Assassin’s Creed Shadows is just over the horizon, and it feels like a game that has swelled in importance since it was announced. The face of a culture war that has since rapidly expanded to include every video game, but one where losses are disregarded and victories are massively exaggerated. But also the face of Ubisoft, a company that once defined open world gameplay, now sorely in need of a win, and relying on a twice-delayed game to get it.

Here’s the real kicker – underneath it all, Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be an Assassin’s Creed game. It may be a good, bad, or middling version of that, but that is what it will be. I don’t just mean in the obvious sense that it will bear the series name, but that it will also have the hallmarks. It will be fun in places, janky in others. Some quests will be cool, many will drag. You’ll reach an inexplicable spike in the story where you’re asked to complete Assassin’s Creed-related tasks when you’d rather just be playing Assassin’s Creed. Underneath it all, Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be an Assassin’s Creed game.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Cannot Be More Of The Same

Can this possibly be enough? The first thing to point out is that we don’t know the financial state of Ubisoft exactly, nor do we know what Shadows’ overall budget was and how much it needs to make to turn everything around. But from the repeated failures of its live-service endeavours, plus Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed Mirage fallingbelow expectations, we can assume that state is ‘bad’ and the amount of money Shadows needs to make is ‘a lot’.

Assassin’s Creed is one of the best known video game series in the world, and is certainly capable of making ‘a lot’. As of September 2022, the last time we got an update, the series overall had sold 200 million copies. Valhalla, the last mainline full-sized game (with Mirage more of a double-A interpretation), is responsible for 20 million of those alone, and brought in $1 billion from sales and microtransactions. Shadows could follow in its footsteps.

But also, many would say Valhalla is just ‘good enough’. Enjoyable, with some cool moments, but never inspiring the love we see for Ezio’s three game run, or the pirate adventures of Black Flag. Five years later, can Shadows be just good enough and succeed? Despite live-service mechanics becoming more commonplace, single-player games tend to get more backlash for including them – though Valhalla admittedly got some at the time – and Assassin’s Creed and Ubisoft have lost some cultural cache since 2020.

While Valhalla was simply The Next Assassin’s Creed and thus fans accepted it doing a lot of the same stuff as the games that came before, there is a fear that Shadows could be The Last Assassin’s Creed, and that brings a different sort of pressure. These fears may be exaggerated – we know that work is continuing on Assassin’s Creed Hexe – but nevertheless they exist and will change the tone of discussion around the game, and that could also hurt sales.

Is Assassin’s Creed Ready For The Culture War?

Another obvious factor that will alter the tone around the game is the ongoing culture war surrounding it. This stems from the fact Yasuke (a real historical figure) is the star of the game. More accurately, it stems from the fact Yasuke is a Black man. These complaints range from arguments that playing as a non-Japanese person in a Japanese setting is disrespectful (something many, many games have done previously), to simple anger at being forced to play as a Black person at all. Ubisoft has stopped short of calling this criticism “racist”, though it has defended the game’s decision to centre on Yasuke.

When critics of the game are editing the cover to include George Floyd or to replace Yasuke with a white man (and Naoe with Stellar Blade’s Eve, a futuristic Korean android), it does not seem as though historical accuracy or cultural respect is the main motivation.

How biased or legitimate this criticism of the game may be is largely moot, however. The fact is it exists, and has dominated the conversation around the game for a year. The old adage that the proof is in the pudding is correct – though few games have been targeted like Shadows, other games like Space Marine 2, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Baldur’s Gate 3 that were once labelled ‘woke’ had this label retroactively taken away when the games launched to rapturous success.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is in too deep for that sort of 180, and so has the job of proving doubters wrong. These doubters may not be acting in good faith, but they are acting loudly nonetheless. If Shadows is just another Assassin’s Creed, good enough at going through the motions but not particularly inspiring, it will likely be dragged down at every turn by people willing the game to fail.

It leaves Shadows with a lot to do. It’s not fair, but it is accurate. Everything I’ve seen of Shadows makes it look like just another Assassin’s Creed game, and if it were any other Assassin’s Creed game, that would be enough. For Shadows, it might not be. We’ll just have to wait and see.