Ubisoft says the game is due to get its New Game Plus update this July 29, for anyone who made it all the way through everything it has to offer and is still voracious for more. I am very glad you are getting what you want. Also, you scare me.

The news is part of AC Shadows' just-revealed summer roadmap, which details all the myriad tweaks and additions that are set to hit feudal Japan in the course of the next few months. There's New Game Plus, sure, but also a level cap increase from 60 to 80, a new level for the forge, new upgrades for all your hideout buildings, and, hang on, the ability to change time of day?

I'll level with you, folks. I find this one a bit perplexing. Not because changing the time of day is a bad idea, but because it's such an obviously good one I'm confused it took this long to implement. AC Shadows makes heavy use of, uh, shadows in its stealth, meaning the time of day you break into a camp, base, or castle can have a huge impact on how well it goes. At night, there's no end to the dimly lit corner Naoe can slink into. At midday? Less so.

It makes me want to hear more tales of AC Shadows' development. There were a few small, quality-of-life-y features like this that just weren't in the game at launch, and I'm curious to know why. For instance, horse autopilot (that's what we're calling it now) and selling multiple items at stores had to be patched in after release. That's weird, right? That seems weird, to me.

Anyway, fast-forwarding the time of day is part of Shadow's gamut of September updates, which don't have a specific date yet but should come early in the month. Alongside that, you'll also get stuff like region maps properly unfogging when you complete all their viewpoints (incredible news for people whose brains are broken in the same way mine is), and uncapped cutscene framerates. Finally, I can lose track of who all these characters are at 144 fps.

But the furthest-out point on the roadmap is September 16, when Shadows will get its first expansion: Claws of Awaji. It'll be free for pre-order people and will only be playable if you've beaten the main plot, so hop to it. It adds all the DLC stuff you expect: a new storyline, new gear, new characters and, god help us, a new region. Please, Ubi, have mercy on us. I am just a small man and Japan is so large.

Assassin's Creed is a game where, in the words of AC Odyssey's world director, Ban Hall, "verticality is really important." It's always been a game about seeing a giant cathedral or something, scrambling up to the top, and then admiring the view before swan-diving off. Even at more of a street level, you're still constantly gaining that little bit of height for sightlines and combat advantages. It is a game that wants players to climb.

Which meant that AC Odyssey had a little bit of an issue. Ancient Greece, you see, was just not known for its skyscrapers. Speaking to Edge Magazine for the venerable tome's 413th issue (spotted by GR+), Hall says, "It really is a climbing-frame game, and it's about moving the players through those spaces and going up and down things as much as anything else."

So when you're working on, for example, Assassin's Creed Syndicate and London in the 19th century, you have an absolute embarrassment of riches for this purpose. Hall says when the AC team was working on Syndicate, much time was spent on "creating those desire lines for players to take" up one of the many enormous buildings in Britain's capital. "How do you attract the players who want to spend their time elsewhere to climb this particular monument you need them to climb?"

But when it comes to Odyssey, "a lot of the buildings and the points of interest we were building were much smaller." Ancient Greece is not exactly short of grand buildings and architectural glories: it's just that none of them are especially tall. The Parthenon is incredible, but it's a mere 14 metres tall: and for high-diving assassins, that just don't cut it.

The tallest structure in Ancient Greece is likely to have been the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. And this is where the Odyssey team hit upon their solution for the videogame version of Ancient Greece: AC games always straddle a fine line with historical accuracy anyway, so adding a few more statues seems like a no-brainer.

"That's kind of where some of the ideation came from when it came to building some of the big statues that we put around Greece," said Hall. "They were always based on mythological or historical fact, always based on working with the research team, working with a historian. But what we did was we took a fantastical approach to the giant statue that then gave us something epic to climb.

"It gave the player a distraction. So you could be on your main quest, going across to a different town, but like: 'Oh, there's that: I'm going to go check that out.' Then you get that climbing, you get that verticality."

Benjamin Franklin once remarked—of his time starring in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed 3—that three may keep a secret if two of them are dead. He was right, because the almost-certainly-upcoming remake of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is probably the worst-kept secret in videogames right now. People just cannot button their yaps about it.

Earlier this month, we wrote about a loose-lipped merch maker who chatted away about "something" happening with AC4 protagonist Edward Kenway in the near future. Now, Edward Kenway himself is chatting about it. Over on X, "The Everything App," Assassin's Creed fan chieftain Zephryss shared a video of Kenway's voice actor, Matt Ryan, chatting with a fan in tones which suggest some kind of Black Flag bombshell is on the verge of dropping.

Ryan's chatting away while signing posters when he asks a fan "Have you beaten the game?" When the fan answers that they have, Ryan gives a cheeky "Well, you might have to beat it again," before flashing a knowing grin.

Could be nothing, of course. Maybe Ryan just really wants fans to re-experience his majestic performance, but that's not all he says. When the fan recording the video says they should run through all the AC games again, Ryan says "Especially this one," noting "there's a reason I say that, but I can't say anything."

Which, look, let's cut the nonsense. Between this, our statue-making friend from earlier, and Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot himself saying the company was cooking up some AC remakes last year, it's practically a certainty at this point that a Black Flag remake is on the way. I'm slightly surprised we didn't catch wind of it during the many games showcases of June, but with former Ubi execs on trial this month for "moral and sexual harassment," it seems likely the company wasn't keen to call too much attention to itself.

The question that remains about a Black Flag remake is when it actually arrives. After all, Ubi has been stringing poor Splinter Cell fans along with talk of a remake of that series' first game for ages now. Might the technically unannounced AC4 remake come out before that one, despite the fact the Splinter Cell remake was officially announced a full four years ago? Stranger things happen at sea.

Assassin's Creed Shadows released 56 years ago: last March, and since then has kind of slipped out of the discourse as hype cycles for new games have been born, ripened, and died. But it keeps trundling on, getting patch after patch after content update after content update, and today marks the game's 1.0.6 patch.

Which brings, you know, patch stuff. Have you been desperate to fix the bug that makes the Onryo Mask visible even when you've ticked the 'hide gear' option? Have you been gnashing your teeth over missing Mastery Points? Have you been lying awake at night, turning over the bug where "tracking the 'Temple Stories' quest only showed a progress bar with no text" in your mind to the point of madness? Then rest easy, comrade, patch 1.0.6 fixes all this and more. Also, try mindfulness.

But in keeping with the AC Shadows roadmap, there are some more dramatic additions tucked in here. For instance, there's a new Nightmare difficulty for the truly hardcore 'ssassins out there, which kind of turns the game into a Kuro's Charm-less run of Sekiro: either you pull off perfect parries or take damage.

