It's a little embarrassing to admit but I am sometimes paralyzed by choices in RPGs. In fact, I am currently in the midst of a Very Big Situation in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (if you've played it, you'll know what I mean, and if you haven't I'm not going to spoil it), and it is absolutely killing me. Which isn't to say that I don't appreciate the freedom to choose my own destiny, but sometimes it's nice to just lie back and let the currents take you where they may.
People who share that feeling as they're forced to choose this guy over that guy may appreciate a clever new addition Ubisoft has cooked up for Assassin's Creed Shadows called "canon mode," that literally takes the choices out of your hands.
"Choices come more into play when recruiting allies and romance some of the characters," director Jonathan Dumont said during a recent AMA on Reddit. "Since the fan base is divided on branching dialogues, we have incorporated an option called Canon Mode which allows you to play the game with choices already made for you, to give you a choice free experience. Hope this makes it fun for everyone."
That's the other drawback of choice-based gameplay: The choices you make may not stand the test of time when the inevitable sequel comes out. That can be genuinely irritating. I'm still a little chapped that Metro: Last Light opens a year after I launched a missile strike against the Dark Ones, even though I made a very specific point of not launching a missile strike against the Dark Ones in Metro 2033.
The Metro games aren't RPGs, fair enough, and so player choices carrying smoothly from one game to the next are perhaps a little less vital than they are in, say, Dragon Age. You could at one point say the same about Assassin's Creed, but as we noted way back in 2017, the series has evolved from primarily a stealth-action joint to a genuine action RPG.
Not everyone who embraces Canon Mode will do so because they're terrified of making the wrong choice: Some people just don't care about silly sideline nonsense like romance. Whatever drives you, though, I think it's a smart idea: A single, linear narrative for people who want to ensure they follow the "correct" story path, and non-stop-in-your-face action for those who just want to get on with the stabbing and the slashing.
Dumont also talked a bit about how developers have approached storytelling in Assassin's Creed Shadows' non-linear campaign, which will involve some of the choices players may or may not opt to make. "Most of the main targets' questlines can be tackled through exploration and are not in a predetermined order (although the gameflow does suggest an optimal path through exploration and progression)," he wrote.
"However, each target has a coherent story with [a] bottleneck section that can introduce more linear and cinematic narrative sections. The particularity is that we leave open many sections to be played with Naoe or Yasuke which can impact the way some of the questlines evolve."
He also touched on the last-minute Assassin's Creed Shadows delay, which pushed the game from November to February 14, 2025, saying it's "been great to be able to tweak the game and push the overall quality."
"We’ve been able to make changes and tweaks on parkour for example, or touch up parry mechanics or work on cinematic transitions," Dumont wrote. "For example, we felt there was a stickiness in the parkour, the delay allowed us to accelerate the responsiveness of inputs and fix rooftop behaviors that were impeding on Naoe’s fluidity. The team is making something we are all proud of with this extra time."
