Assassin’s Creed Shadows Grounds Its Open World In Reality Without Spoiling The Fun

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is celebrating its one-year anniversary today, March 20, 2025. Below, we look back at how its immersive and sometimes unfriendly open world makes it feel real.

We’re so awash in open-world video games that they can all start to feel very similar, like theme parks waiting for you to activate the ride. They’re often designed to be as frictionless as possible, promising that you won’t go more than 30 seconds without finding something to do; it can make a meticulously designed world feel more like a playset than a place. Some games pull off open worlds better than others, though, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows features my favorite open world in years. It feels like a place, not a theme park, and makes for an immersive play experience that feels like it actually fits the “open” in “open world.”

Photo-real visuals have always been a big part of the Assassin’s Creed series, which has featured realistic-feeling cities since the series’ first entry. It’s no different here, but the Ubisoft Quebec team took the visuals of in-game environments to a new level with Shadows, and it makes for maybe the most beautiful and natural-feeling world since Red Dead Redemption 2. Forests are dense and, even during the day, dark. Cities feel open and bright–a side effect of the shorter buildings when compared to most other Assassin’s Creed titles. Roads are alive with civilians, soldiers, and the occasional bandit. Every square foot of the world is teeming with wildlife, from dogs and cats and all manner of ungulates to an incredible density of insects that comes to a head during summer.

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