Assassin's Creed Shadows devs detail new parkour changes

08 Jan 2025, 17:38 · TrueAchievements

Assassin's Creed Shadows devs detail new parkour changes

Ubisoft has shared a new look at parkour in Assassin's Creed Shadows, with details on the grappling hook, adjustments to the control scheme, and more.

Heidi Nicholas

Published 08 Jan 2025

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Xbox Series X|SHeidi Nicholas
We're getting nearer and nearer to February, and Ubisoft has shared a new deep dive on Assassin's Creed Shadows' parkour, telling all about how we'll be performing acrobatics and wielding grapple hooks while going after the Assassin's Creed Shadows achievements. In the run-through of all the Assassin's Creed games in order, it seems like this'll be the first one to feature a grappling hook since Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

Assassin's Creed Shadows makes several changes when it comes to parkour

Assassin's Creed Shadows features adjustments to its control scheme, a grappling hook for one of its protagonists, and more
Release Date: Friday, February 14, 2025
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC

There are a few interesting tidbits in this latest overview, although not as much as in the previous deep-dives. The biggest things are the new input mapping (with the crouch and dodge buttons being switched), the new movements and opportunities for parkour, greater freedom with dodges and stances, and, of course, that grappling hook.

It's Naoe who has the most interesting bits here, since she's the protagonist with the stealthiest playstyle (and apparently the fastest assassin so far). She's the one with the grappling hook, which can be used on rooftop ledges, to hook-swing across gaps, in parkour routes in the countryside, and as a tool for extending her reach to climb to higher areas.

According to Ubisoft, parkour options in cities and castles will be accompanied by "hidden parkour paths in nature" with tree and rock climbing to take into account.

When it comes to dodging, meanwhile, associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois says "In Shadows, dodge has been merged with parkour down mechanics, which unlocks a whole bunch of new parkour moves." Aside from parkour up options to run up walls and jump rooftop gaps, Naoe and Yasuke will have different capabilities and the devs seem keen to emphasize that "holding down the parkour up button like it's a gas pedal" isn't the best option, especially since it's noisy and pretty visible.

Naoe can use a recovery roll manoeuvre for stealthier landings while the parkour down actions let her dodge into more acrobatic and quieter movements for leaping down from buildings. She's the only one who can do prone directional dodges (like when she rolls out of this bush to assassinate an enemy).

She's also the only one who can sprint dodge over small obstacles in her way to zoom away from enemies more quickly, while Yasuke can instead shoulder tackle his way through any destructible things in his way.

Heidi's Take —

Naoe sounds like a winner for stealth players, but what about those unclimbable surfaces?

Parkour and stealth obviously play more into shinobi Naoe's wheelhouse while Yasuke might have more options in full-on combat, but still Naoe does sound like she lucked out a bit more. Along with being faster and armed with a Hidden Blade and grappling hook, she can do those nice backflip-and-drop-into-assassination moves, as well as having the option for wall ejects when wall running.

Yasuke does have a fair amount of parkour options himself, and if you don't fancy sending Naoe into acrobatic movements across the map, you can still just do the ol' reliable climb-down-and-cling from ledges, hovering uncertainly until we're sure the way beneath is clear.

That swapping of the crouch and dodge buttons is an interesting choice. It doesn't sound like it'll cause much of a worry beyond the adjustment period for those of us who are used to the old-fashioned way, and might end up attempting to crouch and be all stealthy only to instead go rolling across an enemy path like a confused armadillo.

"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," Lemay-Comtois adds.

This could be a great change. We don't know yet how it might play out, but accidental movements can be an irritation in these games — controller clunkiness or not, it was a pain to send previous Assassins climbing up some tall, tall tower only for them to go gleefully diving off again instead of where you wanted them to go. That being said, new moves with the dodge button include “out-of-windows jumps”, so perhaps we’ll go sailing out of windows accidentally instead.

AC games in general could sometimes feel a bit samey when it came to infiltration. It occasionally felt like if you’d done one major fort, you were pretty much set up for the rest when it came to knowing where the loot and enemies might be. New things like prone moves and new animations sound like they might be a good refresh for this, but it's that grappling hook that sounds the most interesting.

We've seen iterations of the grappling hook before, like in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, but Naoe seems to have a lot more freedom with it, especially with that ability to run a little way up walls before flinging the grapple hook to extend her reach.

On the other hand, Assassin's Creed Shadows will still have unclimbable surfaces. "It is important to note that Naoe and Yasuke will not be able to climb on surfaces that do not have physical handholds for them to grab onto," the Ubisoft team says, while Lemay-Comtois adds, "This means we had to be more thoughtful about creating interesting parkour highways and afforded us more control about where Naoe can go, and where Yasuke can't, making our two playstyles even more contrasted."

The devs add that "most of what you'll see in Assassin's Creed Shadows is still very much climbable — especially with the grappling hook — but players will have to look for valid entry points from time to time.” Coming across areas where you were sort of "stuck" for climbing could be frustrating in previous Assassin's Creed games, but this might be balanced out by the greater freedom we have with the grappling hook in the first place.

What do you make of these changes? Let us know in the comments! February isn't too far off now, but if you're looking for more Shadows info, here's our round-up of everything we know so far about Assassin's Creed Shadows!

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Xbox Series X|S
Written by Heidi Nicholas
Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.