There's also a new cutscene headgear toggle and an expanded open-world alarm system, but most notable of all is that AC Shadows has now joined the massed ranks of games that feature the Critical Role guys in it somewhere.

Specifically, it now features Robbie Daymond in his role as Rufino—whom he played back in Critical Role's sponsored AC Shadows one-shot—who you can unlock as another ally once you complete his associated quest. You can also get a Critical Role banner to hang in your hideout and some themed weapons. They loved CR back in feudal Japan; not a lot of people know that.

For me? The most exciting addition is probably the nightmare difficulty. I gotta confess, I really enjoyed the early hours of AC Shadows on Hard. Stealth felt meaningful and powerful, and getting caught was a genuine risk. Even when I unlocked super-tanky Yasuke, fights still felt dangerous in a way I'm not accustomed to in AC.

Then, well, I levelled up enough that I could steamroll everybody in my way regardless of the character I was playing, and I ended up losing interest in the game. Could Nightmare pull me back in? I'm eager to see. Also, I could see in just a few hours if I weren't at work: patch 1.0.6 is out today at 2 pm UTC / 10 am EDT / 7 am PT.

In days of yore, before we had all this internet nonsense, leaks happened organically, concretely. They happened in printed books and in frantic conversations in the cloisters. In the time of the Roman Republic, unannounced videogames were leaked by loose-lipped sculptors in unguarded moments, out of their gourds on hippocras.

A more civilised age, and one we've recaptured thanks to the good folks at PureArts, a merch-maker that deals in a line of swish Assassin's Creed statues, featuring the likes of Ezio, Altair, Kassandra, Bayek, and all the other hooded murderers you know and love from Ubisoft's long-running Pope-fighting sim.

Back in March (via Insider Gaming), PureArts took to the airwaves to show off its range of AC homunculi, and it wasn't long before eagle-eyed fans noted that one protagonist was strangely absent: AC4's Edward Kenway. They asked what was going on and, in a moment of confusion, one of the hosts seemingly gave the whole game away about the rumoured upcoming remake of Black Flag.

"Assassin's Creed fans out there, you should be aware that there is something going on with Edward," said the host, prompting his co-host to quizzically ask if "that" had been announced yet. Undeterred, he pressed on: "I think so… I definitely saw an article about it… there's gonna be something going on with Edward and our PVC, ⅛-scale statue will reflect that accordingly."

Which is about as close as you can skirt to saying 'Yeah those guys are remaking Black Flag and that means Edward's model has changed' without saying it outright, isn't it?

To be fair to PureArts, this is hardly bombshell news. None other than Ubi boss Yves Guillemot was out and about last year saying the company wanted to remake some older AC games, and plenty of people assumed at the time that fan-favourite Black Flag would be top of the list there.

Of course, if we're at the 'merch makers have made tiny plastic men from it' level of game development, you've gotta think that Black Flag remake is just around the corner, no? I wouldn't be surprised to see it rear its head during this year's Summer Geoff Fest, possibly alongside that Splinter Cell remake, just as soon as Ubi figures out which Sam Fisher is which.

Two months in, Assassin's Creed Shadows continues to trundle along quietly in the videogame background, presumably quite pleased with itself for pulling in a bunch of players and making such good use of its delays that Ubisoft now wants to delay a whole bunch of other stuff. The game's 1.0.5 patch released today, bringing a new quest, some tweaks 'n' fixes, and—for reasons I am still turning over in my mind—a crossover with Dead By Daylight (and Balatro).

First up, the quest is called Thrown to the Dogs, and will task you with aiding "a loyal dog avenge his late master" in some sort of rollocking tale that will—here's the crucial bit—unlock a new dog to plonk down somewhere in your hideout. This is what videogames are about, my friends.

Another thing videogames are about: hot brand collabos. AC Shadows is getting a Dead By Daylight-themed event, described thusly: "As villagers begin to disappear, Naoe becomes suspicious of the strange presence attacking the local people of Harima. To succeed, you will need to master unique mechanics and confront a formidable otherworldly threat."

Also, there's DBD-themed gubbins available in the AC store now, which I confess I regularly forget exists and will endeavour to keep forgetting in future. If DBD isn't your style, there's a new Balatro-themed trinket that Ubi isn't telling you how to get, only that you'll have to figure it out.

Patch 1.0.5 also marks another step forward in AC Shadows' roadmap, bringing with it a buffet of parkour improvements like back and side-ejects that favour "foot landings over hand landings," a new toggle that stops you from ceasing to sprint when you go into parkour mode, and—most importantly—a straight-up vertical jump. That one will let you jump straight up if you're under some kind of overhang, because I bet they'd invented jumping by 1579.

I've enjoyed my time with AC Shadows—as did our own Morgan Park in his AC Shadows review—but I admit I've fallen off it a bit as the months have gone on. Just like Valhalla, I can't help but feel like Ubisoft has just made too much game for me to ever get around to finishing. But who knows? Maybe some aspect of the roadmap will have me come freerunning back.

Let's play 'guess the game'. You're a meticulous killer in a historical setting. Your targets are high-ranking aristocrats, priests, merchants—men and women of status who go everywhere flanked by a platoon of guards, who sleep behind barred doors, and whose entire lives are lived publicly. These people cannot enter a room without an eruption of folderol: they're here! They're here!

Getting a 15-second conversation with them would require weeks of prep. Assassinating them? Next to impossible. Surviving the attempt? Actually impossible. For everyone but you, anyway. You pound the pavement until eventually you know your target's itinerary better than they do. When the big day comes, you emerge as if from smoke—from the rafters, the floorboards, the crowd—in a display of specific and spectacular public violence, leaving your untouchable target gasping while you make your escape, using your superior agility and parkour skills to disappear while arrows and shouted curses whizz by your ears.

If the game you guessed was 'Nothing' then congratulations! You are correct. This is no game that ever got published. Once upon a time it was going to be Assassin's Creed 1—it was, at least, the game that was suggested by how Ubisoft talked about the project in the run-up to its release: a historical assassination sim focused on careful planning and dazzling execution, where your uncanny ability to climb and swing from things was what separated you from your clanky armoured foes, letting you evade them even after you'd stabbed their boss in the neck in the town square. It's a game you caught glimpses of in old trailers: Altair was here, an alarmingly young Patrice Desilets talking about the game's "flower box" approach to player freedom, or Jade Raymond walking you through a mission to silently infiltrate a crusader fortress.

