The Ringer-Verse - Can ‘Assassin’s Creed: Shadows’ Save Ubisoft? | Button Mash

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Ben, Jessica Clemons, and Arjuna Ramgopal get their 16th-century stealth on as they share their spoiler-free impressions of the highly anticipated, high-stakes sequel that brings the ‘Assassin’s Creed’ franchise to feudal Japan. They discuss what’s new, what’s not, what works, and what flops about the long-awaited title, as well as why its success is so vital to the future of beleaguered developer/publisher Ubisoft. Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Jessica Clemons and Arjuna Ramgopal Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. It's the Masked Man here, David Shoemaker. It's officially a WrestleMania season, and we've got you covered here on the Ringar Wrestling show. Kaz here, every Monday and Thursday hang out with me and my gosh shoes from the Masked Man show. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal, and Brian on Tuesdays for Ringar Wrestling worldwide, where we hit on the most interesting headlines and even react to some of masked men's and even your hottest takes. Don't tap out, tap in to the Ringer Wrestling Show feed now on spot.

Or wherever you get your podcasts. Worldwide. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimfaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trimfaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease

and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trimfair radio.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business.

They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. And welcome into the ringer verse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor for the ringer and Button Mash sensei welcoming you to Assassin Season. I have been spending many hours exploring 16th century Japan in the company of two new fictional friends named Nauwe and Yaske. And today I'm joined by two older friends, human flesh and blood friends, of which I have many

because I'm a very popular person in real life. I just choose to hang out with computer characters sometimes. My first very real podcast companion is, as anyone who has listened to Buttmash before knows, the world's biggest Assassin's Creed fan. Cannot get enough of this franchise. put one in front of her, she will play it to completion. She's also just generally obsessed with stealth games. Hacking and slashing, not her style.

If she can't sneak around slowly, silently, she is not interested. And today, she snuck into the studio to record this podcast. Actually, she signed in at the front desk. I got an email when she arrived. Nonetheless, her name is Jessica Clemens. You set me up for failure. You sent me up of it. The thing is, I will say, this game so far, the longest I've played of Assassin's Creed.

And I have comments, concerns. And I have some praises. I have some praises, though. I have some praises. So don't tune in just thinking I'm here to lay it all out because I do have some praises. So there were some minor inaccuracies in my intro is what you're saying. Minor? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Well, maybe we booked you for the wrong episode. We've made a huge mistake. No, it's okay because you're an impartial party. You're coming to Assassin's Creed Shadows, not as a mark, not as someone who's in the tank for this franchise. You're looking at it with impartial, objective eyes, and we will see what you saw. Our other companion has previously joined us to discuss Star Wars Outlaws. So I guess you could say he's our Ubisoft specialist. But he's also been on button mash to talk about Indiana Jones in the Great Circle.

So maybe he's our historical epic franchise specialist. We bring him in for the big IP. We could also just say he's a senior podcast manager at the Ringer. And the Ringer versus scheduling mastermind secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes like those pesky Knights Templar. He's my pal. He's your pal. He's Arjuna. Ramco pal. That's me.

You know, sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith, Ben. Into a big bale of hay, which is conveniently placed. They'll never find you. And it's cool when they do it. I said it. It doesn't matter what setting or what century. There's going to be a bail of hay right where you need it to be. You can count on that with Assassin's Creed.

We have gathered today to talk about a game. We have all been busy exploring, a game that many of you have been playing too, probably because it came out last week for PS5, Xbox Series S-slash-X, Windows, Mac. We've been climbing and riding and stabbing and looting and leaping from high perches as we play Assassin's Creed Shadows. the 14th, count of 14 mainline entries in the Assassin's Creed series of action, adventure, RPGs. RPGs in air quotes, kind of an RPG, but still, it's the first new Assassin's Creed game since Mirage, which came out a year and a half ago. Jess's favorite game, as I recall of all time. Ben, stop it.

Also, I don't think that's far off from a lot of other people's critique. Mirage was a smaller scale game. started as an expansion, sort of a throwback stopgap to tied players over until the next full-fledged sequel, which has now arrived four and a half years after Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which is an eternity for Assassin's Creed. This one was made by Ubisoft Quebec. That's the lead team from Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Odyssey with help from 17 other Ubisoft studios minimum. That's just how Ubisoft rolls. The credits for this game, which none of us has reached, roll for roughly two hours or maybe two and a half.

No. No way. No way. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It's like when you get to the end of an episode on Disney Plus and you're like, wait, there are eight minutes left. And then it's over and it's like localization and translation.

It's like that. But I don't know, times 10 roughly, which is, look, it's nice that they're giving people credit for working on a game because some companies, they don't give people enough credit. And, you know, you can skip it if you want. But this time, the series. the series has headed for feudal Japan by popular long-time request with multiple playable protagonists, the aforementioned Nowe and Yaskay. Why don't we go around first and just give our quick takes?

And then we can discuss the stakes for Ubisoft, which I say as Ubisoft and you both say as Ubisoft. So we will just fight about that silently for the rest of this episode. Wait, how do you say it? Ubi. Ubi. That's how I say. Ubi. I like Ubi's more fun, though.

You are welcome to say Ubi. Even people who work for Ubi slash UB can't seem to agree on how you say it. So I think it's okay if we can't either. But this is sort of a high-stakes game for this company and for the industry. So we'll talk a little bit about that before we dive deeper into the details of the game. And don't worry, we won't be spoiling any plot points. It is a big game. And we haven't quite finished the story since we've just been taking our time to stop and smell the flowers

and stab people and get stabbed by people. and roam about the countryside. So we couldn't spoil every plot point, even if we wanted to. But let's just give our high-level summaries of how we're feeling about this game thus far. Jess, as the world's biggest Assassin's Creed fan, what would you say about your time with Shadows thus far? You know, I've been waiting for Shadows because this is a setting that I love in video games and just media all around.

So I was very excited for this. You are literally the world's number one Rise of the Ronan. fan. I think that's not even exaggeration. That's still number one. Yeah. I'm still number one. Still number one. Might not be a second, but I'm still number one.

Yeah, dude, straight up and I am. And so I was very excited for this. I was like, oh, I think this will be my first like Assassin's Creed that I'm super down for. And the stealth makes sense for it because I was like, oh, yes, I'm going to be the number one. In all, and we'll get into it more, I think it's mid. I think it's mid.

I think the story is pretty boring. And the fun that I do have at the story is at the very beginning. And then it kind of just drops off. And I don't know where it's going. But in terms of playing the game, I think the combat's really fun. And I love the different, like, parts I can use with Noi. No, no. Now way.

Noway and Yoske. Oof, so sorry if I butcher it. I keep doing this, even though they say their names a million times. It would be sucks. It would be sucks. A million times. Everyone's saying their names. I love playing as her, and I think a lot of people agree, or maybe they don't,

but I love playing as her way more than I love playing as Yaske. And to set me up playing as her, to go to him next kind of was just, I was like, why did you even set him up for disaster like this? Because now I don't want to play as him. I want to play as only her. But because she's so cool, that's the part that really got me wanting to continue playing the game was only for her. So it sucks when I have to be forced to switch.

but all around I give it like again a mid I don't think it's all that great I understand their vision I see how big they went I just think it's kind of

lacking I think it's interesting right because the story I mean you hit on the story element Jess where you're kind of like the story's a little boring it's a little mid

it's a very classic old school Assassin's Creed like it reminds me the first one where it's like here are like 12 people you have to eliminate to get to your final person, right? Because this is a classic revenge story.

Yes. And it kind of feels that way because it's an open world. You can kind of do it in any order you want after you get through some of your introductory levels. And it took me a while to get into the game, I think, because of that, especially because, you know, going into the game, you know you can play as these two characters. And I don't know about for you two, but for me, I played as Noway for like eight hours before I unlocked at Yoste. And it was interesting because I agree with you. I enjoy. playing as her way more than I like playing as him. I do like that the characters feel very different, right?

Because when you think back to Syndicate, when you think back even Odyssey, where you have the choice of you can play as either or the different protagonists, they objectively feel pretty much the same. There's such a difference here, which I do appreciate that they tried for that, where Yoske is not any type of assassin, right? Like, he is a full-on tank. When you play At-Sam, you are playing as this kind of different character that it's just more like, hey, if you like that hack and slash type in Assassin's Creed where, you know, Ben, I know you infamously do not like any stealth elements, you could just go in and you're like, I'm just going to destroy everybody.

Yeah. And it's going to be, it's going to be really fun. Did either of you, one interesting thing about Yoske, I don't know if either of you did this is you can do the leap of faith with him, but it's super funny. She just kind of like, and disgracefully falls off. Yeah. I was just like, it's really fun. So I do actually just unintentionally sometimes when I fast travel in the game, fast travel as him. And I do a leap of faith with him because it is objectively hilarious.

