Ubisoft is continuing the drip feed of information leading into the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows this March, and this time the devs are breaking down what to expect from exploration.
Basically, you're going to have to work a little bit harder to find your way this time around. "We didn't want to hold the player's hand too much with icons and markers," game director Charles Benoit explains in a new blog post. "We wanted to craft an open world where information was key and would become a form of reward.
This made sense in the context of playing a shinobi and fighting for information. In Shadows, information is something you need to look for and earn, whether through your spies, NPC encounters, or through your own eyes.
In short, we want players to discover all our cool secrets on their own terms through investigation, their spy network, or by observing the world." In previous Assassin's Creed games, you'd unlock giant sections of the world map and details on all nearby activities by climbing and synchronizing viewpoints.
As Ubisoft has previously confirmed, viewpoints now serve as a more narrow place to gather information and discover nearby points of interest.