What we got was, well, Assassin's Creed 1, a game I have a lot of fondness for but whose fantasy of the careful assassin resolved into repeating some mission templates a few times—obtaining key information you probably never looked at and certainly never truly needed—to unlock the final assassination mission, where you never had to do anything but charge at your target, kill them, and then either jog away leisurely or murder entire legions of guards with a seriously overpowered counter move.

The fantasy wasn't quite there, and AC spiralled into an identity crisis it's still yet to escape from. Rather than knuckle down and tighten up the elements of AC1 that were truly interesting, that had you embody the role of a diligent master assassin, the series splayed outwards, bolting on more and new systems with every iteration—now you're building a town, buying Rome, running a guild, or being a pirate.

Don't get me wrong, some of those systems were great. I loved being a pirate, and I've been having fun shinobi'ing about Japan in Shadows, but as Ubi has frantically bolted more and more parts onto AC as a whole in an attempt to get you to love it and, on some level, to reach some internal understanding about what the hell this series actually is, I've been more and more mournful for that idea that seem to live and die exclusively with AC1: historical Hitman—a clockwork world where you were a fragile but cunning planner without equal, whose wit and speed, and not the ability to massacre upwards of fifty men in single combat, was what struck fear into the hearts of the medieval haut monde.

The closest we ever got to that idea in the mainline series was AC: Unity—where getting into combat was a genuine risk and you could concoct relatively elaborate schemes to lure targets into scripted executions—but unfortunately that game launched with people's eyeballs popping out of their heads and, fair's fair, it was riddled with online nonsense that I never had any interest in. So Ubi retreated and we got the series' current iteration: 'what if we made The Witcher 3?'

I don't think Ubi will ever condense down the great, sprawling identity crisis that is the modern iteration of Assassin's Creed back to that 2007 vision, but someone should. A true historical assassin sim—where you get to strike fear into noble hearts with your limitless cunning—is too good an idea to leave at the start of the century.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is the tale of Oda Nobunaga's quest to defrag Japan, and in tribute to the daimyō's relentless ambition, Ubisoft has announced its post-launch roadmap for the game consisting of patches, feature drops, and "height-gaining back ejects," which videogames need more of as a general rule.

It looks like Shadows is set for a pretty stuffed year, all told. This month alone it's meant to get a new free quest focusing on Yasuke's Portuguese Jesuit pal Luis Frois, vaguely defined "quality-of-life improvements," a photo-mode update, a "special collaboration" which I'm guessing is some kind of co-marketing thing like that Final Fantasy mission in Origins, and that tweak to the game's parkour.

These tweaks will add the aforementioned back ejects alongside "height-gaining side ejects" and a "vertical ledge jump." You can get a better idea of what on Earth that means in the video up top, but in essence, it's just a few extra ways to make Naoe go up.

I'm curious about the quality of life changes, more than anything. I suspect Ubi will patch back in the multi-sell feature it had to yank out because it kept crashing people's games (mine included), but I'm hoping for a little more, too. It'd be good if horses could move at a full gallop while you're auto-following a road to your destination, for instance, but I also wouldn't mind seeing stuff like being able to easily switch characters in shops (for some reason, Japanese merchants have different items in store depending on which character you're playing) and some kind of quicksave option.

Once May's out of the way, Ubisoft is pledging a new free quest, a new ally, new difficulty settings (which is great news—I've leveled to the point where I'm a human Cuisinart even on Expert mode), and vaguely defined stuff like "gameplay immersion options" alongside an "open world alarm system". Perhaps one of those immersion options will include the upcoming option to show your headgear in cutscenes, but I'm not sure how an open-world alarm system would be different from the game's already-existing alarm system.

Anyway, Ubisoft rounds things off with its plans for some unspecified point in the future. Those include new story stuff, new collabs, new daft Animus gear for the game's weird fake battle-pass system, and—most important of all—the Claws of Awaji expansion, which will add a whole new region to Shadows' already mega-huge map. If you're wanting a date on that, though, you'll be disappointed.

Also, Naoe's gonna get a bo staff at some point, which I have to admit is cool as hell.

And that's it! Sounds good to me. I've got my qualms, but I've had a better time with AC Shadows than I've had since pretty much any AC since Unity (although I reckon Origins is still the narrative stand-out of the recent games). More stuff for it sounds good to me.

In the run up to the release of Assassin's Creed Shadows, a lot of people apparently became very concerned about the series' historical accuracy. It was a bit perplexing, because as anyone who's actually played an Assassin's Creed knows, their historical accuracy usually hovers around the same level as an episode of Doctor Who.

A sheen of real-world authenticity goes a long way, especially in the series' detailed open worlds, but Ubisoft's always treated the history books as a set of suggestions rather than a straightjacket—and many of Assassin's Creed's most memorable and exciting setpieces have been born out a bit of enthusiastic revisionism.

That makes perfect sense for a cinematic, blockbuster action game—it's there primarily to thrill, not to educate, after all. But that doesn't mean we can't have a bit of fun raking up some of its most absurd deviations from reality.

So let's take a look back at some of the series' most historically inaccurate moments—and maybe learn a little about the real events that inspired them while we're at it. Maybe.

It goes without saying but: expect spoilers ahead, for many of the games in the series. You've been warned!

A fistfight with the Pope

The game: Assassin's Creed 2

The event: In 1499, Ezio Auditore infiltrates the Vatican and has a battle with a maniacal and magically empowered Pope Alexander VI, which culminates in a knock-down fistfight for the fate of the world.

The reality: Contrary to what you might think, the Pope in this era did not get up to a lot of bare-knuckle boxing, making this event pretty improbable even before you get to the alien technology. But there are some grains of truth here.

For one, Pope Alexander VI (formerly Rodrigo Borgia) was certainly a real dog of a bloke. He reached his office primarily via old-fashioned nepotism, fathered several children with multiple mistresses while in the supposedly celibate office, and helped to enable the Spanish slave trade in the New World, among other things. So his role as a brutish villain in Assassin's Creed 2 is earned, even if he was never truly one of the masterminds of an ancient conspiracy.

The way the fight plays out—via non-lethal combat, with Ezio ultimately sparing Alexander—also respects the history to an extent. He didn't die until 1503, so while you may have wanted to put a hidden blade through his neck in that sequence, that wouldn't have fit with the facts.

Authenticity rating: 25%

Rome's secret landlord

The game: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

The event: Over the course of the game, Ezio is charged with restoring Rome and shaking off Borgia rule by buying up pretty much every property in the city and charging rent for them. How that makes things better is a little murky, but the upshot is that between the years 1500 and 1507, one man ends up becoming the landlord of not only every shop and bank in the city, but also famous landmarks including the Pantheon and the Colosseum. He mostly spends the money on capes.

