We could be in for a decently sized Assassin’s Creed game when Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches in February, as its creative director suggests its main story is “comparable to Origins/Odyssey and Valhalla.”
This came up in a new ‘ask me anything’ session hosted by a handful of Assassin’s Creed Shadows developers on Reddit, who were asked how long the game is compared to Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. Slightly confusingly, it’s apparently comparable to all three.
“The length of the game is always hard to evaluate in an open world game as different players will have very different ways to consume the content,” creative director Jonathan Dumont replies. “I think Shadows’ main journey is comparable to Origins/Odyssey and Valhalla.”
Comment from r/assassinscreed
It’s a slightly bizarre thing to say since according to HowLongToBeat, an average main story run of Origins will take you around 30 hours, while Odyssey comes in nearer 45 hours, and Valhalla at 61 hours (don’t get me started on the completionist times). With that in mind, we’ve seemingly been given a 30-60 hour main story scale for Shadows. Obviously, as has been acknowledged in Dumont’s reply, players’ completion times will always vary depending on how thorough they are exploring the world, but he’s supposedly referring to the general campaign here.
Earlier this year, art director Thierry Dansereau told Play magazine that Shadows would be “about Origins big,” which suggested that we can expect it to fall closer to that 30-hour mark. To many, I’m sure this would be welcome – the sheer size of Valhalla, while certainly a boon for those who love it, was criticized for being too long by many. You can definitely have too much of a good thing, after all. Then again, with us having to wait a bit longer than expected for Shadows, maybe fans will welcome a bit more content to get stuck into.