While Assassin’s Creed Mirage garnered praise for its stealth and parkour mechanics, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is evolving in pretty impressive ways. In a new blog post, associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois outlined the various changes coming with the sequel, including unclimbable surfaces.
Firstly, dodge and crouch have swapped buttons since the latter plays into the new prone stance. As for the former, it’s now merged with parkour to afford all kinds of new moves.
“In Shadows, dodge has been merged with parkour down mechanics, which unlocks a whole bunch of new parkour moves. This new mapping also disconnects stance-switch (e.g. standing, crouching, prone) from parkour, ensuring you can use any stances without accidentally going down a rooftop when you don’t want to,” said Lemay-Comtois.
While Parkour Up and Parkour Down remain, Naoe can dodge near a ledge to flip off or sprint dodge to leap over rails and crates (or even out of windows). Automated Passovers over small hurdles are possible while sprinting, but sprint dodging offers more damage resistance.
Perhaps one of the cooler techniques is dodging while prone, allowing her to roll out of cover and assassinate enemies. If you dodge backwards on a ledge, Naoe will back flip and land noiselessly. There’s much more to glean, including the grappling hook mechanics, like swapping between vertical ascent and horizontal swinging and ejecting off walls while wall running.
Launching on February 14th, Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. It won’t feature a Season Pass model with the first expansion available free to all who pre-order.