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Throughout the Assassin’s Creed series, one of the most useful weapons that the titular characters have is the iconic hidden blade, something that, unlike Odyssey, is front and centre in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
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While Naoe does have a hidden blade and can use it for stealth kills, Shadows’ position as an RPG with levelled enemies means that it won’t always be as useful as you’d like against more powerful enemies. Luckily, there’s a way to change that.
How Assassinations Work
If you’re playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows on its normal difficulty, then assassinations are a little complicated. Just like in the other RPGs in the series, the hidden blade can be used in stealth to instantly kill enemies that are the same level as you or lower, but if you’re not as strong as them things are a little different.
If an enemy has a higher level than you, the assassination symbol that pops up when you’re behind them will have a different colour to indicate that it won’t be a killing blow. Naoe will instead deal some considerable damage to them that’s akin to a heavy attack, but it won’t be an instant kill like older games in the series.
Samurai characters can also only be assassinated from the back, so if they spot you as you approach them then they’ll instantly counter your attempt.
How To Turn On Instant Assassinations
As you can imagine, this choice was fairly controversial when it debuted in Origins, with fans unhappy that such a powerful tool now had to be levelled up. To combat that, Shadows allows you to toggle an option that activates instant assassinations, allowing them to be performed at any time regardless of player level.
To find this option, simply go into the game’s settings. Then, head over to Gameplay and select Difficulty Tuning. This menu will let you tweak the combat and stealth a bit, which includes toggling Guaranteed Assassinations on or off.
Turning this setting on will make it so that Naoe can assassinate any enemy that she comes across no matter what level the player or enemy is at. This makes things a lot easier if you’re a particularly stealthy player and negates much of the grinding that you might have to do otherwise. That does mess with the game’s flow, but at least it’s left in the hands of players.
A bit of a warning now, though – there are a few targets in Assassin’s Creed Shadows that you can make a complete joke out of if you turn Guaranteed Assassinations on. That is a bit more in-line with the older game in the series, but just be warned if you want more challenge!
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