Ubisoft is an strange ol’ publisher, closing down teams and killing off so many projects—but the games that do reach us tend to be the most extraordinarily accessible, replete with groundbreaking options to make the games playable for the widest numbers of people, in the most specific ways possible. With next year’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows, there’s to be yet another innovative step: a “canon mode” that will optionally streamline its narrative to one historical path.
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During a Reddit AMA last night, four developers working on the game answered questions about Assassin’s Creed Shadows, including news that the game will feature an “immersive mode” that will have all the game’s characters speaking in Japanese, while explaining that the game’s months-long delay has been used for polish, debugging and balancing, specifically fine-tuning the parkour and improving the parry mechanics. But perhaps the most interesting reveal is the “Canon Mode,” designed to appease players who are concerned about the game’s branching storylines, given the series’ focus on synchronizing with the past.
“Choices come more into play when recruiting allies and romance [sic] some of the characters,” said Jonathan Dumont, the director on Shadows. “Since the fan base is divided on branching dialogues, we have incorporated an option called CANON MODE which allows you to play the game with choices already made for you, to give you a choice free experience.” Elsewhere in the thread Dumont adds, “You will still be able to switch characters in [the] open in this mode.”
This news was met with delight by those taking part in the AMA. “Wait, WHAT??? Are you serious? That’s basically what the fanbase has been asking for since 2018,” said one person. “Oh my god, amazing,” replied another. A third suggested, “Wild pitch: retroactively add this mode to Odyssey and Valhalla.”
Screenshot: Ubisoft
While there are some very loud voices that strongly believe all games should only be playable in their hardest modes, back in real life everyone approaches games very differently. Some seek super-hard, reflex-heavy combat, and want to be told the story by a fixed narrator, while others love to become embroiled in a twisting narrative on which they have huge influence but want to walk away at the sight of a boss fight. And indeed, everything in-between, outside of that, and the whole lot combined.
Ubisoft has been making some big strides in the games it does release regarding letting players structure a game according to their own tastes, and while it’s fair to say the publisher has led the way in this regard, many others are now following. Where once we were lucky to choose between Easy, Normal and Hard, it’s becoming more commonplace to let a player tweak specific aspects of their $70 purchase, creating the tone of game that best suits their desires. (We’re edging closer and closer to my skippable boss fight future.)
It seems yet another step in this direction to offer an option to those who simply don’t want to make narrative choices for whatever reason. There are many Assassin’s Creed die-hards who want a single, pure storyline, to make sense of the game’s reliving history through memory, and find the player-driven deviations, well, deviant. For others it could be choice paralysis—that awful fear that you might be picking the “wrong” option, and then worrying about that instead of enjoying the game. The Canon Mode will automatically select what the developers consider the true, historical path through the game, which the same AMA confirms will have a single canon ending.
And, of course, for those who find the idea plain strange, it is just an option, with a branching storyline for the two different characters set as the game’s default.
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