But for me, it felt like a slow start, but I think different from you, Jess, I kind of liked the game more as I played it more and more. You know, I think it obviously has a lot of the elements of origins and Odyssey and Valhalla where it is more open world. There are these kind of this large sprawling map and you can kind of do a lot. And it's not perfect, but I think this game, some of that stuff felt more fun to do than the actual story itself. Kind of how I felt about outlaws as well, Ben. Sometimes it's just more fun to go around and do some of the side quests and do some of the more like world type things. You know, I would always kind of chase the little painting you would do with the animal. Like it felt like a fun challenge of trying to crawl through the grass.

A great game for pet lovers, which you would not expect of an Assassin's Creed game. But I was like, this is all the animals. No, no. The dogs kept running away from me. So then I stopped trying to pet them. But I will say, and we'll probably get into this later, it was a lot of the glitches that were the dogs sitting up, like, upside down. And then they would run away without moving their legs.

And I was like, oh, so they're not going to. Got a lot of notes on the glitches. Look here. I don't care about them dogs. They didn't walk right, and they walked away from me. Well, you're a cat person as you. But there are lots of cats to pet if you're into that, too. But I think I'm going to be the high man on this one.

This is exciting because I think if Jess is saying mid and Arjuna is somewhere in the middle, I'm really liking this game. I'm really enjoying this game. I'm all in on Assassin's Creed shadows. And I was, if anything, less psyched for it potentially than Jess, because I texted you a while back just when we were planning this episode. And I was like, are you ready for another Assassin's Creed adventure? Do you want in on this?

Like, are you done with this friend? Do you accept this assignment? And you were in, I guess, because of the setting, partly. And you were, if anything, just more psyched for this sequel than I was because I kind of burned out on Assassin's Creed, as I think a lot of Assassin's Creed players did. And maybe as Assassin's Creed developers did. And that's why they kind of took a step back and waited a few years between installments here.

But this one is working for me. I am really enjoying it. Now, if you're thinking, oh, they've had four and a half years, they have probably reinvented the franchise and rebuilt it from the ground up, and it's just going to be completely different. And if you didn't like Assassin's Creed before, now is the time to get on board. I wouldn't say that. I would say this is still very clearly and identifiably Assassin's Creed. And four to half years is not that long a time to make a gigantic open world game in this day and

age. It's just that we got spoiled or tired, I guess, of Ubisoft just cranking these things out every year or two. This is, I think, a more healthy, sustainable pace. But still, like, it takes all that time to put a game like this out. And this one was delayed a couple times in recent months to get that extra polish, which we can talk about, whether that was accomplished or not. But after Outlaws came out and everyone thought, oh, this could have used a little more time in the oven. Ubisoft said, OK, then we will let this one cook and season a little longer. And for me, it paid off. I really am liking this. I was not looking at the clock. The time was just going by quickly. It's one of my

favorite open worlds in a video game ever. And I will talk a little bit more about why and all the details that bring this place to life. But I think even though we've seen a lot of feudal Japan lately in video games, in TV, this maybe didn't feel quite as fresh, given all the other times that we've taken those adventures in the past several years. But I thought this was about as well. realized a vision of that setting as possible with good combat, good controls, some variety in the play styles. I definitely share a lot of your critiques about whether you want to play as one or the other.

But for me, like, the time was just going by. And I didn't feel the same pressure that I have felt in previous Ubisoft games to just cross off everything. And there's just so much map clutter and I feel overwhelmed because it's kind of a happy medium, I think, between the old school Assassin's Creed games. And the more recent ones that just got a little bit bloated for me, a lot of people like them. But I think for me, the say 60 hours that it might take to get through of a Valhalla and maybe like a hundred hours if you really want to stop and see some stuff, it's just a bit much. Whereas shadows, which we haven't finished, but based on our pace and everything we've read, it's maybe like a 30-hour base game.

And then, you know, probably up to double that if you take your time. So it's somewhere between the old school more confined and contained games and the ones that just got super sprawling. And for me, I think it's kind of like the Goldilocks game for Assassin's Creed that just blends a lot of the elements of previous Assassin's Creed that I liked and perfect some. And maybe it's just absence made the heart grow fonder, at least for me. Maybe. For some of us. I get it. I'm like, I'm here for it. I'm recognizing everything you're saying.

And I'm like, I'm still like, and maybe this is just me changing. I don't know. I do really like story because that's the only thing that gets me interested in what the main mission is. I want to keep going along with it. But there was just so many NPCs and so many stories. And it was really hard to keep track of like, okay, I need to go against, I need to kill these people. But I also need to do these side quest. And I need to level up.

And I love the amount of ways to level up. The fact that there is like basically a battle pass already that they're like, yeah, you can get more resources this way. But I'm like, oh, so you want me to do the same 40 things over and over and over again until I complete the game? And it felt really repetitive at one point where I was like, okay, I'm going to go kill this guy. They don't want me to kill him. I'm going to kill him. And then I'm going to get a note of where to go next. And I'm going to get this cut screen and I'm not going to remember who this person is.

And I'm going to go back and do that. And I do that every single time. And the only thing that interrupts that is like a shrine or me wanting to draw an animal. and I was just like, okay, so I'm doing the same things. After a while, I started being like, I don't need to listen to half these people talk. But then that's me because I'm like, oh, I don't really do well with Assassin Creed game. So I don't know if this is the normal formula for an Assassin's Creed. Yeah, that I just don't like.

But I did like the stealth part. And I tried my damned hardest with that stealth part. That's the thing. We've talked before about our lack of affinity for stealth and lack of skill for stealth. I think it's fair to say for both of us, maybe. But for me, if it's well implemented, then I'm fine with it. If it's a game that's built around stealth and the stealth is satisfying, it's more like with outlaws where it just felt grafted on and it felt frustrating. And of course, they acknowledge that by attempting to fix a lot of

it post-release. But when it's like stealth elements in a game that isn't really built from the ground up to be a stealth game, then I often find it frustrating. And I often just try to bypass it and just run and gun and hack and slash. But if the stealth is satisfying, and this is Assassin's Creed, so it is. There's a long legacy of that, coupled with the combat, so you can blend both. I thought that worked pretty well here.

So despite stealth not really being my cup of tea, there are a lot of cups of tea in this game, by the way. But it worked well for me. What about you, Arjuna? Yeah, I mean, Assassin's Creed has always had plus stealth, and I would say that continues here, especially with Norway. as she's the only character that can do

that can do stealth. It's really fun, I would say, in terms of just doing it and doing that with her. I did like that, Yaske, you can't do stealth with him. It's actually not possible, right? So, like, if you, you know,

like the aforementioned forts that they have, right? Where do they have these big forts where you clear out the three, four, five samurai that are kind of in the forts. If you do it with Yaske, you just have to go in and you have to brutally murder everybody. You have to, like, brutally do it, and there's no way to really,

disarm the alarm bells. You're going to have the guardian figures kind of come at you and you just have to go all the way in. And I actually liked that wrinkle within this game that you had the ability to do that with a different character who's kind of built that way. I love it. But then I felt like

it was so useless. Because I never chose it. I would always go in Norway because you can do the stealth. It's easier. Right? Like the stealth in Assassin's Creed is always forgiving in a way because, you know, the MPCs are not the smartest.

You can, and it's, there's, my, my favorite hack was always just like, if I ever got caught as Nalway, go on the rooftops, lie flat, they could never find you. And those shadows. And you lose them. And it's just like, okay. They can't climb so well. It's a significant problem for them, but yes. But that was the best.

I love doing that. I was, I kept taking out any light, any extinguish. I just did that just so she would be in the shadows. Yeah, exactly. And why, but that's the thing. That's what I makes me. And this might just be my irritation. I'm like, why even give her all that?

and then give us this guy that I'm not going to play as. It felt like when we did, and I tried, I tried so hard going through this game, not comparing it to any other game, but other Assassin's Creed. But I was like in Spider-Man, what I really liked with Spider-Man 2 was I was like, even though, like, sometimes it was a little indifferent,

majority of the time, you're either Miles or you're Peter and you're having fun. This one, I was like, no, strictly. You're not having a lot of fun maybe with Yoske. And the thing is, that was the thing. I understand he's not like an assassin. He's not going to be in the shadows, but I was like, she literally disappears in the shadow. She has this grappling hook to like lift her up and just hide.

And she can do anything. The game is called shadows. You should just be in the shadows the entire time. You should just be in the shadows the entire time. But I did like, and that was the thing, because I, even when I play tabletop, I'm usually the big dumb hymbo that runs through and just attacks everyone. So that was the part of Yaskin I was like, oh, I'm going to like this. That was part of my thought. When you were going to play this, I was like, there's another route for this.

