A new collaboration is live for Assassin’s Creed Shadows with Naoe and Yasuke mixing things up with Attack on Titan. The limited-time quest sees players venturing into the Crystal Cave and encountering a Titan (though it’s a lot less exciting than it sounds). However, the update also adds new microtransactions, which have long been contentious in the series.
On Access the Animus, however, associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois argues their necessity, especially when it comes to post-launch support. “Microtransactions, for all the flak it gets, allows us to do the Isu stuff, the quest stuff, the parkour updates, all of it.”
It’s hard to argue with that, especially given the sheer range of free content, including new story quests, companions, activities like Corrupted Castles, level cap increases, and new abilities. Plus, Naoe is even more fun to control thanks to the advanced parkour additions, and that’s a plus.
The collaboration, however, is a different matter, as fans like The Hidden One on Twitter called it a “total mess.” “Almost 90% of the entire collab quest is just very generic climbing and swinging with really poorly put together routes.” They also called the cutscenes “atrocious”, especially compared to Valley of Memory, a free expansion-sized update for Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Perhaps even more insulting is that finishing the quest doesn’t provide an outfit (like the Mikasa Ackerman digs). Instead, it directs you to the store to pay for them. Suffice to say, this hasn’t gone down well for some fans.
Of course, Ubisoft claims the title is “overperforming”, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see even more microtransactions to accompany the free content. Rumors claim that a free co-op mode will launch next year, and before that, Shadows is finally arriving on December 2nd for Switch 2.
