A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

Ubisoft is rumored to make significant changes to Assassin’s Creed Shadows during the 3-month delay the company announced and will specifically change “Yasuke’s story and how he’s portrayed.”

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

Ubisoft officially delayed the game last week announcing in a press release, “Assassin’s Creed Shadows will now be released on 14 February 2025. While the game is feature complete, the learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release led us to provide additional time to further polish the title.

It added, “This will enable the biggest entry in the franchise to fully deliver on its ambition, notably by fulfilling the promise of our dual protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different gameplay styles.”

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

According to Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming the polishing of the game “includes changing some of Yasuke’s story and how he’s portrayed in the game, fixing architectural details, and ensuring that the game is historically grounded while fitting into the Assassin’s Creed universe.”

Henderson also added that “The game is currently not at the stage it needs to be for release, and I’m told that there have been some tweaks to some gameplay mechanics and elements that are going to take time to incorporate.”

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

Not only did he reveal these changes, but he also shared that Ubisoft was not as dedicated to historical accuracy as multiple developers have claimed.

Henderson shared “that historical experts were brought onto the project much later than usual for a project of this magnitude and that miscommunication between teams and cutting corners when it came to the approval process of assets to meet deadlines” resulted in “many of the historical and cultural concerns” that have been raised by gamers.

He also indicated that Ubisoft management has ignored their own developers who have been calling for a delay. He stated, “Seven developers working on the project said that they have been pushing for a delay for some time, and their situation had even been heard at other studios in the company.”

Screenshot of Sachi Schmidt-Hori and Ubisoft’s Brooke Davies discussing Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Henderson’s information appears to corroborate other rumors surrounding the game’s delay. Brazilian YouTuber tvPH claimed sources informed him the game was simply a buggy mess.

In the above video, he explains using Google’s auto-translate function, “The problem that is going on inside is a very simple one. The game is buggy, which is something that is traditional to the Assassin’s Creed series, right? Especially when they are making this transition and internal technology. Assassin’s Creed Unity was very dramatic. Assassin’s Creed Origins also had a lot of problems at the time of launch.”

“And Assassin’s Creed Shadows also offers a change of internal technology within the game that was most likely causing these bugs,” he continued. “So it’s not a completely new thing, right, a buggy launch of Assassin’s Creed. But there’s a very marked difference in the days of Unity, in the days of Origins, Ubisoft was safer. Ubisoft was calm.”

“But in September 2024 Ubisoft had just launched and seen Star Wars Outlaws flop, which was a game that they expected would completely explode into being one of the biggest titles of the year and from the looks of it, it sold just OK. It sold like the least a Star Wars game should sell when there is no public interest in it, right? And part of the problem was that the game was completely bugged at launch. Ubisoft even had to apologize to the fans and promise that they are working on urgent fixes for performance problems on all platforms,” he added.

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

YouTuber Endymion also indicated Ubisoft is planning to make changes to Yasuke. He shared, “One of the things for sure getting removed from Shadows, according to my sources, is indeed the rap, hip-hop music for Yasuke. Apparently Ubisoft brought out a questionnaire and they were unanimously told that the rap music was tonally wrong and completely unneeded. And that it was actually offensive that Ubisoft believed Yasuke needed a hip-hop battle theme in a game that was set well before such music existed and it was only implemented ’cause Yasuke was black.”

“So that’s going to be gone for sure,” he declared.

“They are also going to be removing dialogue from the game that according to my source told me that it would actually enrage players it they heard it,” he added. “I wasn’t given concrete examples of what kind of dialogue but the source assumed it may have been Yasuke saying some sort of sociopolitical pandering nonsense about he was sold by white men or something and that he hates white men and white supremacy must be abolished and such.”

“They’re also removing this because, of course, if that were in the game it would absolutely be highlighted and used to detract even more people from supporting the game in the future,” Endymion shared.

A screenshot from Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft

As for Ubisoft management ignoring its developers, this was brought up by YouTuber Legendary Drops who noted that executives and even developers were ignoring player feedback and criticism of trailers.

He shared that a developer informed him, ““At a high level, they rarely talk about it, at a project level they brush it off as toxic gamer talk. As Asmongold correctly pointed out in one of his videos, Ubisoft is filled with toxic positivity that prevents growth.”

After being asked about Japanese gamers sharing their own criticism of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the developer stated, “The criticism hasn’t been talked about and [Ubisoft] only issued demands that we mustn’t engage with discussion on that topic publicly.”

What do you make of this latest rumor from Tom Henderson regarding Ubisoft and the changes it will make to Assassin’s Creed Shadows?