Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
We’re getting closer and closer to February, and Ubisoft has shared a new deep dive into the topic Parkour Assassin’s Creed Shadowsto tell all about how we perform acrobatics and use hooks during a chase Assassin’s Creed Shadows achievements. In running all Assassin’s Creed games in orderit looks like this will be the first game to feature a grappling hook since Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows makes a lot of changes when it comes to parkour
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows features tweaks to its control system, a grappling hook for one of its heroes, and more
- release date: Friday, February 14, 2025
- Platforms: Xbox Series S, PlayStation 5, PC
There are some interesting tidbits in this latest overview, although not as much as in previous in-depths. The biggest things are new input mapping (with toggle crouch and dodge buttons), new parkour moves and opportunities, greater freedom in dodges and stances, and of course the grappling hook.
It’s Naoe who has the most interesting parts here, since she’s the protagonist with the stealth playstyle (and apparently the fastest assassin yet). She is the wielder of a grappling hook, which can be used on roof ledges, to swing across gaps, on countryside parkour paths, and as a tool to extend her reach to climb to higher areas.
According to UbisoftParkour options in cities and castles will be accompanied by “parkour trails hidden in nature” with tree and rock climbing in mind.
When it comes to dodging, associate game director Simone Lemay Comtois says: “In Shadows, dodging has been combined with parkour mechanics, opening up a whole host of new parkour moves.” Aside from the parkour options of climbing walls and jumping between rooftop gaps, Naoe and Yasuke will have different abilities and the developers seem keen to stress that “holding the parkour button up like it’s a gas pedal” is not the best option, especially since it’s loud and very visual. .
Naoe can use the recovery maneuver to land more stealthily while her parkour moves allow her to dodge into more acrobatic and quieter moves to jump off buildings. She’s the only one who can do directional dodges (like when she comes out of these jungles to assassinate an enemy).
She is also the only one who can run quickly to dodge small obstacles in her way to get away from enemies more quickly, while Yasuke can instead charge his way through any destructible objects in his path.
Heidi’s position —
Naoe looks like a winner for stealth players, but what about those unclimbable surfaces?
Parkour and stealth obviously play a bigger role in Naoe’s shinobi wheelhouse while Yasuke may have had more options in full combat, but it still seemed like Naoe had a bit more luck. Besides being faster and armed with a hidden blade and grappling hook, she can pull off cool backflips and fall assassination moves, as well as having the option to take out the wall when wall running.
Yasuke has a fair amount of parkour options himself, and if you don’t want to send Naoe acrobatic across the map, you can still do a climb and cling from ledges, hovering uncertainly until we arrive. ‘Make sure the path below is clear.
Swapping the crouch and dodge buttons is an interesting option. It doesn’t seem like it will cause much anxiety after an adjustment period for those of us who are used to the old way, and may end up trying to duck and duck only to roll across the enemy’s path like a confused armadillo.
“This new designation also separates stance switching (e.g. standing, crouching, prone) from parkour, ensuring that you can use any stances without accidentally descending to the surface when you don’t want to,” adds Lemay-Comtois.
This can be a big change. We don’t know yet how things will go, but accidental movements can be annoying in these games – console or not, it was painful to send former Assassins climbing up some towering tower block only to have them happily dive back in instead of where you wanted them to be. To go to him. However, new moves with the dodge button include “jumps out of windows,” so maybe we’ll accidentally sail out of windows instead.
AC games in general can seem a bit samey when it comes to stealth. Sometimes, it felt like if you’d built one main fort, you’d be pretty much set for the rest when it came to knowing where the loot and enemies were. New things like prone moves and new animations seem like they could be a good update to this, but it’s this grappling hook that’s the most interesting.
We’ve seen iterations of the grapple hook before, like in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, but Naoe seems to have more freedom with it, especially with that ability to run a bit up walls before throwing the grapple hook to extend her reach.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows, on the other hand, will still have non-climbable surfaces. “It’s important to note that Naoe and Yasuke won’t be able to climb on surfaces that don’t have handholds for them to grab,” says the Ubisoft team, while Lemay-Comtois adds, “This means we had to be more thoughtful about creating Interesting parkour speedways and gave us more control over where Naoe could go and where Yasuke couldn’t, making our two playstyles more contrasting.
The developers add that “most of what you’ll see in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is still largely climbable – especially with the grappling hook – but players will have to look for valid entry points from time to time.” Reaching areas where you were “stuck” due to climbing can be frustrating in previous Assassin’s Creed games, but this may be balanced out by the greater freedom we have with the grappling hook in the first place.
