Assassin’s Creed Shadows gets new parkour system as Ubisoft faces difficult year-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro

Is this enough to encourage you into picking up Assassin’s Creed Shadows? (Ubisoft)

Ahead of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ launch next month, Ubisoft has shared a surprisingly thorough breakdown of its revamped parkour mechanics.

It is not hyperbole to say Assassin’s Creed Shadows may be the most important release in publisher Ubisoft’s history, considering the tumultuous year it had in 2024.

The company’s shares were already dropping all last year and between a string of underperforming titles and cancellations, there have been serious discussions of Ubisoft selling itself off to Tencent.

Time will tell if Assassin’s Creed Shadows is successful enough to pull Ubisoft out of the fire, but in the meantime the publisher is trying to drum up hype for the February 14 launch, with a lengthy breakdown of the game’s parkour mechanics.

Parkour usually comes as standard in an Assassin’s Creed game, especially one with ninja protagonist Naoe as one of its playable characters (although the playable samurai, Yasuke, can do parkour as well).

A recent blog post from Ubisoft reveals that the parkour system has been given an overhaul for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. For starters, long time fans will need to get used to the crouch and dodge buttons switching places.

This is to take into account a new prone stance and the ability to transition from a dodge move into parkour, as explained by associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois:

‘In Shadows, dodge has been merged with parkour down mechanics, which unlocks a whole bunch of new parkour moves,’ says Lemay-Comtois, ‘This new mapping also disconnects stance-switch (e.g. standing, crouching, prone) from parkour, ensuring you can use any stances without accidentally going down a rooftop when you don’t want to.’

The blog goes on to break down all the different parkour moves at your disposal, but despite the wide array of techniques, it also sounds like parkour will be slightly more restrictive than usual.

Compared to previous Assassin’s Creed games, you’ll only be able to scale and climb surfaces that actually have physical handholds to grab onto. This doesn’t mean there are fewer climbing opportunities, but you’ll need to be more creative with how you traverse the world.

‘This is a pretty big deal for us,’ continues Lemay-Comtois, ‘This means we had to be more thoughtful about creating interesting parkour highways and afforded us more control about where Naoe can go, and where Yasuke can’t, making our two playstyles even more contrasted.’

Why is Assassin’s Creed Shadows so important to Ubisoft?

While these changes might be important for established Assassin’s Creed fans, a reworked parkour system isn’t necessarily something that’s going to attract new players.

Maybe that’s what Ubisoft is counting on and is now prioritising keeping hold of the current player-base and maybe winning back anyone who has dropped off the series.

Ubisoft is certainly putting all its eggs in the Assassin’s Creed basket with how many games it has planned for the series, but those plans could radically change if Assassin’s Creed Shadow underperforms even a little bit.

Ubisoft needs a big win after the messy 2024 it had. Star Wars Outlaws was clearly meant to be what propped the company up that year but, despite being a solid game, it wasn’t the blockbuster Ubisoft wanted.

It had what Ubisoft called a ‘soft’ launch last August, and was what apparently spooked them into delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows into 2025.

According to analyst Chris Dring, it was also only the second-best selling Star Wars game of the year, meaning EA’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor sold more copies in 2024 despite being a year old at that point.

This isn’t even mentioning the half-hearted launch of Skull And Bones (a game that took over 10 years to be completed), the abrupt cancellation of XDefiant, and Beyond Good & Evil 2 still being stuck in limbo.

As for the proposed Tencent buyout, talks have apparently stalled due to Ubisoft’s current owners, the Guillemot brothers, being unwilling to relinquish control, according to Reuters.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows being a hit would give the brothers more leverage in a potential sale. Conversely, its failure would reinforce the idea that Ubisoft needs new leadership.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ two playable protagonists will have slightly different playstyles (Ubisoft)

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