There's another alternate play style. So you could maybe be just the hackens slash brute force guy. But I kept going back to her and maybe it's me trying to feed into the Assassin's Creed stealth because I was like, you can't stealth with him. And I spent, I spent like 10 hours with her. I spent forever for her because it takes me so long to get to these levels that I was like, okay, let me play with her a lot. Oh, I perfected her.

Then I get him. And I'm like, oh, so I just got to be loud and clunky. Yeah. Even if I assassinate him, it alerts everyone around me. So I was like, I got to run through this. and then I would die. The biggest mistake, I think, in the game is not introducing him faster

in terms of playing with both of them at the same time. Obviously, the very first mission you play is with him, and then you don't get him, potentially for like eight to ten hours, depending on how you play that first kind of part that introduces you to both characters, familiarizes yourself with the story slightly, and then, yes, Yaske goes away for a very long time.

He disappears. For a long time. Like, really for that first, like, pretty much the majority of the first act of the game. And so it's tough. Don't we basically do the training everything to learn how to play the game with her? Yes.

And then we go back to it. And then you get back. And I think that's, yeah, that's an acknowledgement of, I think, just how much better she plays and just how much more central she is to the Assassin's Creed experience. But then it does also feel like, yes, I appreciate the variety. And they do really handle differently. They feel different and you approach the levels differently. But it's ultimately just not nearly as satisfying to play. as Yaske because this is Assassin's Creed.

So there's some other games where you would want to be Yaske and you wouldn't want to be anyone else. But in this one, you want to be the stealth Shinobi character. You just have the cooler like finishers too, honestly. Yeah. And that was also my, okay, so I got a lot of beefs. That was also my beef was like,

it felt like, and this again could just be me not being well versed in Assassin's Creed. I had to go into the settings and edit so many things that I just felt like should have been default. And one of those things was like how I fight the goons. I was like, oh, I put everything on easy. I put it on story mode. I said they have the one for like, oh, do you want it to be just like a quick assassinate, like kill? Yeah, 100%. And then I was like, these people are really easy to

take out. So easy that I even had to bump it up a little bit. And then I went, oh, okay, they're a little bit harder. It makes sense. I'm actually hiding in the shadows. But then when I went to the hardest one, I was just hitting them over and over again, and they weren't dying. And I was getting irritated. I was like, okay, do they normally play like this? Am I, are they just punching bags that take a lot of damage? So it's interesting, like, especially with these open world ones, you know, which they started since origins, you know, they would have the sections of the maps, which are leveled off, essentially, which it's like, yeah, it's open world, you can go anywhere. But if you're not the right level, you're just going to get messed up, right? And even if you, like,

stumble into maybe the wrong place on the map, it's like it's going to be really hard and you're going to struggle and it's going to be difficult. So it's like, here's the illusion of an open world, but we're going to give you kind of a path to go with with your enemies and the levels. And I think that's what these newer Assassin's Creed games have like

really leaned into. And, you know, they obviously have a lot of the different character types and archetypes that you kind of fight and, you know, it's going to benefit some weapons. You know, you have the different weapons that you can have with both of the different characters and stuff. But that's just like, sometimes it's a level of customization

that I wish was a little bit more optional, the Assassin's Creed, where it's like, I have the different weapons and I can engrave and I have to think about the different attributes that go with it. And for me, like, especially because, again, this is a versus stealth game. So it's like, I'm going to fight at some points, but I don't necessarily want to have this level of customization.

I wish that was added more like, that was easier to maybe edit, because sometimes it's just like, oh, do I have the right weapon because I'm fighting this brute? Or do I have the right weapon because I'm fighting this kind of like scrappier Ronan? Yeah, or something like that.

There were certain weapons I noticed that I was like, because I will give them, I will give them this, which I was blown away by because I don't think I've played a game, it's been long since I played a game where I can reset my entire skill tree. I thought that was great. I was like, oh, beautiful. So I could try a lot of different weapons,

but they all hit the same amount on certain people. that's what made me irritated. I was like, oh, once I leveled up or once I made them a little bit harder to fight, it didn't matter if they were small. Didn't matter if they were giants. If I was using a katana, if I was using something else, it was the same amount of pressure it took to hit and it was pissing me off. Again, I guess my beefs are like small irritations that I'm like, hmm, someone should have fixed this. I'm excited that you spent so much time in the menus and settings though. You know, I had been and you know why I did that because I knew where I was coming. I told you that there are settings in the menus and previous pods.

You're like, I wish you could do this. And I was like, you know, there's a setting for that. The thing is, I never said it. Because sometimes I like going, especially when we're reviewing the games, I'm like, let me go in the same way a beginner would, which they're not editing the settings. But Assassin's Creed is so heavy that I was like, nah, you guys have to go in and fix it for yourself.

Listen to the actual settings. There's so much in this game that it honestly got me a little confused at first. That's why I spent more time playing. the game, editing the settings, then actually hanging out at my hideout. The hideout part was like Sims to me and I don't understand Sims. And it was so confusing. And I know you need that. I know you need the entire hideout to get more resources.

But it's so hard to understand. We'll talk about that and more in just a moment. I just want to pull back a second here. And for people who are not big Assassin's Creed fans or they're wondering, why does this matter to me, maybe a non-gamer or someone who's not going to play this game? what are the stakes here? And I know it can be tempting and potentially tiresome

to turn every new release into a referendum on how some major corporation is doing. The state of the MCU, the state of Star Wars, the state of Ubisoft. But if there was ever a time to do it,

it would be this one, because Ubisoft has a whole lot riding on the success of Assassin's Creed Shadows. And just to recap the past few years in Ubisoft, following from all of the workplace harassment,

in toxic workplace culture, revelations, and lawsuits and reform, just in terms of the actual games. Ubisoft used to be a perennial powerhouse where every year they would be cranking out one, if not more than one of the best-selling games in the medium. And lately, they've been struggling. So skull and bones was a debacle that took forever to come out, though not as long as Beyond Good and Evil 2 has. Maybe we will see that someday. the Prince of Persia's sense of time remake has also been in development hell.

Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, was great but didn't sell well. Star Wars outlaws, we mentioned, was fine, often fun, but kind of forgettable, also missed sales expectations, ex-defiant, shut down. So they've sort of slowed their output, and also when they have made these big bets on games, they just haven't really paid off. So the share price has tanked, not that we're owning Ubisoft stock over here, or monitoring that all that closely, but it affects the future of that business. And, you know, Shadows was delayed multiple times just because there was a sense that they had to get this right.

And Ubisoft said in January that it was taking decisive steps to reshape the company and actively exploring various strategic and capitalistic options to unlock the full value potential of its assets. Aren't we all trying to unlock the full value potential of our assets? So there's been a lot of, of reporting and speculation that Ubisoft in concert with Tencent, which owns a stake in the company, may be considering a buyout or potentially Tencent taking it over, taking it private, Ubisoft starting a new venture to keep some of its core properties and selling off some others,

breaking up the company in some form. The vultures have been circling. So it's been one of the biggest stories and sources of speculation in gaming all year, just what will happen to Ubisoft. and is shadows make or break. So maybe it's sort of a simplification to say that any one game, no matter how much it bombs or is a huge hit, could actually salvage a company or just be the last nail in its coffin. But it really has felt like this game had to be good. And it had to please people and it had to sell well.

Or else this death spiral was just going to accelerate. Yeah. I think it's for the most part mixed-ish. It's hard because I also, a lot of the reviews I have been seen for this game are a lot of review bombers and review hypers, if that makes sense. Yes. And they're doing it out of like the bit. They're doing it out of the bit of what Assassin's Creed is. And it kind of sucks because I'm like, no, I want to hear actual people's stakes.

And for the most part, I think a lot of the gamers that get to do these reviews are like, the gameplay is very fun. I like playing in the game. And also they think it's really gorgeous. I feel like Assassin's Creed has like a, has a loyal fan base, right? In terms of just like, it's kind of like the MCU or, you know, Star Wars or some of these other big IPs and big franchises where I think there's a lot of people within that space that just want a game that they could like. And I do think this game probably does enough for people to want to check it out, to, you know, buy the game, to check it out, to spend some time with it. I definitely think people there's going to be people that love it. I think they're going to people that are going to dislike it.

But I think if you're a fan of... On this podcast, in fact. Yeah, exactly. If you're a fan of the series, though, I think you're going to check it out. Now, is this going to bring in new fans? I don't think so. What?

In terms of, like, for new, it's like a new Assassin's Crews trends? I was thinking that's what it was going to do. I think the most... I don't know. I've been feeling like the Assassin's Creed, the, like, the people are like, this is what I've been expecting.

Sure. And it's not what I wanted. That's who they're... That's upset. I feel like the new people are like, oh, this is a... big world. To me,

Assassin's Creed is like Madden now, right? In terms of like, you either buy Madden every year or you don't. And it's almost like Assassin's Creed, even though we've had a little bit more time now between games, you either kind of buy the game or you don't. And there's always going to be people that kind of nitpick and be like, where's the update?

