Ubisoft to tone down UI elements in Assassin's Creed Shadows

Ubisoft recently delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows for the second time following the conclusion of playtests, claiming more quality-of-life improvements are being implemented. However, the devs are keeping up to date with more information, and now a new blog post has revealed more information on exploration inside the game.

“We didn't want to hold the player's hand too much with icons and markers. We wanted to craft an open world where information was key and would become a form of reward. This made sense in the context of playing a shinobi and fighting for information,” said Charles Benoit, game director for Assassin's Creed Shadows.

That’s right, Ubisoft has decided to put fewer UI elements that hog almost the entire player screen. It’s funny because a few years back, a few devs, including ones from Ubisoft called out Elden Ring for having minimal UI. Thankfully, the company seems to be learning what players want, besides, Ubisoft already made some incredible open worlds and players might finally enjoy exploring them.

Also Read:Assassin's Creed Shadows expansion will have over 10+ hours of content

Assassin's Creed Shadows brings back viewpoints

The complete blog post is extensive, but we’ll go over key details of what Ubisoft is adding to exploration in Assassin's Creed Shadows. First off is the world map, which will expand as players explore more areas and key locations. This gives players something to explore, information on the map will also vary depending on zoom level. Viewpoints will allow players to explore surrounding areas and mark POIs. These can also be used for fast travel.

There are also customizable hideouts ‘kakurega’ and scouts players can hire to do some extra tasks. Scouts will help players locate objectives when an area is on high alert players can also be tracked and hunted by enemies, to avoid that, either wait out and let the alert level go down or deploy scouts to cancel the alert.

Scouts can also help players smuggle stuff over time. All resources scouts gather can be used to upgrade hideouts. It seems these scouts will be an integral part of the game. Ubisoft says there are a lot more things to do once the game releases on March 20th.