Assassin’s Creed: Shadows won’t be receiving a second expansion to follow Claws of Awaji, unlike previous games in the series. Instead, Ubisoft is working on “chunkier updates”, similar in size to the Attack on Titan crossover released earlier this week.
Since the launch of 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, releasing at least two expansions has become the norm for the series. Assassin’s Creed Mirage was even originally planned as a further expansion to Valhalla, before becoming a standalone game.
Yet that won’t be the case with Shadows, released earlier this year. Claws of Awaji was released back in September, but that will be the only expansion for the game.
“As of now, at this moment for Year Two, there is no expansion on the size of [Claws of Awaji] that is planned, currently,” said associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois in an interview with YouTube channel JorRaptor. “We’re still working on content for post-launch and supporting it, but it’s not a full-on DLC the way a season pass would have had in previous years.”
Lemay-Comtois did admit the situation could change, but for now Ubisoft’s plan is to keep updates “small and reactive and see how the community feels about it”.
He continued: “We’re trying to re-adjust for Year Two a little bit. There’s learning from Year One that we can apply to Year Two. Any content we want to do in Year Two is probably going to be more sparse, so not a drip-feed like you said but chunkier updates that shake things up a little more. I’m not announcing anything at this point but the strategy for Year One was to be quick and reactive, so it means smaller drops often. For Year Two we don’t need to put fires out or anything, so it’s more about what good, chunky little piece of meat… we can drop and have people come back to it and enjoy it.”
Since its release, Shadows has already received a number of updates with fan-requested features, addressing the “fires” Lemay-Comtois mentioned. Now, the team is free to add more sizable updates, just not at the size of a full expansion.
Instead, those updates will be “something like yesterday’s update plus, something at minimum this size”.
That would be the Attack on Titan crossover added earlier this week, though it’s only available for a limited time. Still, the reaction online to this addition hasn’t been overly positive, with posts on social media noting poor quest design and animations.
The game will soon arrive on Switch 2, with Ubisoft yesterday detailing its features.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage, meanwhile, received a surprise free story DLC recently, reportedly backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
