Assassin’s Creed Shadows Canon Mode is a new feature for the series, that has been requested by fans and those who are invested in the lore. This mode removes all of the dialogue choices from your interactions with other characters, to dial back some of the RPG elements and instead allow players to experience the canon narrative version of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. If you’re looking to play through the reference story in exactly the way the developers intended then this option is for you, so here’s everything you need to know about Canon Mode in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and whether you can change this setting later.
What is Assassin’s Creed Shadows Canon mode?
If you turn on Assassin’s Creed Shadows Canon Mode then all of the dialogue choices are removed, meaning cutscenes run linearly and you can’t interact to steer the direction of any conversations. In this mode you don’t even get a notification as to when a choice would normally have been available – so in the above early example where Yasuke can choose to reveal he understands Japanese or remain silent, in Canon Mode the cutscene plays out automatically with Yasuke confirming he can understand what is being said and you wouldn’t know that staying quiet was an option. In our experience with AC Shadows, dialogue choices do not have any significant long-term effect on the storyline, so you aren’t missing much other than some short lived flavor in conversations.
Can you change Canon Mode in Assassin’s Creed Shadows once you’ve started?
It is important to note that you cannot change Assassin’s Creed Shadows Canon Mode once you’ve started a game, either to turn it on or off. You should therefore give careful consideration to whether you want to use it or not before beginning a fresh playthrough, as this setting is much stricter than other options such as Assassin’s Creed Shadows Immersive Mode that can be toggled on or off at any time with little or no progress lost. The only way to change Canon Mode is to start an entirely new game, and given the overall size of AC Shadows that is certainly not a decision to be taken lightly, so settle on the level of interaction you want to have with the story before you begin and be prepared to stand by your choice.
Not long after starting the game, you’ll have to figure out how to retrieve the box in Assassin’s Creed Shadows for your first infiltration mission.
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