The game director of the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Shadow revealed some reasons for the game's delay in an interview."Assassin's Creed: Shadow" was originally scheduled to be released in November 2024, and was later postponed to February 2025, and then again to March.
Charles Benoit has worked at Ubisoft for 19 years, and has held various game design and guidance roles in the Assassin's Creed series (as well as Watchdogs and Glory Souls).In an interview, he talked about the reasons behind the delay of Assassin's Creed: Shadow.He said development time was mostly spent on “adjustment and polishing” rather than “significant shifts” in gameplay or design.Benoit mentioned that during this period, the development focus of Assassin's Creed: Shadow was to make the game process more balanced and make the parkour and combat experience smoother.He also made it clear that the adjustments were "really subtle", he said:
“What we really do (using the extension time) is more about looking back at the parkour part and thinking, well, how can we make the parkour on the roof smoother? You also see those roofs—the building structure is quite complex.So, how can we make it smoother? How can we speed up some transitional movements?
"The same is true in combat. Can we optimize the expressiveness of the battle and make it more impactful? So, it is more about adjusting and polishing, rather than saying that we re-do this or add that. We balance the game processSome changes were made in terms of sex, but it was really subtle. We felt like we had a good gaming experience and just polishing it and making it more balanced, which really helped.”
After "Shadow" was postponed twice, many players were worried about the progress of the game and expressed concerns about the behind-the-scenes development.Bernoit's new details about the team's work priorities during the extension of Assassin's Creed: Shadow, let everyone know - and make everyone feel at ease - the extension allows the team to improve the core game elements rather than completely change this popularKey aspects of the welcome stealth action series.
Parkour has been a big selling point for the game so far, and knowing that developers use the extra time to refine and optimize this mechanism (and other aspects) from the delay, for those who are eager to see what the game brings to the seriesThis is undoubtedly good news for players who have changed their minds.As a predecessor to the series, there were a lot of infamous loopholes and technical failures after the release of Assassin's Creed: The Revolution (especially Parkour). Ubisoft's fine-tuning of the game system should ensure a "smoother" parkourFighting with "more impactful" and these are the two cornerstones of the Assassin's Creed game experience.
While any delay usually disappoints players who are eager to play the game, the best result is the ultimate release of any game in the best condition.After some technical problems arose after the release of "Star Wars: Outlaws" last year, Ubisoft said that after "learning lessons" from this release, it will adopt "valuable feedback" from players, which may be "Assassin's Creed: Shadow"A factor in the final delay design.As for Assassin's Creed Shadow, Ubisoft seems to be spending time dealing with the details of Assassin's Creed game experience, the 14th work in the main line series, set in 16th-century Japan.
