Assassin’s Creed Shadows Director Reveals Why Game Was Delayed A Second Time

Assassin’s Creed Shadows has already been pushed back from its release date more than once, but the most recent delay has a good reason behind it. Ubisoft recently showed off what Shadows’ two protagonists–Naoe and Yasuke–can do with their parkour skills. And those skills were part of the rational behind giving Shadows’ programmers a few extra weeks to get everything ready.

Game director Charles Benoit told IGN that the additional time was used to polish Shadows and balance the progression. However, he noted that the really difficult issue to deal with was the architecture of Feudal Japan, which wasn’t intended to be used as parkour surfaces.

“The Japanese architecture, the roofs [are] super complex,” said Benoit. “Probably the most complex thing that I ever worked with if we compared to Odyssey and Syndicate. We needed specific codes and specific animations to support something super fluid, changing the transition of the parkour to make it even more fluid. So that’s one of the specific feedback that we heard that we wanted to address, and it really improved since the last few months.”

GameSpot’s Jordan Ramée recently had an extended hands-on preview with Shadows, and he noted that he was “regularly blown away by just how pretty this game is and the team’s commitment to creating as accurate a historical fantasy as possible…. I only got to explore a snippet of Shadows’ 1579 feudal Japan, but I could not stop staring at what I was able to see, even when I should have probably been paying attention to the approaching guards.” Ramée added that he is “inclined to go into the full experience with hopeful expectations,” despite not fully experiencing the other aspects of the game during his time with Shadows.

As part of the recent preview, Ubisoft shared more details about Shadows’ new features on PC, as well as the Animus Hub that will debut with the game. Assassin’s Creed Shadows will hit Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC on March 20. But if you need a pre-order guide to the collector’s editions, then we’ve got you covered.