Assassin’s Creed Shadows does a lot of things right. It’s an astoundingly gorgeous rendition of Feudal Japan, has a surprisingly robust set of combat and stealth options, and manages to scale back the story to tell a moving and emotional tale. But there are also a few head-scratching decisions in Shadows, and chief among those is how the modern-day story is realized. The modern-day narrative has long been Assassin’s Creed’s most divisive feature, and for good reason as the quality and importance have been all over the place. It feels like that’s all come to a head now, and Ubisoft is going to have to make a critical decision — either go all-in or scrap the modern story entirely.
Warning: There will be minor spoilers for Shadows ahead.
When you think of Assassin’s Creed, its most defining feature is its historical focus — the promise of exploring different eras of history in a kind of virtual playground. But the other vital piece of the franchise, often more overlooked, is its off-the-wall sci-fi storytelling. Yeah, you get to run around ancient Rome, but you’re also learning about how aliens came to Earth and uplifted monkeys to turn them into human slaves through mind control. These two almost opposing narrative themes are what gives Assassin’s Creed its unique identity, and the sci-fi side of things has mostly been explored through the modern day.
Shadows introduces the Animus Hub — a visual and thematic way to tie the games together. But right now, it mostly feels like set dressing.
In early Assassin’s Creed games, you followed Desmond Miles, a modern-day descendant of critical assassins like Altair and Ezio — living his ancestor's memories while he fights the modern version of Knights Templar in the current day.
While Desmond’s sections weren’t as fleshed out as the historical settings, they were genuinely compelling pieces of the game that helped flesh out the narrative and had a sense of building up to something larger.
But with Assassin’s Creed 3, things went awry, with the game bringing an end to Desmond’s story, and his life. Since then, the series has struggled to find meaningful ways to integrate the modern story, wildly experimenting with a wealth of ideas. In one game, you play an Abstergo employee committing office subterfuge in first person, in another, you flash forward to WWI during an attack on London, where you meet Winston Churchill. The problem is, since Assassin’s Creed 3, none of the modern-day content feels united, both in narrative and overall thematic vision — and Shadows is the worst offender yet.
Shadows is apparently supposed to be the start of a new modern-day “arc.” What that arc is supposed to be I couldn’t begin to tell you, even after playing 100 hours. The modern story is essentially dolled out in two different ways — brief quests that give you cryptic voice over, and a new in-game unpaid battle pass that gives you data logs to read. Yes, I’m really not kidding on that second point — Shadows has gatekept the story behind a battle pass.
The battle pass-ization of story in Shadows is a downright bizarre choice that makes an already lackluster modern story feel even worse.
When you begin Shadows, you get a whole opening cutscene talking about reliving memories of Naoe and Yasuke and the Animus Ego, which is some kind of new version of the device. Across the entire game, there are four quests that unlock rifts in the Animus, with a mysterious voice known only as The Guide directly addressing you, the player, and calling you “the human.” Eventually, a second voice known as Ego joins in, and is clearly hostile to you.
Now I could dive into a lengthy explanation of Assassin’s Creed lore, the god-like beings known as Isu, and who these voices could be. But that’s exactly what's wrong with Shadows’ modern-day story, it’s incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t been playing every game and who knows all those lore intricacies — and even then it still doesn’t really make sense.
You can get even more tidbits of story by doing the battle pass (called Animus Projects) to unlock data fragments, which unlock text entries that dive into a kind of side story that follows a brand new character in the current day. But to do this, you have to do Animus Anomalies that award a resource for the pass, and the current problem is you only get four of these quests every week — of real time. That means if you want to see all those story bits you’ll need to be playing the game for over a month, or at least jump back in to do those anomalies.
Even for someone into the absurd lore of Assassin’s Creed, Shadows has a lot of head-scratching mumbo jumbo.
Yes, the whole thing is understated because it’s setting up a “new” story, but it all just feels so fragmented. And it doesn’t need to be that way. Shadows’ modern-day story doesn’t just feel like a fun Easter Egg, it actively detracts from the game and adds needless confusion into a historical story that already has pacing problems. After years of floundering to find a meaningful way to integrate modern story, it feels like Shadows has started to veer in the other direction.
That brings the series to a crossroads — especially as Shadows’ version of Japan feels like the best-realized historical setting the series has had since Origins’ Egypt. But it feels like that modern story is trying to take a Marvel Cinematic Universe approach, tying each game together with little hints that build up to something — but the payoff has never come. Over a decade since Assassin’s Creed 3, it feels like we’re still just getting little hints and setups that don’t lead anywhere.
There are conceivably two solutions now, either drop the modern stuff and focus solely on historical stories, or go all-in on it. Historical games can still focus on that core Assassins versus Templars conflict, but it feels like the series is ready for a modern-day entry. Something that really pushes things in a new direction and forces the franchise to innovate. Maybe there could even be two distinct halves to the franchise, historical and modern day — with stories that tie together.
Shadows flourishes in its portrayal of Feudal Japan, but some of what’s around that shows the stagnancy of the series’ formula.
Shadow’s modern story feels like it’s there because every Assassin’s Creed game has to have one; a checklist item every game needs, even if you don’t know how to integrate it. I’ve played every single Assassin’s Creed game since the beginning, and I have no hesitation in saying this is the worst the modern element has ever been — and that’s really saying something. Even Valhalla, for as fragmented as its story felt, did a lot to provide modern-day context for the story, with some meaningful character development to boot.
It’s a real shame, because nearly everything else about Shadows feels like the franchise getting back on track. But at a certain point, Ubisoft needs to look at what works and what doesn’t — what people come to Assassin’s Creed for. If that means excising a modern-day story like an annoying boil that won’t go away, so be it.