The reality: While no one man ever owned as much of Rome as Ezio did, it is true that the rich have long loved gobbling up land, charging extortionate rates on it, and then spending the profits on frivolous nonsense (though probably rare for that to be crossbow upgrades and smoke bombs).

There was also a significant shift towards what we would recognise as a system of landlords and tenants in this period, and away from more feudal systems of property ownership. Though the fact that Ezio has a genuinely altruistic mission in mind rather than just loving money blunts the historical accuracy a little.

Rome's famous landmarks have certainly also required restoration efforts over the years too, and though they were probably never up for sale to the first guy to turn up in a hood with a pocket full of florins, they haven't always been treated with the reverence they enjoy today. Not too long after the period in which Brotherhood is set, Pope Sixtus V put forward a plan to turn the Colosseum into a giant wool factory that could employ Rome's prostitutes. Sadly he died before that foolproof plan could be enacted.

Authenticity rating: 32%

All the Ancient Greek monsters were real, actually

The game: Assassin's Creed Odyssey

The event: Over the course of her travels, Kassandra encounters: three cyclopses, a gorgon, a sphinx, and a minotaur (and kills all of them). They're not even hidden, really, and they're not explained away as hallucinations or anything like that. There just were actual monsters in Ancient Greece, I guess. Even the in-universe explanation for this one is weird: they were a bunch of inexplicable genetic experiments created by the Isu purely to freak out their human slaves.

The reality: The mythology all these creatures are based on was real, of course, and Odyssey does go above and beyond in places. The names of the three Cyclopses, for example—Brontes, Steropes, and Arges—are taken from a nearly 3,000 year old poem that describes the creatures.

But, of course, we have no evidence any of these monsters actually existed, and even if we did, they seem a bit out-of-time here. Odyssey is set in 431 - 422 BC, whereas these creatures were already the stuff of mythology hundreds of years before that. Many likely have their origins thousands of years previous, before Greece itself even existed. So it's a bit like making a game set in Edwardian London and having dragons and giants wandering about—anachronistic even if you accept the fantasy.

Authenticity rating: 3%

Black Bart reincarnated as an IT manager

The game: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

The event: The legendary pirate Bartholomew Roberts turns out to be one of many reincarnations of an Isu called Aita, granting him ancient knowledge and strange visions. Hundreds of years later, he returns as a new reincarnation called John Standish and gets a job as an IT manager so that he can enact a sinister plan to upload his god-wife into the brain of a QA tester… or something.

The reality: Well… they at least gave Roberts a really thick Welsh accent, authentic to his real-world origins, and I appreciate that it's so strong it seems to still be fighting to get out through John's American accent.

In fact, mystic nonsense and modern day conspiracy aside, there is a lot of authentic Roberts detail in the game. He really did write his own pirate code, for example, and he did capture hundreds of ships over the course of his career on the seas. He probably was about as much of a lunatic as he is in the game too—he was apparently so confidently outspoken that he went from captured by pirates to captain of the crew within just six weeks.

It is also true that people who work in IT are usually hiding something from you and should always be viewed with suspicion.

Authenticity rating: 9%

Final Fantasy XV's Ardyn Izunia in Ancient Egypt

The game: Assassin's Creed Origins

The event: Proto-Assassin Bayek discovers a tomb in the desert where the number 15 is mysteriously marked on the wall. There he frees the main villain of Final Fantasy XV, who then has a load of swords thrown at him by a giant flying monster and teleports away into space. Bayek is rewarded with an ornate shield, a sword that looks like it has a car engine attached to it, and a frankly disturbing camel/Chocobo hybrid beast that he can ride through the rest of the game. Baffling.

Sure, maybe picking on a crossover quest is mean, but in my defence that shit is canon, and the game doesn't even warn you what's going on. It just drops Bahamut on you and expects you to figure it out.

The reality: Well, we can't prove this didn't happen, given only Bayek was witness to it. But it does seem… let's say, relatively unlikely.

There are, however, many popular theories that aliens were involved in the creation of the Pyramids, explaining their seemingly impossible construction. Could those aliens have actually been characters from Final Fantasy XV, somehow real in another reality?

No, they couldn't, don't be stupid. And there were no aliens, humans have just always been good at building things. Stop watching the History Channel.

I'm docking this one extra points because that Chocobo camel doesn't even seem biologically possible. It looks like it resents its own creation and it makes me sad to ride it.

Authenticity rating: -57%

Bonus round

Let's knock out some quickfire inaccuracies for good luck:

• Leonardo Da Vinci invented and built not only a wide selection of Assassin gadgets, but also a functional tank and a flying machine.
• Ninth century England and Ireland were littered with clumps of powerfully hallucinogenic mushrooms whose ambient spores regularly made Vikings think they were fighting werewolves and ghosts.
• Jack the Ripper's cruel and brutal string of murders were actually the result of a petty internal dispute among the Assassins.
• The French Revolution was orchestrated by the Templars, Robespierre was their sinister puppet, and the French nobility weren't so bad after all. Notably this particular inaccuracy was egregious enough for the French Left Party to label Assassin's Creed Unity "propaganda".
• The Templars initiated World War II via member Henry Ford manipulating Adolf Hitler. Roosevelt and Stalin were also under their control. But then it got out of their control, so they tried to build a time machine so they could go back and kill Hitler before it all started. You know what? I think I'm done.

Yellow paint: it's the scourge of our time. Or at least, that's what I've gathered from the approximately 4,000,000 online arguments that are happening about it at any given moment. People—some people—really don't love it when games splash helpful dashes of yellow on every surface you can climb on, calling it daft and immersion-breaking.

Which, hey, I kind of get, and I confess that the sheer volume of lemon daubed across the walls and trees of Assassin's Creed Shadows has stood out to me, a little. But in a chat with GamesRadar, the game's creative director Jonathan Dumont says there's a real good reason for it: we're idiots.

Well, OK, he puts it more delicately. Per Dumont, AC Shadows originally didn't have any yellow paint in it at all, but playtesters kept banging their heads against walls they couldn't climb, or failing to realise a given surface actually was climbable.

"We didn't have it until players were really struggling in playtests to find their path when engaging in [the] hidden trails activity," said Dumont. Problem was, the game's foliage was just too beautiful: "the environment is lush and full, and giving a bit of guidance is needed."

Which makes a degree of sense. The game's hidden trails are pretty much parkour exams that task you with climbing, jumping, and swinging through them to reach a treasure and knowledge point at the end.

They would be a fair bit harder if you couldn't see where you were meant to go, and you can even rationalise it as the shinobi who originally created the course daubing the intended path for participants.

