Assassinating people is a big part of Assassin’s Creed. I mean, it’s in the name. You find the target, stab them in the back, and call it day. That should be the case at least, but throughout its history the series has sought to reinvent this simple task again and again and again. Very much to its own detriment at times. In Shadows, it wants to make up the difference.
One of the biggest complaints people had about Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla was the odd decision to split up the open world into level-based regions. If you weren’t high enough level to be in a certain area, enemies will quickly overwhelm and kill you. That also meant they had huge amounts of health and were no longer vulnerable to instant assassinations. That’s always been the coolest way to dispatch your foes in these games, so the idea of taking it away was borderline sacrilegious. On the other hand, changing the game world to match your level at all times frequently makes things too easy. There was no satisfactory middle ground.
Assassinating Should Always Be Core To The Assassin’s Creed Experience
Shadows includes an option to turn on instant assassinations and eliminate this annoyance altogether, despite the fact it has leveled enemies each with different health pools, much like the previous three open-world titles. Standard soldiers and bandits can be dispatched with a cheeky stab, but more hardened samurai or primary targets will suffer a chunk of damage as you are pulled into a standard fight. It lessens the assassination fantasy of it all, so having an option like this strikes a balance I am so tempted to walk.
Last night, I was invading a high-level castle and needed to defeat four samurai in order to gain access to a treasure chest in the central tower. Three of them went down with a single strike, and it felt incredible managing to sneak around the facility as Naoe without being spotted. It’s Assassin’s Creed at its very best, as all of its mechanics combine to turn you into a being that lingers in the shadows until it is their time to pounce. But then I found my final target, a huge fella with an ever-bigger weapon who wouldn’t go down even after I shanked him in the gut.
Cue a massive combat encounter where the alarm was raised, and I found myself swarmed by soldiers I wasn’t strong enough to deal with. I could flee and ruin my perfect run, or die to the onslaught only to reload my save and be stuck in the same predicament.
You can level up Naoe’s assassination skills to deal more damage with a single sneak attack, but that still won’t be enough to down every single target you come across. So I decided to switch on the instant assassinations and tackle the castle again. The result: I had way more fun.
Instant Assassinations Are Fun, But They Also Make The Game Too Easy
Stealth is a condition that you are responsible for maintaining, and Shadows offers all the tools needed to do this. You can use eagle vision and high vantage points to scout out much of the surrounding area by tagging enemies and making note of hiding places, while most of the soldiers have movement routines and behaviour that is trivial enough to predict. You can systematically eliminate enemies one-by-one while searching for your target.
Instant assassinations make this more possible, and don’t artificially break your stride with an enemy who is impossible to defeat with a single strike, even if they might be lower level. When this target is a mandatory objective, it is frustrating to be forced into combat and have your cover blown through no fault of your own. I don’t want to walk away when I’m several minutes into a mission because the game decided someone is too strong for me.
This has happened multiple times now, so instant assassinations are staying until I stumble upon an instance where the game is suddenly too easy, but I’m unsure if that’ll come to pass. I’m still going to find myself in combat encounters outside of stealth on a regular basis, and there is so much to do in this world – especially castles to conquer – that having that broken up by needless barriers doesn’t sound like a good time. But Shadows finally offers a way to avoid that, and honestly, it might be the only way to play it from now on.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Released
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March 20, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language