Assassin's Creed Shadows There probably won't be a second major DLC expansion on the scale of Claws of Awaji, said Ubisoft deputy game director Simon Lemay-Comtois. This is a blow to fans who are used to getting a couple of major expansions for Assassin's Creed, and a boon to people who haven't even played Shadows yet, let alone the 10-hour Claws of Awaji, and are getting dry bursts of FOMO. It's me, I'm human.
“At the moment, there are no plans to expand the size of Awaji during the second year,” Lemay-Comtois told the publication. Jorraptorby using Yang Games. “We're still working on and maintaining post-launch content, but it's not full DLC like it was for the Season Pass in previous years.” The developers are trying to “keep things small and reactive and see how the community feels about it.”
In addition to Claws Of Awaji, the first year of the Shadows update brought self-riding horses, awesome parkour, Balatro collaboration, terrible difficultyAnd more conveniently made open worldamong other changes in the situation. The second year “will probably be leaner, not a trickle, but a bigger one, which will shake things up even more,” Lemay-Comtois suggested in an interview.
“I’m not announcing anything at this point,” he continued, “but our strategy for the first year was to move quickly and react, so that means the fallout will be smaller more often than not, but the second year we don’t have to put out fires or anything like that, so it’s more of what a nice piece of meat we can throw in for people to come back and enjoy.”
As IGN notes, in 2017. Origin of Assassin's Creed and 2018s Assassin's Creed Odyssey both had two expansions, while 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla received three, and 2023's Assassin's Creed Mirage begins as another expansion of Valhalla. Why did Shadows stall because of one measly addition? Because it was extraordinarily difficult to develop, Lemay-Comtois explained, it benefited from major technological overhauls (along with the “soft” performance of its stablemate). Star Wars Outlaws) To delayed release.
“I think we've had a big generational leap with Shadows,” he said. “The engine work we had to do on Shadows took a lot of time and a lot of our resources. Post-launch planning was not as clear as with [previous AC games] where the technology is more stable and well known.”
Shadows originally had a full season pass, but Ubisoft canceled it along with the delay announcement and decided to give Claws of Awaji away for free. “I remember during pre-launch we had a Season Pass,” Lemay-Comtois added. “And that situation changed when we moved the release date. That plan changed a little bit and then we had to kind of adapt to the situation. So, because of the new technologies, because of the new generation, because of the pushes that we had in production.”
It seems possible that the decision to stick with just one Shadows expansion also reflects broader turmoil at Ubisoft, which is busy restructuring around Tencent-funded subsidiary dedicated to Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six. Either way, the result is that you AC fans now have about 10 hours of game time to spend on something else. I recommend the same ghostly and treacherous Ninja sign. Alternatively, you can spend it by playing Remake of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, which will definitely not be released in 2026.