So that's that explained. It doesn't quite explain who's been nailing planks to all the trees in Japan and painting those too, but hey, whatever. At the end of the day, I struggle to get too het up about these things, and if a splash of paint can help players have an easier time navigating the many freerunnable surfaces of Sengoku-era Japan, I guess that's all to the good.

While it’s not quite as good as Ubisoft's roast of the world’s most pathetic man, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is still a fun time. Clearing out castles as a neck-slitting shinobi is bloody brilliant now that this series, just 300 games in, has finally figured out how to let you smoothly climb down a building. What a nice change from throwing you in a random direction and alerting every guard within fifty miles.

Shadows has also beautifully recreated 16th century Japan at an astonishing level of detail. And then, because this is Ubisoft, it's put glowing floating orbs in all the important places. Scan one of those orbs and it’ll unlock a page in your codex which tells you more about the history of said place. Nice idea! But goodness me, look at the utter state of this:

That massive slab of bone-dry text is almost as long as the terms and conditions I pretended to read when I booted up the game, and even that had more frequent paragraph breaks in it. My eyes can’t help skimming through this dull word avalanche while my thumbs beg me to abandon this screen and get back to the stabbing funtimes.

That’s a real shame, because your knowledge of feudal Japan is going to drastically affect how much you appreciate what Ubisoft have achieved here. I myself watched one episode of Shogun and then my Disney Plus subscription expired. Call me naive, but I honestly didn’t think this would be a problem. Because previous Creeds have been more than happy to be parkour-murder playgrounds that also double as mini history lessons. That’s how I know that Leonardo Da Vinci once invented a gun that helped an assassin kill the pope.

OK, so maybe a little creative liberty has been taken. But these games used to nicely split the difference by having preposterous alt-history missions, and then a codex that essentially told you the truth. When you meet Charles Dickens in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, you team up with him to try and solve paranormal mysteries Scooby Doo-style. But if you open up his codex entry, all that nonsense is replaced with a great factual summary of the actual man’s life:

Fun facts! Good gags! Frikkin’ frequent paragraph breaks! These codex entries are written in-character by Shaun Hastings, the cynical assassin played by Danny Wallace from Assassin’s Creed 2 onwards. His voice is sorely missed in Shadows, a game that takes itself way too seriously and often lacks much character at all. Sincerity is nice and I don’t need everyone to be a tedious Marvel-wannabe quipping machine, but was it really necessary to completely throw the giggling baby out with the comedy bathwater?

I’d settle for the game bothering to clue me into who its major historical cameos actually are. Shadows is a huge game with a massive cast, and yet bizarrely you won’t find pages about any of the characters in your codex, fictional or otherwise. Who is Hattori Hanzō, and why doesn’t the game care to explain why I should be so impressed when he shows up? I’m left with some vague name recognition and a much stronger sense that I’m missing out.

Apologies to all the weebs reading this who just spat bubble tea all over their screens when I admitted to being a Hanzō noob. Fortunately, I was able to remedy my ignorance by finding out loads about him from Echoes of History, Ubisoft’s official Assassin’s Creed podcast. Each episode deep dives into the historical settings of the games and is full of great trivia. So why isn’t there more of this in Shadows?

Even being able to listen to this podcast in-game would be a good addition, as Shadows loves a long commute through pretty but repetitive forests. Perhaps you’re clutching your pearls and shrieking ‘not the precious immersion!’ at the idea of me enjoying a podcast on horseback in the year 1579. But we’re actually in the animus in the flawless year 2025, remember?

Besides, I’m not getting immersed anyway, because I’m struggling to digest the codex entries about the places I’m riding to, and don’t know the historical significance of the people I’m meeting when I get there. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is still a good stealth sandbox. I just hope this series’ underrated side hustle as silly but infectiously enthusiastic history teacher hasn’t become ancient history too.

Ubisoft is continuing to trumpet the success of Assassin's Creed Shadows, saying today that the game has now surpassed three million players a week after its release.

The new big number comes just four days after Ubisoft said Shadows had broken the two million player mark, and points to continued growth for a game the company really, desperately needed to be a hit. More interesting, though, is the mention of money: While Ubisoft has previously stated that Assassin's Creed Shadows has "surpassed the launches of AC Origins and Odyssey," it hasn't (as far as I know) said anything about actual sales.

Now it has: Shadows has put up the "second-highest day one sales revenues in Assassin's Creed franchise history." That's nothing to sneeze at, especially when considering the conditions surrounding the release of the number-one game, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which came amidst the "perfect storm" of the Covid-19 pandemic, when everyone was stuck at home playing videogames at a pace that created an unprecedented boom (and, sadly, bust) for the industry. The release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles at around the same time sure didn't hurt.

In fact, Ubisoft has told employees not to get too hung up on the comparisons with Valhalla, saying "it’s more meaningful to compare Shadows to entries like Origins, Odyssey, and Mirage—games released in more typical cycles." And also, as previously noted, games that Shadows has already handily beat.

The success of Assassin's Creed Shadows, particularly coming amidst a storm of ugly noise on social media (which ultimately amounted to very little in terms of real-world impact), has to be a tremendous relief for Ubisoft, which is still struggling to find its footing amidst a number of underperforming recent releases including Star Wars Outlaws and XDefiant, and a share price that's been in decline for the past five years.

Ubisoft took what looks to be a big step toward addressing those difficulties today, announcing a deal with Tencent to establish a new subsidiary company that will manage the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six franchises, separate from the rest of Ubisoft's properties—but still ultimately under Ubisoft control.

Assassin's Creed Shadows brings some massive changes to the series, whether it's the dual protagonists or its less emphasized RPG elements. One area that is drastically improved upon is the AC Shadows romance options–no doubt good news for all the endlessly thirsty players out there.

While the last few Assassin’s Creed games have certainly had romances, the relationships in Shadows are far more fleshed out, and, in some cases, integrated directly into the story. Both Noae and Yasuke have multiple romantic interests they can pursue, either for one-time flings or lasting partnerships.

Below you'll find all the romance options available, how to get them, and how the system works in Shadows.

All Assassin's Creed Shadows romance options

Naoe and Yasuke have four romance options each, available with key characters throughout the main story quests, and one each in side content. It's honestly quite hard to miss them, especially as they tend to crop up at rather awkward moments.

As a general rule of thumb, every “romance” conversation option is marked with a heart icon in dialogue, so you won’t flirt with anyone by accident. It’s also important to point out that these romance options simply aren’t possible if you’re playing in "canon mode", as you’ll be locked into specific story choices.

