Assassin’s Creed Shadows got its first expansion in September: Claws of Awaji. Bringing a new region, new storyline, and new icons to sprawl your objective board out even further, it was a meaty chunk of game in the vein of AC DLCs that went before it—Wrath of the Druids and Siege of Paris for Valhalla, or Fate of Atlantis and Legacy of the First Blade for Odyssey.
Those of you hip to pattern recognition might note that those predecessor games seemed to get multiple expansions (Origins, likewise, got multiple), but it seems that won’t be the case for Shadows. In a chat with JorRaptor (via IGN), the game’s associate director Simon Lemay-Comtois said that, “at this moment for Year Two, there is no expansion on the size of Awaji that is planned, currently.” Which is a tad surprising, given Ubisoft’s recent statement that the game is “Overperforming” against its expectations.
I think the wording here is worth bearing in mind. Ubi’s got no mondo-size expansions in the pipe, but Lemay-Comtois notes that “We’re still working on content for post-launch, and supporting it,” so it’s not quite as though the game is just being dropped. Still, many moons ago—before the game’s release—Shadows did have a season pass planned. It was eventually scrapped, but it seems that this move not to release an additional expansion is a volte-face both from previous games in the series and from Ubisoft’s original plans.
“Any content we want to do in Year Two will probably be more sparse,” says Lemay-Comtois. “I’m not announcing anything at this point, but the strategy for year one was to be quick and reactive, so it means smaller drops, often.
“For year two, okay, we’ve got a handle. We don’t need to put fires out or anything, so it’s more like, ‘Okay, what good chunky little piece of meat we can drop and have people come back to it and enjoy it? … Not to the size of an expansion, but something like Yesterday’s Update Plus.”
Honestly? Suits me. I still haven’t played Claws of Awaji. Hell, I still haven’t beaten AC Shadows, despite having tens of hours in it. It has the same disease of all modern AC games—it’s just too damn big to hold my attention.
Another expansion with another region would just make me feel even more fatigued than I already do. Some smaller updates, tweaks and changes to the game as a whole? Well, I don’t know that they’ll reinvigorate my passion for the game, but they stand a much better chance of pulling me back in.