Like, what's really different? And I think there are some differences with shadows, but like at the core, it is still an Assassin's Creed game. It is still very, and especially like these more recent ones of like, there's a big open world.

you have the, you know, you go through, it's the same type of story. You know, there are these differences, obviously. But I think, like, it is such an established formula now that you're kind of in or you're not. And I don't, it's, I feel like it's been going so long, too,

where unless you do have a drastically different game. Yeah. It is hard, I think, to maybe break that cycle of what an Assassin's Creed game is, very much like what is a Madden game. Like, a lot of sports games in particular. Does it feel like, is it too much? much for an Assassin's Creed game

or is it too little for an Assassin's Creek? It feels like it has the exact same fundamentals and it feels like it looks, it doesn't look the same, but it has like the same building blocks. I think to Ben's point, and you've both talked about this before too when you guys did the Mirage pod of,

you know, Assassin, like, part of the reason they did that smaller game was because Assassin's Creed had gotten too big, right? Valhav and Odyssey and Origins were just these mammoth games where you're like, oh my God, there is all this map clutter. I have all these things. to do and like it just takes

so long to kind of beat this game that I'm like overwhelmed and it gets repetitive and you're like I kind of get the vibe of it after 10 hours do I need to really put in the 40, 50 hours to finish this game maybe not necessarily because I'm just doing the same thing over and over again shadows again we haven't completed the game but it feels like it is a nice happy medium to Ben's point

where it's going to be like some repetitiveness but it's not overwhelming because even just looking at the map and playing through it for you know, the 20 hours that we've played, there aren't like 50 things on the map that you have to do all the time, right?

The game does feel like it is contained to like take out X amount of targets and you get to the end, right? We assume, I guess we don't know, actually, if that's the case. Maybe there's a twist in the story, but... The size of it is about the same as origins, so smaller than Valhalla and Odyssey,

which is good, again. Like, it feels big, but not absolutely overwhelming. And this is a big bet because this was the setting that people have been calling for since the start of the franchise. And maybe that even speaks to Ubisoft's desperation to some extent. Although, again, this game was greenlit so long ago that it was before a lot of the recent returns. But there was a sense that like break glass in case of emergency. Like when we really need a hit, when we want to give the people what they want, we're going to go to Japan because it just made so much sense for this series. And as I said, that's become a crowded space recently, whether in gaming with Sekiro or Rise of the Ronin or Ghost of Yote coming later this year, one of the most anticipated games, or just elsewhere in media with Shogun or Blue Eye Samurai, which has a lot in common with the plot of this game, if you've seen that series, which you should.

So it does feel a little bit like, okay, we've been here and seen this a lot lately in some other really well-recently. received and well-done releases. And yet this one stands up to it, you know, Rise of the Ronan, you could lump in there, too, just his favorite. But there's been a lot, but it didn't feel overdone. I don't think it has the same, like, freshness or novelty value that it might have if this game had come out five years ago, let's say. But I don't think it's disappointing either now that they finally gave people what they want.

And thus far, the returns have been pretty positive. The critic and player reviews on the whole, pretty good. The sales and player counts and streaming viewership have all looked good as far as we can tell from publicly available information and what Ubisoft has chosen to announce. So it seems to be the best start than an Assassin's Creed game has had other than Valhalla. And that came out in 2020 when everyone was at home and just playing video games 24-7. So I think given that, it does seem to have justified the hype thus far. And it's off to a strong start, whether that is a. enough to rescue Ubisoft or save Ubisoft.

I don't know that a single game could do that, right? But it does seem to be on track to be a hit by Assassin's Creed standards. Just maybe not like leveling up and finding some entirely new audience that wasn't here before. So if that's what they needed, I'm not sure they're going to get that here. Don't worry, Ben. The new Outlaws DLC coming this spring is going to save Ubisoft. Yeah, that'll finally fix everything. They'll fix it.

It'll fix it. It'll fix it. We can fix Ubisoft. We can do it. The three of us. If we all just donate $5. This is like Wikipedia, right? If we all just separate. We all just come together. We can do it. We can save Ubisoft. We can fix them. Crowdfund. Crowdsource Ubisoft.

You want another game? We'll give us $10. I will say one thing I do appreciate that they've done with this one and they did with Mirage too is removing the present day, animus. kind of storyline from Assassin's Creed. To me, as a long time player in all the Assassin's Creed games, I always thought that was by far the week as part of the franchise. And was the one that always felt just kind of tacked on or added to or was like,

all right, I want to get back to playing as Etsio or whoever the protagonist was. And I think it's a good thing to just remove that as much as possible. We don't need an explanation of like how we're back in this thing. You know, it's like, like, yeah, the present day storyline's kind of weird and has gone into a weird place,

I think, where it's just like best to leave it alone. I like that you can go to it, though, on the settings. When the game first started, I went, whoa. And I thought it gave us every game to play. Going back, way back, I texted you guys, I was like, this game's taking a full day to download. So I thought for a moment when I- I thought when it opened up, I was like, oh, it's every single game. There's like the Ubisoft launcher where you can access all the other recent Assassin's Creed games.

I was like, oh, my God. And I thought about it too. I was like, damn, I'm going to go play Valo. And then I was like, oh, it was just little clips. But I thought it was a really cool feature. I loved the way it looked. That was really cool. And I wish it would have stayed a little bit more than me having to see random things throughout the game.

Yeah, there's still some vestiges of that modern day storyline. But I am with you, Arjuna. I thought it was cool initially in the very first games when it was just for people who don't know, is the conceit is that you're in the modern day and there's just this ages long battle between the assassins and the Templars and you have to go back into the past to find out things that are hidden in the genetic memories of the characters that you're playing as. And so you're the descendant of the playable character and you're doing stuff in the past so that you can discover secrets, which then you can use in the present. But it just became completely bad shit after a certain

point. Like, it just ran off the rails. There were, like, prehistoric super beings and, like, aliens. Yeah. It's just, like, eternals. There were just, like, you had to watch hours long, lower videos to figure out what was going on in Assassin's Creed, and you still wouldn't understand it. So it just got a little high on its own supply. And it's probably for the best that they, they dialed it back a bit. Spoiler warning for those who have not played Assassin's Creed Odyssey or care about the modern day storyline. But in Odyssey, in Odyssey, see, it's revealed that your protagonist lives all the

way to the present day and gives the staff to the animus controlled player, Laila, I believe or Lila, is her name. And I was just like, this is getting insane. Take it back. Take it back. What's happening. That's so funny. Well, let me tell you

what's happening on the Ringiverse feed. We will take a quick break here for some programming teases. We've got a bunch of button mashing coming up. April's going to be a busy month around these parts because next week, Big Nintendo Direct, which figures to be full of significant Switch 2 reveals, plus the Minecraft movie is coming. A Minecraft movie, I guess is what it's called.

For now, it's the Minecraft movie. Start in a franchise south of midnight the following week leading up to the Last of Us season two. So we got lots on our plate. Send your questions, comments, feedback of all kinds to ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. This Wednesday, we will have Daredevil Born Again, episode five and six reactions from the midnight boys, pew, pew, and not long after that, the March edition of Ringaverse Recommends. Get your listener recommendations into Ringiverse Recommends at Gmail.com. Over on House

Bar, you'll find Yellow Jackets and Daredevil Deep Dives this week and next. And Arjuna's here, so he will skewer me with a katana if I don't remind you to follow at Ring Reverse on Instagram and TikTok. And of course, YouTube, the native platform of Jessica Clements, where you can like and subscribe and watch all your ringerverse favorites not butt mesh sometimes butt mesh occasionally butt mesh it would be just too much visual splendor unleashed upon you all to put every butt mesh on there we'll get there we'll work up to it just in increments you know ease you into it i mean ben if you remember the youtube trailer you were the the talk of the trailer and it's true you know because no one's ever seen ben the people aren't ready for ben limberg i know you guys don't want

to see his drapes that's a year too that's year two you know maybe maybe ringerverse Ringverse YouTube page. Whenever you're ready. Just go on. Reverse Ben. Reverse Ben. Show some skin. Put the thirst traps on there.

Juice our subscription counts. I'm ready. People want to see your biceps. Yeah. I'm ready. Anytime. Wild. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

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Gwava, hit the street, grab a can and get after it. All right. Getting back to the game for a second, speaking of things that look incredible, let's talk a little bit about Assassin's Creed shadows. This world, so I sang the praises of this open world. I think it's my favorite in this series. And maybe is this too much? It's just one of my favorite open worlds, period.