If you decide to romance multiple people you’ll also have to make a choice when you get into that new relationship, whether it was just a fling or something serious. Many of the romance options in Shadows end up living at your hideout, so you wouldn’t want things to get awkward.

Make sure to read each step so you don’t miss out on any intimate moments, and of course, be warned, there are spoilers ahead. There are likely more romances we haven’t discovered, so expect this to be updated accordingly.

Gennojo (Naoe)

Gennojo the first romantic interest you'll meet in Shadows, and don’t be surprised if you think he looks familiar–he’s modeled after and played by Japanese actor Mackenyu (Roronoa Zoro in Netflix’s One Piece.) He’s the first character who will join Naoe’s League as an ally and can be summoned to help in battle.

This lovable rogue appears during your first major assassination questline after the prologue, as you go after Ise Sadaoki (The Fool). When you first meet Gennojo in the “Missing Missive” quest, make sure to choose the dialogue option with a heart, saying “Let’s not fight.” This will kick off his romance, so here are the next steps:

1. Complete the Lost Honor quest to assassinate Ise Sadaoki, and during it choose the heart dialogue with “You might be right.”
2. Do the Sake and Swords quest in Yamashiro. Again, choose the heart option in dialogue to say “Depends on what you’re offering.”
3. During the Honor Among Thieves quest, steal the scroll and choose the “I’m keeping it” option in dialogue.
4. Complete the Stolen Hearts quest. Follow the blood trails on the ground to the northwest of the starting position to find Gennojo, then save him from his attackers. Now choose the dialogue option that’s an arrow with a heart through it and say “I’d like to embrace you.”

This completes Gennojo’s romance but he’ll hang out at the homestead where you can talk to him occasionally, and he still has story moments.

Katsuhime (Naoe)

Katsuhime is yet another major character who will join The League as an ally if you ask her to. Like Gennojo, her joining The League can be done separately from the romance–and even if you break off a romance with her she’ll still be your ally. To meet her you’ll need to start your investigation into Onryo called The Naginata, which has a recommended level of 24. Here are the next steps:

1. Follow the investigation until the Showdown in Sakamato quest, and during the dialogue choose the “I like your Teppo” option with a heart.
2. Now do the Letter from Katsuhime quest. After the conversation, follow the marker down the hill, then head past the burned buildings to find a cellar with sake. After that, choose the “It offers time with me” dialogue, follow the marker, and kill the pirates. Now choose “I do enjoy your company.”
3. Go back to Omi and start The Diary of Lady Rokkaku quest. For this, you need to reach Katsuhime before the samurai kills her. Your focus should be jumping on the buildings straight ahead of you, and using the grappling point to swing across to the building above the samurai. Assassinate him first as he’s stronger than the other enemies, and then take down the others who attack you. You need to pick up Katsuhime, carry her down the stairs straight ahead, then turn right and go to the blue marker to finish the quest. Once over, make sure to ask her to join the League.
4. Finally, do The Jounin Pillow Book quest, which takes you all the way to the far left corner of the map. Talk to Katsuhime and choose the heart option. At this point, if you also romance Gennojo you can tell her you’re already taken, to keep it as a fling, or commit and say “Together forever.”

Koshiro (Naoe)

Koshiro is a protective ronin who you'll first meet while investigating The Bull member of the Shinbakufu, so you'll need to be roughly level 30 to start with. But in order to finish the romance, you'll need to get to level 46, making this the last romance option you're likely to meet.

1. Investigate The Bull in the Shinbakufu and complete the quests until you unlock Brothers in Arms, which you'll need to complete to meet Koshiro. He’s right across the river from Miki Docks.
2. Head to Kanki Burned Fields and help Koshiro find Seiji. You can use "observation mode" to reveal blue quest dots, tracking down Seiji in Jorakuji Temple. Make sure to spare Seiji during this quest.
3. Complete all quests and assassinate The Bull. This will unlock Koshiro’s quest, Fallen Soldiers.
4. Starting with The Scout, assassinate four of the targets for Genzaburo's Soldiers. Each one will give you a clue to the next. After this, talk to Koshiro.
5. Now, find Genzaburo to the northeast of the Himeji synchronization point and defeat him.
6. You’ll have to wait a bit until the next quest appears. Once the season changes, Naoe will mention checking up on Koshiro, and the quest The Leaf Turns will unlock.
7. Follow the quest marker to speak to Koshiro. During the conversation, choose the option “You’re more than a blade to me.”
8. Travel to Inariyama Garrison to collect Koshiro’s toolbox. You'll find it under the big tree against the west wall.
9. Meet Koshiro again and choose the dialogue option “We have a special connection,” and then “I’d like to spend more time with you”.
10. Follow Koshiro and choose “You must follow your heart.” Finally, choose the dialogue option “Like me” to finish the romance.

Mayu (Naoe)

Mayu's romance is one of the simplest, but also one of the most arduous. After bonding over their lot in life, Mayu sets you on an elaborate fetch quest of sorts where you'll need to honor all 69 Jizo statues to kiss this grieving widow (coincidence? I think not). These are the small shrines you'll find across the open world that you can pray at for a small amount of XP.

Until now, you likely assumed that's all they were, but they're actually required for Mayu's romance. They'll be marked on your map with an icon that looks like a figure standing in a doorway. Plus, any you've discovered but not honored can be tracked using the map's legend feature.

1. Find Mayu next to the Jizo statue at the north edge of Gose in southern Asuka Rocks Basin, southwest Yamato. After speaking with her, she'll ask that you visit all the Jizo statues, though you only need 35 to finish her romance quest.
2. After honoring 10 Jizo statues, return to Mayu and say "I know that feeling" after she speaks about her past.
3. After honoring 35 statues, return to Mayu again and say, "You can define your own path".
4. Once you've honored all 69 Jizo statues, speak to Mayu once more and choose either "I did it to make you happy" or "I learned to follow my own intuition".
5. Then, at the end of the quest, say "Not before I kiss you" to finish her romance story before parting ways.

Lady Oichi (Yasuke)

Yasuke's first romance option is the only non-ally and actually starts during a flashback. After you’ve recruited Yasuke at the start of act two, start the quest An Education. During the flashback, the first time you talk to Oichi, choose the heart option saying “Some company might be nice.” Here’s how to finish the romance.

1. Complete the quest A Talk With a Lady in Omi. Oichi can be found to the southeast of the Goshiki Highlands label on the map.
2. This unlocks the A Prayer for Omi quest. Follow the objectives, complete all the rituals, and make sure to donate to the shrine. During the dialogue after that, choose “I would spend my last night with you.”
3. Now you need to investigate the member of the Shinbakufu called The Wheel. During this quest, you’ll find out they’re secretly Oichi, and you must choose the option to spare her as Yasuke.
4. Continue following the main story objective until you find and assassinate The Naginata. After this you’ll unlock a quest called The Wheel Turns. Head to the homestead and read the letter, then follow the marker. Talking to Oichi choose “I miss your smile.” Continue following objectives and choosing the heart option until you get the choice to “Enjoy the moment.” This will conclude Oichi’s bittersweet romance.

