5 Small Things I Would Like to See Added to Assassin's Creed Shadows

Generally, I'm really enjoying Assassin's Creed Shadows. 

It feels like a return to form for the series following the recent RPG saga. Not to say that those games were bad, in fact I'm a massive Valhalla defender, but after years of watching this franchise change from its original intentions, something like Shadows feels wonderful.

I've not completed the game yet, and will save my full review until then, but up top I wanted to say how much I'm enjoying it. As with anything though, there are things which could be better, and I have chosen five nitpicks that have really been annoying me as I explore 16th century Japan.

1. Headgear in Cutscenes

Naoe has some of my favourite costumes in the series. She's a walking fashion icon. And yet, whenever you start a conversation, even just to use the shops, her hood vanishes. 

I know this isn't a major issue, but I find it truly breaks my immersion. These cool costumes lose their aura the second a cutscene begins to play - I hated it in Odyssey and I hate it here.

The argument from developers is that they probably want to show off the work done on facial animations, which I respect, but a toggle to choose this would work perfectly. Afterall, we managed to get emotional moments with characters wearing hoods in a dozen other games.

Walking Speed

This may be less popular than the first point, but I would also like to be able to toggle the walking speed. Since Origins characters have been jogging everywhere, in fact everyone in games now seems to jog. 

The cool moments of walking towards a battle are sort of gone, and while you can control it with the stick, it's too fiddly to ever be precise. An option to make it so Naoe and Yasuke move slower unless running would again add to the feeling that we're playing something much closer to the original games.

3. Objective Counters

Shadows introduces missions that amount to killing x amount of a certain type of enemy within an area. They're fine, introduced with a bit of a narrative which goes a long way to making it more engaging.

The problem is, the count for this only begins after you speak to the quest giver, and can task you with battling 100 NPCs. Recently I picked one up in Yamashiro after completing the main quest in the area, which meant that the hundreds of bandits I'd already killed in the region did not contribute to this counter. 

My intention was to finish some side quests before moving the story forward, but now I'm certain that mission will never be complete because I'm not going to bother running across Kyoto again waiting for bandits to respawn. If this was monitored in totality then it would make what are very much box ticking tasks feel much less annoying.

4. Selling Items

This one's so simple I'm surprised it wasn't in the game from launch. 

If you want to sell gear in Shadows you have to go to a shop, choose the specific item, and hold the button for a few seconds. You get A LOT of gear in Shadows so if you chose to clear out your inventory it could take minutes of holding down one button. 

A group sell option (where you select multiple items to sell at once) would just streamline this whole process. 

5. Change Time of Day

In Shadows light and darkness play a major role in how successful you'll be in stealth. It's honestly a brilliant design, making your surroundings play a much bigger role in the gameplay. 

Obviously this also means that the time of day you choose to attack a fortress/camp is more important than ever, and yet unlike in all the previous RPG games you don't have an option to skip time. Bayek, Kassandra and Eivor could meditate to move between night and day, but Naoe and Yasuke aren't even able to sleep. 

Unless you are incredibly patient, this will often mean you just attack at whatever time of day it is and make do, meaning a whole system and strategy goes completely ignored. Bringing back meditation would be a really simple fix to this problem. 

If you do want to make it more restrictive, as to provide a bit of an extra challenge, you could always restrict this feature to Kakuregas, the small bases you can unlock across the map. Maybe add a bed into these, where Naoe and Yasuke can go to rest and you get to choose the time of day you want to approach the next target in. 

Conclusion

I'm no game developer, and my understanding of how easy these features would be to add might be wrong. But honestly, everything I've mentioned here feels like it could be patched in with the latest update, and it would go a long way to making the experience more enjoyable than it already is.