Just one of the most immersive, good-looking, interactive, convincing depictions of a place in video games. Like, I was almost getting Red Dead level. I was going to say, I think Rockstar might want to have a word with you. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to go too far, but, like, there were aspects of this that really reminded me of that. I just so enjoyed being in this world that even if some of the quests were pretty pedestrian or the story was falling back on a lot of established tropes.

I just wanted to be in this world because it's beautiful. Like it's for next-gen platforms only. And you can tell it ran well for me. I was running it in the balanced setting, but it didn't really slow down a whole lot even when I put it on quality just to see if it looked any different. And usually I can't even tell that much. But it's just like the weather is great.

Like when it rains, when the wind blows, I just, I feel the breeze on my face, like, in real life, it's just that convincing because, like, the blades of grass are swaying and the paper lanterns are swaying with the wind. And the animals, all the little creatures and critters are scurrying to their hidey holes. And it just feels like a fully realized place. And I think it just does that better than any other Assassin's Creed. Not only does it have a day-night cycle, but it has a sea. seasons cycle, which is rarer in video games. So you're going spring, summer, fall, winter, and you don't need me to list the names of the seasons. You probably know them. But it makes a real

difference, like aesthetically and also gameplay-wise. Some stuff resets when the season changes or you can access different things or approach things differently. But it also just looks totally different. And there was just a lot of visual variety in it. So I don't know. Am I my off here? Am I exaggerating? I just really loved being in this world. I think the seasons thing is a good call out for sure, because I did find that interesting in terms of how it would change the environments. It didn't feel like it was something that I was tacked on.

It felt very thought out and fleshed out in terms of what it was. And what I actually really liked about it too was it felt like each season had multiple feels to it, right? You had like the heavy winters where like sometimes it would be snowing and it was dark and you couldn't see a couple feet in front of you, which would help with some of the stealth, right? And then there was, like, a lighter winter and, you know, all the different variations of the season. So I did like utilizing that to your advantage, right?

Or especially if you're going through different missions or different, like, side quests or something, you know, for me, I might be like, oh, I'm going to wait, maybe until this season to do this thing or something like that. It's a bigger castle. I'm going to wait until it's... I liked winter a lot because it was just easy. to, like, it was harder for people to see you.

Yeah. Versus like daylight in the spring. It's for some reason, you know, the NPCs could see you no matter what. Sometimes. Yeah. Good snow. Good snow effects, too. I always like a good snow game.

I don't know if it's like God of War level snow fidelity, but it's up there. It's quite good. And yeah, there are different play styles depending on how you want to approach it and when you're playing and how you're playing. And Jess, you mentioned the objectives. and sort of the way that the missions are assigned, which I also kind of liked. It's like it's not super linear,

and it's not like, okay, you did this, now you do that. There's this map screen, this objectives board, where you kind of piece things together as you go, as you complete various missions, as you talk to people, it just fills in a little more of the board, and there's lots of side quests you can do. And as you alluded to, not all of them are about killing people.

I mean, most of them are. It's still Assassin's Creed, but there's like a little less violence in this game, or at least like a more nonviolent path or like side quests that don't involve violence, which may not be what you want from this franchise. But again, I kind of appreciated that they were experimenting a little more with what Assassin's Creed could be. Yeah, 100%. I agree. Even though I went to most places killing.

After a while, my stealth was just so. bad that I ran through as fast as I could. And that's not the way to play the game. It's also not the way to play Last of Us Part 2, but I do it 90% of the time. I just sprint as fast as I can't pass the zombies until I get to the next. Sometimes running gun is like the fun

way. It is. Eventually, I'm just going to press triangle, talk to the next person, and it's going to be a cut scene. And no one's chasing me anymore. In the forts, the level one kind of caretakers of the different areas who were just kind of rat you out if they ever saw you. I will say one of the

more satisfying animations was kind of just chasing them down and assassinating them by jumping on their back. In front of everybody. Yeah. In front of everybody. It's great. I like that. And like,

I did like, there was like really early off ones where you're there like, you got to ease drop. And I was like, oh, hell yeah. And I just had to like hide behind things and listen to people. Going back to like the prettiness of it all, it is very pretty.

Again, I'm not trying to compare it to other games. I'm just trying to compare it to only Assassin's Creed games. And I think it was the prettiest. I was very into how pretty it was compared to the other Assassin's Creed games. I also think they have a lot more to work with, to be fair. It's different seasons, different times.

I guess the other assassins could have done that too. But either way, I think it was really pretty. And where that was gorgeous, this is maybe the rudest thing I'll say. Where those are gorgeous, the opposite can be said for the characters, in my opinion. The characters, delivery, line delivery, everything was so crazy and abrupt to me that I was like, whoa, I got pulled out. The only person that I remember specifically. I think it was Junjira, the little boy.

I loved him. I liked him. And he could deliver the line any way he wanted to. Yeah. I played this with the Japanese audio. Oh, okay. I'm a subs, not dubs guy just in general. Hey, better than me.

You're better than me. And it was an issue at times because, of course, I can't understand Japanese. And so sometimes I'm, like, writing and killing people and also trying to read the subtitles at the same time, which is like, Tough multitasking, but the delivery was much better, or at least if it wasn't good, I couldn't tell because I'm not a native speaker. But the videos that I have watched, the cutscenes I've seen of the English language deliveries left a little to be desired, at least compared to my experience of this game. It was bad, but I also didn't. I wish I would have done the Japanese and English subtitles.

It said that at the beginning and I was like, I just think I'm going to lose track. And I was like, I need to pay attention. Yeah, that's understandable. I think that the story is nothing special. You know, it's just kind of like very blue-ey-semurai revenge story, as you said, Arjuna. Just classic villain mistake of leaving the child of a murder victim alive to come back in exact revenge. When will the villains learn not to keep doing that? But the characters.

They never learned. And I wouldn't have wanted it to be her anyways. It could have happened to anyone else. Leave her alive. She's the best character. Well, that's the thing. I like the character. even though the story itself is nothing like super original.

I liked Yaskei. These are good characters that I cared about, even though they weren't doing anything that I haven't seen characters do in a lot of stories before. So I enjoyed spending time with them. And as we said, just like the incredibly different ways that they play, they feel very distinct, maybe too distinct, again, because, yes, it's like,

I appreciate giving us two different play styles, but making one so clearly more rewarding is just, it's tough because unless I was forced to play as Yaske, there are some missions that are kind of tandem missions where you're teaming up and Noe's doing one thing and Yaske's doing another thing and it's kind of tailored toward their strengths. And that works really well. But when you're left to your own devices to choose, it's very rare that I would choose Yaske. I would be curious to see the stats. I'm curious to see how people have the breakdown.

I do feel like most people are going to play it as Noway. Definitely. And it's going to be like a 70-30 split of your playtime or 8.20 or however it may be. It's fun to brute force it and just to like be able to tank and take a lot of damage and also dish it out because Noe is just much more fragile. But like all the stealth and the climbing. I mean, that's the thing. Like she has a grappling hook and so she can climb on just about anything. It's Assassin's Creed.

And he just can't. And so it's so. much less vertical as an experience when you're playing as Yaske, it just feels really limiting in a way that makes sense for the character, but just doesn't really make sense for the player. Especially if you're like myself and a sicko completionist and you're like, I got to get every collectible here. You can't get half of them with Yaske. So it's like, why would I even bother playing with him when I have to go run outside of the fort to then switch to Noway? And then risk a season change and everything resetting. That's makes sense. There were

times when I'd tag him in if I just needed to kill a bunch of people and then would immediately just swap him out. Like, thank you for your service. Yeah, I did find that frustrating because there are some things that you can only do as one of the characters. And especially when you run into an area where you can't just do a quick change, you risk the season changing, right? And like, everything could reset if you don't do it fast enough. Yeah. So I, that was like one aspect of it I didn't like. I wish there was a little bit more of a seamless way. Like, if you, I think it would have been cooler if you were able to go into the forts, let's say. And, you know, they're kind of both there.

And you kind of switch back and forth where it's like, oh, there's a bunch of guys here. I'm going to fight as Yaske. And then I could do like a quick switch and now is up above, like, scouting ahead and doing something like that. I think would have been cool. And I think you could have even added like a co-op ability in there too if you wanted to like play with multiple, like a second person or something. But that would have been, see, no, that would have been fun. That would have been And then I

But that's also the thing It feels like to play as him You gotta be forced to do it Yeah I feel like if they made him a little bit I don't know That's also the thing is like If this is true

Then what else is true He is big He can't be sneaking Like He can't he can be That's why I'm like I appreciate it But it

She's just Him just with the full samurai armor Like crouching in the grass Yeah It's going through Yeah just like I see you Oh no you don't

No you don't Turn around It was funny I saw them play the game. I went to this German gaming convention last August and they played, they showed a little bit of this game and I realized they showed more of her than him in the game. Played for a reason. And also the parts that they did show wasn't like any missions. It was just like, look at her

jump, look at her duck, look at her hide. And then I went, oh, this is why. And then it got delayed. And I was like, oh, they did not show a specific cut for a reason because I was very excited to play as him. And I also think I will add about story wise. I like the idea of his story a lot. I think it's very fun or well interesting I should say or an entertaining. But as a black person playing, I was like every time they came back to him being black, I was like, I get it. But I was like, this has been every dialogue I have with someone is how crazy it is that I'm a black person. Yeah. I mean, I guess 16th century Japan, sure, it's historically

accurate, but also, yeah, I mean, you feel for the guy. It's just everyone's like, are there people with your skin color where you come from every conversation. Yeah. And the thing was I was like, oh, I see what you're doing. Like, you're making this as real as you can. But I also recognize this is a game. And I am playing it to escape. I don't want to be questioned why I'm black here all the time.