Ibuki (Yasuke)

Ibuki is one of the final allies you’ll recruit into The League. His quest will become available as soon as you make it to Iga, which has a recommended level of 23. A quest will appear near the northern border on the map to help a ronin fight a bunch of bandits. Head there, defeat the bandits, and start Ibuku’s questline. Here are the next steps:

1. Complete the Homecoming quest and choose the dialogue “I’ll be here with you.” Fight through the fort and keep moving up to the main keep. There you’ll have to fight a boss battle.
2. After the battle, during the conversation, choose “Your mind works in beautiful ways.” Then recruit Ibuki into the League.
3. Do the Putting Down Roots quest at the Homestead. Choose "You have lovely eyes" during conversation.
4. Gather three Anemone. These can be found near Kashiwara village. Use a scout to reveal the area. Then, travel to the village, go across the bridge to the east, and up the hill. One Anemone is in a bandit camp, so you'll have to fight.
5. Bring them to Ibuki to finish the romance.

Hori Hidemasa (Yasuke)

After you've dealt with the Betrayers, you'll have the chance to romance Hori Hidemasa, a retainer under Nobunaga. As you'd imagine, this gives Yasuke and Hidemasa plenty to chat about. This romance is much more understated than the others, but you do get a nice helmet out of it, at least.

1. Find Hidemasi in Miidera Temple, Mouth of Seda, Omi. He'll give you The Betrayers quest, requiring you to track down and kill seven samurai who betrayed Nobunaga.
2. You start with one unlocked on the mission screen, and as you kill each Betrayer, you'll learn about where to find the next one.
3. Once you've killed all seven, return to Hidemasa and choose "Meeting you was my reward."

Rin (Yasuke)

Rin's romance quest is one of the more complicated options, largely because it's so long and spread out between three quests that you can only complete as the seasons change. To start this romance, you'll need to begin The Winter Raiders quest to unlock the Arrow Strike, War Horse, and Ride Into Town quests. Here are all the steps:

1. After speaking to Rin and Gobo in The Winter Raiders, speak to Rin again outside the house, where she'll ask you for assistance. Wait until the next season and then travel to Mount Omori Hut south of the Mount Takeyama viewpoint in south Kumano Sanzan, east Kii, to start the Arrow Strike quest. It's very straightforward, so just follow the prompts.
2. When speaking with Rin during Arrow Strike, choose "Let me help you clean" and "It wasn't my archery you were testing", then complete the quest as normal.
3. At least one season later, return to Rin at the Mount Omori Hut to begin the War Horse quest. Here, you'll just have to soothe a nearby horse and then call your own mount to ride along the trail with Rin.
4. During your conversation with Rin, select the dialogue option "You excel at everything you try".
5. Wait for another season to pass and return to Rin for the Ride Into Town quest, where you'll find her under attack. You can either let her handle the bandits herself or help her, though you'll gain more trust by letting her take them down.
6. During the race to Hongu, lose deliberately.
7. In the conversations that follow, choose the plum onigiri and say, "I want to draw a picture of you".
8. To finish Rin's romance, simply say "I would like to kiss you" at the end of her questline.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has landed some solid success on online storefronts, and an overall decent critical reception. PC Gamer's own Morgan Park gave it an 80 in his review, which is none too shabby.

To celebrate, Ubisoft has gone from avoiding treading on eggshells, to getting its biggest, chunkiest eggshell-stomping boots and marauding through an eggshell field while laughing uproariously, scoring one of the biggest ratios I think I've ever seen on social media.

For context: Ubisoft has found itself in the unenviable position of being caught in the midst of an ongoing culture war over whether videogames are woke or not—woke, generally speaking, meaning anything with the wrong shape of woman or a pronoun selection screen or a Black person or a consulting company present during its development. That is to say, it's a word that's lost most of its meaning.

This time, they were bristling over the inclusion of historical Black samurai Yasuke—never mind that over-the-top historical fiction is the series' thing (Leonardo Da Vinci, you'd be surprised to find out, never built a working tank) nor the fact that Yasuke, and characters inspired by him, have both popped up repeatedly in Japanese anime and videogames. My favourite, by far, is Guilty Gear Strive, where his expy is a big vampire man with a skull mask and a banging theme song.

Ubisoft's initial response to this was to try and meet these naysayers halfway. It held up its hands and stated that Yasuke's position in history was "a matter of debate and discussion". Later, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot would also try to reassure folks that the studio wasn't trying to "push any specific agenda".

It wouldn't be until November that the tone would change, with franchise head Marc-Alexis Coté stating: "We all however face the added challenge of distinguishing between genuine feedback and attacks driven by intolerance. The current climate is tough on our creative teams. They face lies, half truths and personal attacks online."

Now that the game is out, though? Ubisoft's gone from stoic but firm rebuttals to publicly clowning on a tech billionaire. Elon Musk, owner of the platform this happened on and self-admitted supporter of Path of Exile 2's account-trading industry, has been particularly vocal about Assassin's Creed Shadows. Writing, in June of last year, that "DEI kills art".

He's been particularly vocal in the following X thread, too, coming after a streamer who'd done a paid promotion for the game. "Hasan is a fraud," Musk writes, producing his blade and levelling it at his enemy. "'Sell-out' would be more accurate. Objectively, he is promoting a terrible game just for the money." The official Assassin's Creed account, liberating its own steel free from the prison of its sheath, retorts: "Is that what the guy playing your Path of Exile 2 account told you?"

Both stand at the ready. The setting sun bleeds red into the sky, bearing witness to their duel. Reeds sway in the breeze. Elon Musk and the Assassin's Creed Shadows X account flash towards each other. There's a blinding shock of light. As they stagger from the momentum, Elon Musk's post accrues 23,000 likes—a superficial blow. In true Samurai movie fashion, he then looks down to see the effect of his opponent's strike, as over the next 14 hours the Assassin's Creed Shadows account rakes in upwards of 440,000 likes, nonchalantly sheathing its katana with a satisfying click.

To put that in perspective, the Stade de France, which hosted the 2024 Olympics, has a seating capacity of around 80,000 people. The likes on the account's reply could fill up that stadium 5.5 times. The likes on Elon Musk's post wouldn't even book half the seats. 440,000 is a comparable amount, also, to EA's legendarily flubbed Reddit comment, "A sense of pride and accomplishment", which tanked over 600,000 downvotes circa 2017.

