Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Kyoto Doesn’t Look Very Climbable

A first look at the city of Kyoto from Assassin’s Creed Shadows has emerged, and fans are confused about where the series’ iconic parkour features will fit in. The video shows Naoe atop a tower looking over the city of Kyoto. This location is a viewpoint, meaning the area will be added to the player’s map.

From the video, we can observe that Kyoto is neither densely packed nor vertically tall. This could mean there aren’t a lot of opportunities to leap from building to building or climb tall structures, something the series used to be known for but hasn’t been as prevalent in some of its recent entries, like Valhalla and Origins. This depiction of Kyoto appears to be more or less historically accurate but has been downsized to an appropriate size for an RPG.

Day Off in Kyoto

In a Reddit thread by Ajxxt about our first look at Kyoto, commenters expressed surprise and some disappointment about the layout of the city. “Wasn’t it supposed to be half the size of Unity’s Paris? Don’t get me wrong, it looks really beautiful and it’s going to be awesome to walk around and immerse oneself, but I expected the game to have at least one dense and parkourable city,” writes RedditWhales.

The prevalence of private gardens in feudal Japanese settlements inherently means that cities can’t be densely packed, because you need to leave enough space around a dwelling for a garden. This topic can be polarising, as some fans treat Assassin’s Creed as regular period piece RPGs, and others enjoy the fast-paced parkour popularised by the series’ earliest entries.

The selection of feudal Japan as the next entry in the Assassin’s Creed series was highly anticipated before its announcement. Though Assassin’s Creed Shadows has a “solid” number of pre-orders and looks set to be a commercial success for Ubisoft, the game’s development cycle has been a troubled one and the adaptation of feudal Japan has caused some controversy for the studio over the past year.

There was a controversy over the selection of Yasuke as a protagonist, despite the character being based on a real-life historical figure. The argument is that selecting a non-Japanese native in a game based in Japan is disrespectful to the setting. Once again, Yasuke is a real historical figure from the period depicted in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. More recently, officials from the Itate Hyozu Shrine in Hyogo Prefecture announced they would be taking “appropriate action” following the surfacing of a video where a player destroys the shrine in-game.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows releases March 20 for PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Systems

Released

March 20, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language