Assassin's Creed Shadows has convinced me that Ubisoft will never make a good RPG

Assassin's Creed made the jump from sneaky action sandboxes to full-fledged RPGs a long time ago, and at first the novelty of all the loot, skill trees, dialogue choices and quests were enough to make it seem like Ubisoft had been successful in its pivot. But the more of these RPGs it makes, the more the gaps become obvious.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is chock-full of RPG systems—possibly more than any other Assassin's Creed—but their lack of depth reveals a fundamental problem that, at this point, I doubt the series will ever overcome: Assassin's Creed is an action series cosplaying an RPG.

It goes through the checklist of RPG traits, furiously ticking away: an absurd array of weapons and outfits, extensive skill trees for both protagonists, frequent dialogue choices, romantic relationships and more quests than any reasonable person has time for. How could this be anything other than an RPG?

And OK, some of this is legit. The power progression of Naoe and Yasuke tickles my RPG-loving brain in just the right way, and while the skill trees don't really lend themselves to buildcrafting and experimentation, there's plenty of fancy bits of gear that allow you to go down different routes—at least when it comes to how you kill your targets.

It doesn't hold a candle to the more pure action-RPGs, whether it's Path of Exile or Elden Ring, but that's not what it's aiming for. This ain't a dungeon romp. It's a story-driven RPG, full of cutscenes and dialogue and character development. It's a shame, then, that Shadows is downright awful at all this stuff.

Temp agency

The phony agency it's trying to sell players on is perhaps the best example of Shadows' failing as an RPG, and the most egregious instance of RPG cosplaying. Throughout the meaty game, we're given a thinnest illusion of choice, specifically through dialogue options. They are meaningless. You are not the author of this story; you're barely an active participant.

Often you'll simply get choices that don't matter—with nothing really changing based on what line you pick. The most frustrating moments, though, are when you pick one of two dialogue options, and after Naoe or Yasuke repeats the line you picked, they then immediately repeat the one you didn't.

Ubisoft created an utterly bizarre canon mode that makes all the 'canon' choices for you, which really tells you everything you need to know about its priorities. Forget choices, you are just along for the ride. Your agency doesn't matter, and this isn't your story. It doesn't even give you the illusion of choice. The explanation for this mode is, frankly, utterly bonkers. Apparently some imaginary players can't stomach the idea of not knowing what choices in this entirely fictional story are canon, so this mode is for them.

Canon mode comes across as Ubi trying to fix a problem that isn't really there. Where other RPGs have settled on canon story beats, they usually only matter for adaptations, like Dragon Age's many novels and comics. They don't intersect with the games, leaving it up to the players to determine their own canon.

Embarking upon any of Shadows' quests reveals the same hollowness, largely amounting to either speaking to someone or killing someone—sometimes both. There's not enough here to even call it bad quest design. There is no quest design. On the rare occasion a quest offers something a bit different—like preparing for and then participating in a tea ceremony—the novelty is undermined by the lack of meaningful choices, engaging conversations, or consequences.

It's particularly hard to put up with these days when there are so many strong contenders to compare Shadows to. Across the last decade there's been a big push to elevate RPG quests—the gripping writing and deliciously varied subject matter of CD Projekt Red quests, Disco Elysium's unhinged, character-focused mysteries, Baldur's Gate 3's absurd level of agency and reactivity—but none of this is evident here.

Knights vs Samurai

Finally finishing the behemoth that is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 right before Shadows was a big mistake. With Henry's misadventures fresh in my mind, the next RPG I played was going to have a lot to live up to, and Shadows doesn't come close.

I keep coming back to a completely incidental KCD2 quest that I'd been avoiding for countless hours. The wife of a blacksmith needed horseshoes to deliver to a military camp, and her husband refused to make them. It seemed like busywork, but I ended up needing some cash, and Henry is a blacksmith after all, so I got stuck in. After making the horseshoes, this seemingly boring quest took a turn. A blood-soaked room, a missing woman, plenty of suspects, an undercover operation, a fight with knights, a love story gone awry.

If this quest had been in Shadows, the blacksmith's wife would have simply told me to kill her husband for being a layabout and that would have been that.

What's frustrating about Shadows' approach is that it shows Ubisoft clearly understands what makes a good RPG. You can't cosplay as a proper RPG if you don't know what a good RPG looks like. Ubisoft has included all the systems and features that you'd expect, but they're thinner than shoji paper.

This also suggests that Ubisoft simply isn't interested in committing. It's had plenty of opportunities, and it has the knowledge, so there's nothing holding it back aside from Ubisoft itself.

There's a lot to like about Shadows regardless—the series has never had better stealth or combat, and Japan is a striking location for a spot of digital tourism—but if you're in the market for a new RPG, this ain't it.