Assassin’s Creed Shadows Turns Hideouts Into A Cozy Building Sim
Build a home away from the battlefield.
When you think of Assassin’s Creed, a few fixtures probably come to mind: sneaking through big cities, launching yourself into piles of hay that act like airbags, convoluted conspiracy plots involving the Illuminati and big tech. Interior decorating likely isn’t one of things that occurs to you first, but a new blog post from Ubisoft dives into a surprisingly cozy side of the rapidly approaching next game in the series.
We’ve known for a while that Assassin’s Creed Shadows would include a customizable home base called the Hideout, but now Ubisoft has slipped some key details on how exactly that will work. Located in the Izumi Settsu province, the Hideout sits on an acre of land deep in a remote valley, watched over by a caretaker named Tomiko. Assassin’s Creed games have featured similar bases before, but the difference this time is that players will be able to shape it themselves, adding everything from buildings and decoration to wildlife to the Hideout.
In between battles, the Hideout can turn Assassin’s Creed Shadows into a cozy base-building game.
For the first time in the series, Assassin’s Creed Shadows features a menu that lets you construct new buildings and place objects throughout your home base. Collecting resources out in the world will give you access to more customization options, both functional and cosmetic. Some resources can be picked up right away, but larger caches will require you to mark them for a team of scouts, who will bring them back to the Hideout over the course of an in-game season.
"It was important for us that players would feel the passage of time with seasons," says Dany. "Linking smuggling with seasons was a natural choice: it gives players a rhythm to return to the Hideout, review all they gathered and catch up with the inhabitants."
That rhythm seems to make a lot of sense in a game that’s not primarily about base building. While Ubisoft says you could spend hours customizing your Hideout, most players will likely want to dip in every once in a while between stealth missions, rather than turning the whole game into a bloodier version of Animal Crossing.
Collecting resources out in the world can help develop your Hideout.
Instead of just decorating for the cozy charm of it, improving your Hideout in Assassin’s Creed Shadows brings tangible rewards. Building a forge lets you upgrade weapons and armor, a dojo offers training for the protagonists’ recruited allies, and the stables grant you extra resources each season by way of your scouts. Other buildings offer ongoing buffs, like granting bonus experience or increasing how much health you’ll gain from healing items.
Undoubtedly the most important (by which I mean silliest) part of the Hideout is the ability to bring pets home. Petting cats and dogs in the world will allow you to bring them back to the Hideout to roam, and completing painting of wild animals like deer and foxes will let you fill your home with them as well. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but things don’t really need to when they sound so adorable.
The Hideout building interface lets you place entire buildings and decorate them inside and out.
Human companions can also settle down in the Hideout, selected from allies that players recruit throughout the game. Ubisoft says these can include things like scouts and blacksmiths, who will go about their work at the Hideout while you’re there and even converse and form relationships with each other. Assassin’s Creed game tend to cast you as something of a solitary hero, skulking in the shadows to do your work, despite the fact that the Assassin Order is an organized, hierarchical group. Getting the chance to set up a real base for the Order and see others join your cause over time could give Shadows a much different feel, leaning more into the idea that you’re a member of a large organization rather than a lone wolf.
The Hideout isn’t likely to turn Assassin’s Creed Shadows into the next big cozy game, but the opportunity to take a break from all the stabbing does sound appealing. I’m admittedly a sucker for aesthetic customizations in games, especially when they involve letting wild animals roam through your backyard, but the Hideout could help break up the more tense business of assassination even for players who don’t typically go for cozy town builders.