Do you feel like the game would have been better served if they split it off into like you could only play as one or they were two separate games with the different characters? I would have bought it. I would have bought it. I don't know if other people would have. because that would have been more money. But, like, if they made it a second game, which is him, I would have played it.

Because I feel stupid. Because he is exactly what I would have played. He is 100% what I would have played. But when you gave me the best thing in the world, I'm not going to play as him. And then the obstructions that he can't get over that she can, I'm like, oh, no, I'm only going to, I'm going to do like Ben.

I'm going to tag him in and then tag him immediately out once I'm done. Because it does feel like the game was designed more for her character than his character. I would be interested to see a game that was actually designed for Yowski and his playing style. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I think a standalone Yoske game just, I don't know that that would be Assassin's Creed. No, I don't know, Assassin's Creed could maybe be a lot of things. It could be black flag.

You could be in a ship, but it would be more like a Templar like in Rogue. Sure. Yeah, it would be more like a Souls game or something. It'd just be more straight up action. And I don't know if people want that from that franchise. maybe a DLC or something side quest. I just think it would have worked well if they had just integrated him more,

basically, if they had made him more appealing to play or given you more incentive to play as him. And it's okay that they mostly don't force you to, though, is the thing. Like it does feel a little grafted on, but it's also mostly optional. So they're usually not forcing you

to play in a way that you don't want to play. They're just not really giving you any incentive to play as him either. So you can largely ignore him for a long stretch. of the game. So it feels like undercooked or underutilized potential, but also not really that frustrating because you're not forced to play that way. And, you know, I think there was like this contemplative, meditative side to this game, which I also really appreciated, which I guess

goes hand in hand with my praise for the world, just the fact that it's not always hurrying you on to the next thing. And it often encourages you to stop and meditate and and pray and look for things in temples and just. Yeah, that's how you get your knowledge points to level up. Get your knowledge points. Appreciate the wildlife and sit and sketch them. You know, again, like, I'm not saying that this game is as good as Red Dead redemption. I'm not saying it's as good as Breath of the Wild or anything like that.

But I'm saying that it had elements of that I'm not really used to seeing from Assassin's Creed where I didn't always feel like I needed to go cross something off the map clutter, which was reduced and just get it. on to the next assassination. It was like, hey, let me just wander down this side road and see what's here and appreciate the scenery. And I like that. It was like it was calming. It was sort of soothing for me to play this Assassin's Creed game, which is not normally something I would say. That's where it feels like the time and the development helped. Yes. The developers are able to have other games come out, consume other media to kind of make these small but significant changes to their open world platform. where it isn't just like, yep, every side quest, you kill something, right? Or like, you know, that's your, you're searching for something. You know, there are a little bit of iterations here and things that make sense within the world that, like you, Ben, I thought those touches, like, works.

Like, even some of those, like, meditation or practicing your samurai moves with Yauke and, like, doing those things were nice ways to kind of break up the action a little bit where it's like, okay, here's another fort or here's another target that I just have to, like, take down. down and kill over and over again. There is a lot of that, I will say. And some, you know, there were parts where I was in the gaming. There was like another four. And I was just like, there was like one hundred yards away. Like, why is there another one? You got to free your mind from the obligation to do everything in Assassin's Creed.

No, it's impossible. It's impossible, especially if it just pops up on my, as soon as it pops up, I have to do it. You have to do it. And also, and I am like, oh, I guess you're getting your money's worth when they're like, you're chipping away and grinding at this game forever because that was my farming. I was going nuts. Every time I saw them come up,

I was like, well, it looks like I'm going to get more points. There's another question mark on the map. And I literally was like, I gotta get it out of the way. A discovered location. That's the, I think Rise of Ronan did that to me because it was just per city. And they were like, you can finish every city. And it wasn't actually hard to finish every city.

So I was like, oh yeah, I'll just finish every city. Yeah, 100%. This, I'm like, this was really hard to finish. It's 100%. I don't think it's going to take me four straight weeks. The Assassin's Creed question marks remind me of Arkham Asylum

when you'd see the Ridler trophies. And I had a running joke with my brothers and it's like, I got to collect all those redler trophies. Even though so many of those, as you guys remember with Arkham you have to go back and get once you got new abilities and stuff. But I would just spend hours being like,

how do I get into this vent to get this damn Ridler trophy? Yeah. See, when I'm playing, I feel that compulsion too. And yet I know that the second I'm done with the game, I will never think about those things again. I've just learned that I have to let it go. Like, it's not going to matter to me.

I'm not going to feel good about this. I'm not going to feel bad that I didn't find that thing once I move on to the next game. So I'm just, I'm zen. How cluttered is your desktop right now? Because you need to, I wish I could just walk away. You got to answer the call, Ben. Answer the call. The other thing is that like the combat is compelling.

Like, yes, you will have to do a lot of it. But I think it's good. Like, the camera can be rough at times. The camera sometimes gets in the way or doesn't show me what I want it to show me. Or you center on someone, lock onto someone, and it doesn't stick. But the combat itself, I thought was quite good. It's just, it's like the previous games, but maybe more refined, like good deflection and dodging. And again, the characters feel very different in combat.

And it can be a relief to just play as Yaski and just be like, yeah, I'm just. tearing shit up right now. I don't have to worry about finesse at all at this point. But it's not overwhelming. Like the visual cues you get, when to deflect, when to dodge, it felt pretty well calibrated to me so that I felt kind of in command. And the combat just kind of crunchy, kind of satisfying. The only thing is that there is a difficulty ramp up, which may just take you unaware sometimes because initially you're limited to certain areas or sort of like soft gated by difficulty level. And it does telegraph, like, how hard this area is going to be. Or, yeah, there will be a skull icon if someone's just like too strong for you, basically. But it's nine

regions. And when you start branching off after the original opening ones, suddenly, like, I was just getting one hit killed left and right. And I was like, what happened? Like, this just, this was very sudden. And you just have to kind of work your way up to it or avoid combat and take a more non-violent approach because it was just like this this random ronin is just like wrecking me right now what happens but yeah it does sometimes like difficulty spike on you but when you get the hang of it and you're like at the right level i think it works well and i do appreciate that it doesn't make you you you don't become op at any point where it's just like yep i can just take on 15 guys and be fine and you know like if you're facing three or four people it's going to be hard because you can't

dodge four people's attacks all at once. And then they're not just going to wait their turn. They're all going to fight you at once, which has always bothered me about some combat, it's like, no, no, you go and I'll wait to politely attack. Yeah, exactly.

So I appreciate it that. And there is something satisfying, especially playing as Nauai when you like pull off a perfectly timed dodge or like a counter or something and you're able to expose and get like a bigger enemy down or something. Yeah, I did find that pretty saddened and they're just, you know, stunned for a second and then you can get some hits and that's very satisfying.

And like exploring certain areas, you know, I'd climb up to the high peaks where, you know, you can kind of unlock some of the map or historically you have in this franchise. And often like you're at the top of a pagoda or something, then you can just go down and there are chests all the way and you're kind of like stabbing people through the walls and, you know, just stealthing your way down. And that stuff can be really fun, I thought. So it's a nice mix of settings. Like, that's always the conflict with Assassin's Creed. It's like, is this a city Assassin's Creed or is this a countryside Assassin's Creed that's that's just more open world and sprawling? And this game has a pretty good mix of both.

And if I had to choose between the two, I'd probably say City Assassin's Creed, just because I like when you have a more contained area that is built for the parkour that you're doing. and you can just kind of like free run and just cross an entire city, never touching the ground, and you're just going from roof to flagpole to like canopy, and you know, you're just parkoring everywhere and you feel like Spider-Man sort of. There's less of that if you're just in the countryside because you're just kind of running around or riding around on your horse, and there's a little less of that acrobatic aspect to it. So I miss that sometimes, but there are a lot of urban areas in this map as well.