The account would then later double down, quoting its own post with the following: "Where other men blindly follow the truth... Remember, nothing is true," a maxim of the series' titular assassin's creed. Even some of the quotes cheering Musk on are taking his lunch money. "$44 billion to get cooked on your own website," writes one spectator, to the tune of 190,000 likes (around 2.3 Stade de Frances).

While I am quietly and respectfully amused by this development, I think the fact that Ubisoft appears to've stopped giving a crap is the takeaway here. Though it's pretty significant that over 440,000 people are also fed up with the outrage tourism, too. The game's out, and as Morgan said in his review, "Is Shadows fun? I'm so glad that one is an easy yes." Nobody—least of all Ubisoft's shareholders—have to wring their hands anymore. As a matter of fact, the gloves seem off entirely.

The first Assassin's Creed Shadows hotfix is live, and in what I have to imagine is seen as good news by developers, the list of fixes is remarkably small.

Update 1.0.1, as it's known, does the following:

• Stabilization - Fixed some global issues
• [PS5] Fixed a Photo mode issue that could cause a crash when fetching photos to display on the world map.
• [PC] Fixed a Photo mode issue that could cause a crash when taking a photo.

Admittedly, the relatively small list of fixes is probably down at least in part to the fact that "some global issues" isn't the most detailed breakdown of all time: One thing I've learned in life is that "some" can mean a little or a lot, depending on the circumstances of the moment and how far things have spiralled out of hand.

On the other hand, Shadows has been out for nearly a week now and there really have been no crises at all, which is something of a notable accomplishment in its own right given how often games seem to set sail and immediately take a hard left onto the rocks these days. No news really is good news, sometimes.

Despite the small number of fixes, it's a fairly beefy update in terms of bytes, clocking in at just a hair over 7 GB on PC. PS5 owners somehow get away with a relatively trim 1.4 GB download, while Xbox Series X/S and Mac owners will be hit to the tune of 9 GB.

Ubisoft recently said Shadows is the second-biggest launch in Assassin's Creed history, a ranking it qualified further by noting the number-one game on the list, Valhalla, was released amidst the "perfect storm" of the Covid-19 pandemic, when everyone was home and bored and thus playing a whole lot more videogames than they used to. Take away those externalities, in other words, and maybe Shadows is the real big dog—or at least, maybe it could be.

Maybe yes, maybe no, and really, it doesn't matter—I'm not going to quibble about the moment-to-moment vagaries of the cold, hard reality in which we live, or read too much into the fact that Ubisoft has thus far talked up big numbers of players but not said much about sales. I am, however, going to be paying very close attention to Ubisoft's next financial call, which will happen in May: That's when we should get a closer look at the Assassin's Creed Shadows' numbers that really matter, and what sort of impact they might have on Ubisoft's future fortunes.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is doing very well. Incredibly well. You wouldn't believe how well it's doing. But despite it all, it's not doing quite as well as AC Valhalla did back in November 2020—Shadows is the second-biggest launch in the series' long history, not the first.

But per an internal Ubisoft email seen by IGN, the company's telling employees that it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to compare Shadows and Valhalla. "Valhalla launched under extraordinary conditions," says Ubi's internal comms, smack-dab in the middle of "widespread lockdowns and brand-new console hardware."

The former of those two things kind of sucked for you and me, but they were great for entertainment businesses. "It was a perfect storm we may never see again," says Ubisoft.

So what does that mean for how the company is thinking about Shadows? "It’s more meaningful to compare Shadows to entries like Origins, Odyssey, and Mirage—games released in more typical cycles," it says, and if you look at Shadows' performance from that angle it's "already setting a new bar."

And while companies are always gonna spin their latest thing as a mondo-success, this seems pretty fair to me. It's undeniable that the videogame industry as a whole got absolutely zooted, just tremendously high on the hog from all the cash that poured in when we were all locked indoors over 2020 and 2021. It's a bit of a statistical outlier: not necessarily something to look to when you're trying to figure out your actual long-term trends.

For its part, Ubisoft talks up 'player engagement' in the email. "Feedback across moderated, verified platforms—those less affected by review bombing—remains incredibly positive," it says. In fact, it's at "record levels," which I'm sure is quite nice, even if it's gonna be money earned, not attention paid, that ultimately decides where Shadows ranks in Ubi's history books.

Oh, and Ubisoft once again emphasises that not keeping all its games off of Steam for a ridiculously long time was a good idea: the stats it's seeing "are a strong validation of our decision to return to the platform." No kidding.

Gamers only want one thing: to put an end to the Warring States period and unify Japan beneath the wise consulship of Lord Nobunaga Oda, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven. Or they might want to kill Oda, actually. I'm not sure. Depends on the game.

Either way, Assassin's Creed Shadows is, per data seen by VGC, the second-biggest Assassin's Creed launch of all time behind AC Valhalla, and it's in no small part down to PC gamers. A full 27% of the game's "Activations" happened on our platform of choice, though it's worth bearing in mind that doesn't translate to 27% of sales. Ubi uses the word activations because it presumably encompasses people playing the game via their Ubisoft+ subs.

More intriguingly, the data says that Ubisoft's return to Steam has paid dividends. AC Shadows is the first major Ubi game to launch concurrently on Steam in six years. Turns out, people like that: Steam played "a significant role" in Shadows' stonking PC performance.

As precisely the kind of idiot who will buy games (on sale) on Steam that I already own on other platforms just so I can keep all my stuff on the same digital shelf, I'm not too surprised. People sure are loyal to Valve's storefront, myself included.

You might think that coming second to the previous game in the series puts a little bit of a damper on celebrations, but it's worth bearing in mind that Valhalla released in November 2020.

For one thing, November is just a juicier sales period in general, but more significantly this was right in the thick of the Covid-19 lockdowns, when we were all desperate for something to do and Valhalla's ludicrously huge open world seemed like just the ticket. Given we're all allowed to touch grass again now, Shadows managing to catch up to Ubisoft's Viking sim seems like nothing to sniff at.

Now, whether it's all been enough to pull Ubisoft out of the spiral of cancellations, poor finances, layoffs, and CEO Yves Guillemot jamming his foot all the way into his mouth remains to be seen, but there's no question it's a win for a company that was desperately in need of one.

And hey, Shadows deserves it. In our Assassin's Creed Shadows review, PCG's Morgan Park scored the game a healthy 80%, praising it as a "stealth action buffet" with "surprisingly great combat," even if the story was a little rote.