Assassin's Creed Shadows Director Says Recent Delay was to Polish Parkour, Especially on 'Super Complex Roofs'

ign.com:

Assassin's Creed Shadows is expected to launch March 20, 2025, after multiple delays. The most recent was only by a month, which doesn't seem like much time to change anything significant. So why did Ubisoft push the game?

According to the game director: roofs.

At a recent preview event for Shadows, we spoke with game director Charles Benoit, who confirmed that the month delay was "mostly about polishing" and did not change any big systems. The team did update "a couple of things in progression to make it more engaging, also balancing a bit more." But the main feature that needed extra tweaking was the parkour system, which Benoit says was running up against an obstacle unique to Feudal Japan.

"The Japanese architecture, the roofs [are] super complex," he said. "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."

Assassin's Creed Shadow was originally planned for release in November 2024, but was pushed to February 2025 and then again to March, with the company citing player feedback as a main reason for the delay.

You can catch up on our recent preview of Assassin's Creed Shadows. We also learned more today about the long-awaited Assassin's Creed: Infinity, which will appear in Shadows as the Animus Hub.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.