So there's a little bit of both, something for everyone. Right. Kyoto is huge when you get there in the game. It is a massive city. Yeah. Now, you two talked about the bugs, and we were texting about this, too. And I definitely saw my fair share of that. I definitely saw creatures standing up in their hind legs in unnatural ways or horses,

like, just sort of walking on the air, more or less. Like, those things happened. And definitely when you're on the horse, if you run into a stock of bamboo, you're done. Like, that is it for your mount. I will say I appreciate that you can just like cut all of the bamboo stocks, just like neatly slice those stocks. And that just felt very satisfying and sounded very satisfying. The snick of that to me.

But yeah, there's some jankiness when you're running around in this world. But I didn't run into any game breaking bugs or like seriously, you know, stuff where I had to reload or I got stuck or I couldn't complete an objective. You know, it was more just like general jank of the kind that you get in almost every open world game because it's just such a vast undertaking an enterprise to build a world like this and let people run around in it as a sandbox. So that was my sense. Like it was sub-Bethesda game in terms of like how buggy this is.

And for the most part, it was like kind of the funny kind of bugs where like I would gift that and send that to someone and they would laugh, but it doesn't actually impair my playing experience. I had to restart the game twice because it was Ben. Okay, then. Boo to you. Wow. What happened in your game?

I know. My game was me and, yeah, me and Adrienne were talking about this earlier, but I also will say it didn't, it didn't, it irritated me 100%, but it was also what I'm expecting for a game

that got delayed twice and is this big. I was just like, it also there was, there's this bugs, and then there was the Pokemon bug. that literally irritated me to the degree that I did not finish the game. I was like, I'm not doing this on my switch.

This game, my glitches were anytime, not anytime, it was just one time. I had to go under the house to go get, so I had to crouch, crawl under the house, and it would not let me out. It was like, you're stuck, you can't get in, you can't get out, have fun, and so I had to restart the game.

I also got a glitch in the damn woods. I would sprint through the woods and the trees and jump from rock to place, and I got stuck on a cliff edge like by the rocks, because she was like, I can't climb this, but she could climb it and then she got stuck. And that was my, oh my God, I texted you guys immediately.

Only, like, only like five hours into the game where I was like, I can't run without crashing into things in this game. Every little thing to the point where I was like, yeah, I cannot recommend fast travel enough because you're just going to get irritated, running for 40 minutes just to, like, crash into things. Yeah. There were, like, parts in the game where you play is Yowske,

and you have to, like, find the chest in, like, a tomb or something, and there were like parts where you couldn't run up a sliding thing. And it always frustrate me because I'm like, you can go all the way to the top and you slide down. Like you just, just one extra step. But I don't think I ran into too many game breaking bugs either, similar to you been.

Unfortunate for you, Jast. They knew I didn't like the game. Yes, you just sensed your feelings about. I did have a few funny ones where like I got stuck in a wall, like a castle wall for about three minutes. And I did think I was going to have to restart the game.

And then eventually I just like, phased out of it. First up, Arjuna, you should have restarted the game. That is insane. That technically is a bug that I had. The reason I didn't reset because I was like, I don't know where my last safe point was and I'm killed like 15 people and I'm really

worried right now. So I was like, I got to try and get out of this. So technically Arjuna had one bug. I had one big bug. And then the other bugs, the other bug that I kept getting to was if I changed like a weapon or like an outfit and then I would fast travel shortly after that,

it would revert to like what I previously had for some reason. So that was like, that was more annoying than anything. It wasn't, it just learned, okay, like, I shouldn't change equipment before I fast travel here. 100%. I'm just, like, do it after, essentially. Mine did that, and I did, I just ended up rechanging. I was like, oh, whatever. Yeah.

It wasn't that big of, yeah, that wasn't a big deal. But it was something that was like, this seems like a common one that people might just run into. Like, you might have finished something and you might change your equipment and then you might fast travel somewhere. And then all of a sudden, you're like, wait a second. And if you don't realize, you're like, wait a second. Why did I just talk so fast? I would say I was saving a lot manually in this game just because of everything. Also, because I'm so bad at being stealthy, every time I made it past a really important scene, stealthy, I would save immediately.

I was like, they ain't going to make me do this again. I saved so often. It was insane. Yeah. And because it's Assassin Creed, there's a lot of stuff in here that you may or may not be interested in. And it's just there if you want it and you don't necessarily need it. Like you mentioned the hideout, Jess. So you can kind of animal crossing this stuff, basically, where you can put a team together,

you can just collect decor, you can customize the roof. You know, you have a home base, and you do eventually recruit allies, and you can kind of deploy them in combat. And it's actually kind of cool. Like, it doesn't feel half-assed for this kind of game having this sort of mechanic, but you can also completely ignore it. And usually this sort of thing isn't for me so much, but they're actual, like, boosts that you can get, you know, you can construct a forge and then you recruit a blacksmith and then the

blacksmith can upgrade your armor when you go back to your base and it's just a place where you can hang out and have quiet time and sometimes there are cut scenes there that, you know, it's nice to like have a little corner of the world that is yours and you can customize it or you can completely ignore that, which I'm sure many people will and that's fine. But, you know, it's there if you want it. So I think it was a cool feature. I just was I'm just bad at normal Sims. And that was really hard for me. And also, it felt like a lot of the stuff with the hideout and things you can do are, again, chipping away and grinding at the game things. Like, the reward is later in the game. It kind of like snowballs for you, which is great.

I think that part, I think I would have ate up. That's the part that I really like about Animal Crossing. I'm like, oh, yeah, it's real time. I got to wait. I got to wait for my rewards. I think that's really cool. But I'm playing this for, I'm playing for a review. for a professional manner. I don't have time. And so I'm building this for nothing. That's how I felt. I put a few hours into the home area

and it didn't feel like the juice was worth the squeeze. It felt like some minor enhancements. Like you get scouts. Yeah. And you could get like a couple more scouts to like, you know, get resources or kind of scout objectives ahead. But there weren't like, it just didn't feel like there were like enough benefits for me to like really invest a ton of time

into it necessarily, which is like a little disappointing because it's like you have to kind of do some of this stuff. You have to get the resources to upgrade the buildings, to build the new buildings. And then there are even like other buildings where it's like you have to buy this building from a specific merchant in a spot to then get the resources to make the building and then to get the real benefits. You've got to get more resources like you said to upgrade the building. And it's just like, this is a lot of extra stuff on top of the already extra things that they're out of there. This feels like the part of the game, if my brother was playing, I'd be like, now can

I take it over? Because then you'll be getting those rewards randomly of legendary items that are probably really great, but you have to make all that money and you have to run around so much at the beginning to make that happen. Right. That, again, this is a long shot game. This is for people that I want to play it for a long time because that's a portion that you got to chip away at.

Right. And you can collect pets and they'll show up at your hideout. Yeah. Yeah. My little bald dog. It's great. Yeah. And of course, you can upgrade your.

character, that's where the RPG elements come in. You've got your several skill trees for both of your playable characters here. And at first, there's a lot of like increase your katana damage by 2% or something. And it's like, this is completely imperceptible. But also, sometimes you can unlock cool abilities. And there are different things you can get different upgrades that actually do affect your play style and the way that you approach combat and stealth. And those things are actually kind of cool. But, you know, it's largely like follow the main story and you will be fine when it comes to leveling up. But that's the reviewer's curse. That's the podcaster's curse is that, you know, if you're on a deadline and you've got to get through this game and you've got to see everything by a certain

time, then you're kind of doing yourself in the game of a disservice sometimes because I think this game and outlaws to some extent, you know, these are games that are meant to be played at a leaderly pace and, you know, to explore a little bit and get off the beaten path. And if you're just following the missions. That's why I kind of took my time and we didn't put ourselves under pressure to finish the story missions because we wouldn't have wanted to spoil them anyway at this point. The game hasn't been out long enough. But also we just wanted to see the variety and approach playing it the way that I would recommend people play it as opposed to just cramming and crunching to finish it by the time we have to record a podcast. So that's the way to do it. But, you know,

the leveling up, I think, is fairly satisfying. Like, you know, there's a progression. There's a sense that you're getting more powerful, you're unlocking more abilities. But as you said, you don't really get overpowered at any point. Since Origins, they've had the, like, you know, your whole body glows

and there's like an explosion around you and there's like a really sudden music sting. And every time these last like four Assassin's Creed games, it scares me every single time. Every time you love it, I was like, it's just that really loud music thing. I'm like, ah. You know what's funny.

You know, oh my God, you know what's really funny. And this is bad for me to do. I turned off the music in the game. You didn't like it. No, it's not that I didn't like it. I was listening to, I was listening to Dochi. When I'm playing games like that, where it's like, oh, I'm going across the entire world. It's a long time coming.

I will listen to music. It's until I'm on like a major mission where I have to be like silent, I need to listen. That's when I turn the music off. But I turned the music off. So I was like, why are you freaking out when there was no music? It was just that level up. It's always a really loud kind of thing. And I played a lot of this late at night, so I'm like trying to be quiet, not wake my wife up or anything.

