Ubisoft has reflected on the legacy of Assassin's Creed Shadows, a year on from the samurai blockbuster's launch.
Shadows arrived exactly a year ago today, following its high-profile delay and various pre-release controversies. The game was followed by a major expansion last fall, and a Switch 2 version right before Christmas. But, earlier this month, Ubisoft said it was moving on from the game, prioritizing future Assassin's Creed projects rather than providing substantial support for a second year.
Now, at an event designed to celebrate the game's first anniversary, Shadows art director Thierry Dansereau told IGN he was proud of the game's release, and that its technological advancements would benefit future games in the franchise.
"I'm proud that we shipped the game!" Dansereau told IGN. "I was at DICE not so long ago and shipping any game is a small miracle, according to all developers. It's quite a challenge, and with Assassin's Creed there's a lot of people involved, so it's a collective challenge.
"The legacy, I think, is we've pushed quite a lot of things: we've improved parkour, stealth. Fighting we've pushed certain elements of it. In all the systems, we've guided a lot of technology in the game that I think will become legacy for future ACs." Here, Dansereau specifically called out Shadows' addition of real-time ray traced global illumination to the franchise's graphical engine, and the development of Atmos, Ubisoft's weather system that dynamically changes lighting, cloud generation, rain and wind effects on a fly.
"There's quite a few things that will make their way through [to future games]," Danserau concluded.
Which games might these be? Ubisoft has a pipeline of future Assassin's Creed titles in production, including its long-awaited (and finally now confirmed) Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced, which fans expect to launch later this year. Beyond that, the series' next all-new blockbuster will be its witchcraft-y Assassin's Creed Hexe, though that's not likely to arrive until 2027 at the earliest.
Beyond these, Ubisoft is still planning to release its Ancient China-set smartphone game Assassin's Creed Jade (which was announced years ago, though nothing concrete has been heard of it in a long time) and the Assassin's Creed live-action Netflix series, which is now filming.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