Yeah. Just I was playing in one of those headphones. So I didn't wake up everyone in my household and startle them with that. Also, I wanted that immersive sound with the wind blowing through the grass. I just wanted to feel like I was there. And I did. I wanted to rap music as loud as it can. I wanted to listen to Wu-Tang Clan while I was playing this game.

And I guess just lastly, like, you know, this is the sort of thing we bring up more than an hour into this pod because it just doesn't deserve any more than that, but just like the tired, toxic conversation that happens about every game these days featuring a non-white male character, which has been plaguing this game from the start. I mean, from the time when it was announced, and everyone from Elon Musk on down who said DEI kills art in response to a story about this game, and that just led to a whole pile on. And you mentioned the review bombing chess. And I always just feel like focusing on that just kind of gives us. those people what they want, you know?

Like they want the attention, they want the conversation about the game to surround that. And it's always just the same tired reaction to everything by people who haven't even played the game. And in many cases, they're just like bad faith, just grifters, right, who are trying to stir up these sentiments more so than having any sincere reaction to it. And there's just absolutely nothing to that, having played this game now for hours. Like, no part of it feels, you know, focused. grouped or grafted on to like increase diversity at the expense of the game or something.

And, you know, there's been a whole separate conversation about like the historical accuracy of the depiction of Japan and should you be able to destroy temples. You know, there's been a patch to prevent people from destroying temples. Not that the game encouraged you to destroy temples in any way, but it gave you the freedom to, which is something I appreciate about just the interactivity of this world and the environments are pretty destructible. But, you know, out of respect and cultural sensitivity and everything. They've kind of put some limits on some sorts of behavior. But, I mean, it's just the same conversation over and over,

and it makes any sort of user score unreliable in every case, because you never know who's sincere and who is just piling on for this just extremely tired narrative, which is unfortunately sort of ascendant in the culture and is not going away. And if anything started in gaming and metastasized elsewhere. So we kind of have to look inward at our medium and hobby here for being like the breeding ground for a lot of this sentiment. But it's just it's the same thing every single time. And Yaske, who is like based on a historical character who existed, not that much is known about him, but he existed.

And, you know, like as you said, just maybe some aspects of his background are harped on a little too often. but on the whole I thought he was a cool character and I enjoy his arc in this game that is why that is the only and we don't understand this long that was the only reason why I was also kind of upset with the character

because I was like I don't even like playing as him and I want to I want to so bad it's funny because like Rise of the Ronan it's a whole game about like oh my twin became evil and I need to go I need to get my twin back

and I was like and in these games I'm so happy to make myself a black woman in this game as a samurai. And I was like, this is the best of both worlds. I get to be a female assassin or I can be Yaske. And then I was like, Yaske sucks.

I was like, Yoske. And I'm so sad because I wanted, I just wanted more from this. I wanted people to be so excited to play him. And I think people are still excited. It's just when you get to play it, you're like, oh,

the world wasn't really made for him. Not by race, but by like, by his character. Yeah, but development of the game. Yeah. And I do, yeah, I agree with you, Jess. And Ben, I just wish. there was more four of a character

because there is a lot of interest and there is, and again, it is cool that they made a second character that is like largely different. I just wish it, I just wish that, you know, more of the world was designed for that archetype.

And his outfit is so cool. He's so cool. He's so cool. It sucks. I'm mad about it still a little bit because I wanted to play him. And then I was like, this is useless for me.

But I do still love Noway. Noway. Yeah, I still love Noway. She, she's scratched. that age for me for sure. I was like, oh, hell. Not to dump on Rise of the Ronen, your favorite, which... Dude, then don't do it. Then don't do it, man. Just stop right there. End the podcast. But just visually, though, which, like, Rise of the

Ronan was designed for current gen systems, too, or at least it was out only for current gen system. It looks like multiple hardware generations separate Rise of the Ronan and Assassin's Creed shadows, in my mind, at least. Like, it is night and day, literally, because there's a day-night cycle, but also figuratively, like, it is such a better looking game, you know, like in Rise of the Ronen, you're running around and you see the cherry blossom trees and then, like, you turn to the side and they're just like three pixels per leaf. I was thinking, I was like, Ben's going to say something about this. This exact what we're talking about right now. And I was like, I need to go back. I haven't played Rise and Ron in so long. And it's funny because a lot of my friends have started replaying

it. And I'm like, yeah, I need to get back into it. Because I'm not the only one. All right. No, no, I'm not the only one. But I think. There's a reason why they're my friends. Yeah. They're just humoring you. They're like, we got to play this game to stay on just this good side, I guess. No, they play it.

They got further than me. And they'll hit me up and be like, hey, did you get to this? How did you do it? And I was like, I didn't get that far. But I wanted to go back and look. Again, I did not want to compare because I know some people were like, oh, it goes to Tsushima and this. And I was like, I do not want to compare to this.

I want to authentically play this game and think of how it is. But I do remember like, I don't know. And maybe that was. And maybe that was because I was choosing my character in Rise of the Ronen that I was like, oh, I didn't look this ugly. That's me playing a sats. I think because Assassin's Creed people kind of always look ugly. Well.

No offense to the characters. They're kind of little ugly. I thought the facial expressions, I mean, the bar is low for video game, like models of, you know, actual face acting kind of things. But, you know, compared to some, I don't know, kingdom come deliverance to. or something or even, you know, it's better than that. It's not all-time worse.

It's not like L&O-R where the faces are just insane. You guys, I told you I'm not comparing it to other games. I was just playing it and I went, this person's eyebrows have not lifted. And he moves like this with his neck and his entire body. He has no neck. He has no neck. And why would you guys make him ugly?

It's okay. It's okay not to have a neck. But not in this game. Not in this game of pretty samurai. Eyes. Ghost of Shasimo is a beautiful game too. And I'm sure that Ghost of Yote will come along and steal this game's lunch money. And it'll be like, oh, I can't even look at Assassin's Creed anymore now that I'm gazing upon the beauty of Ghosts of Yote. So yeah, it doesn't have a whole long time to have this corner to itself before the next great game comes along. That might be a better version of this thing. But it met and exceeded my expectation. So I guess we really ran the gamut here on our three person panel. Like, the full range of possible responses to Assassin's Creed Shadows were reflected on this podcast. So will you be a Ben or an Arjuna or a Jess? You will have to play the game to find out.

And I don't think Ubisoft is saved necessarily, but it's a decline. The crisis is at least slowed, is arrested. You know, the narrative doesn't gain steam from this game because it seems to be doing fairly well and has been fairly well received. They at least met expectations, I would say. with this game. And I'm just much more into playing something like this every four years than every year or two. So take your time. And I know you comped it to Madden. And I see what you mean because it was on the Madden schedule assembly line. When you look at those first games, it was every year.

It really was. But that was like, and the thing is I wasn't expecting too much from them every time, though. But this, I'm like, ooh, it's a different place. Different people. Bigger map. Yeah. Those were smaller scale games too. And so it was more manager. but it was kind of like, you know, this coming back after a relatively long layoff for this franchise, you might have expected, oh, this isn't going to be like Madden. This is going to be like, you know, college football 25 where, oh, it's been off for a long time and they've completely rebuilt it. And it's not quite that either. So it's it's somewhere between Madden and college football 25. It's not a complete reinvention. It's not a complete carbon copy. For me, it synthesizes a lot of what the previous. Assassin's Creed games have done well without completely reinventing the formula and again because I haven't played an AC game like this in several

years I was ready for it and I'm happy with it so I thank you both for taking the plunge along with me take that leap of faith yes yeah into a haystack do it stop landing what is it is this Scrooge McDuck style where he like

dives into the gold yeah you won't die jumping into this one bail a fan I swear no matter what the distance is. Yeah. It was cool. I'll give them that. I thought those parts were cool.

I think that and the grappling hook was very fun. All right. Thank you, Jess. Thank you, Arjuna. Always a pleasure to have you on button mash. Yes. Thank you to Devin Ronaldo for producing this episode. This is where I normally thank Arjuna,

but I just did that. So we're ahead of the game here. We have coverage of Daredevil coming up. We have coverage of yellow jackets. We've got Button Mash on Switch 2. reveals and a Minecraft movie in south of midnight. Check the feed, both of the feeds, follow the YouTube, follow the socials, send us emails at ringerversegaming at gmail.com.

We will be back and butt-mashing with you next week. Until then, stay silent, stay in the shadows, unless you're Yaske, in which case you can't. Feels like every product claims real protein these days. But real doesn't start on a label. It starts at the source. Like real California milk from California farm families, it's real dairy delivering high quality, complete protein, with all nine essential amino acids to help build muscle,

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