The Assassin’s Creed games haven’t felt overly assassin-y since Origins remade the series to be more like RPGs than stealth titles. Now, for the first time since Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, there’s an option for players who hate the level grind and loot game requirement for newer entries.
There’s no doubt that, while Assassin’s Creed’s evolution of a series has brought some big improvements to the franchise, it has lost some of that luster as a stealth game. The feeling that we got back in the day with games like AC2, a feeling that stealth was the only option, is rarely there.
However, with Yasuke getting introduced as a combat-focused option, Naoe gets the chance to shine as an assassin – and one specific setting in the difficulty menu brings the assassin fantasy back.
Regardless of which difficulty you’re playing on, you’ll want to have this setting enabled: Guaranteed Assassination.
Assassin’s Creed finally earns the assassin name again
If you’re like me, you really enjoyed the early section of Assassin’s Creed: Origins when it first came out. The new combat mechanics were fun at first, but the stealth was where the game shone. Getting that experience in ancient Egypt, complete with the ability to raid tombs and uncover mysteries hidden beneath the sands, was a real treat.
But there was also a sinking feeling I got the moment I perched above an enemy and saw that assassinations brought up a health bar, one that was only partially depleted. From Origins forward, the new RPG direction of the series forced players to grind and specifically build around being an assassin. The fantasy I came to this series to experience was gone.
While the aspect of putting together the perfect build to one-shot enemies may be something players enjoyed, it wasn’t for me. I’m playing my Assassin’s Creed game to be, well, an assassin.
In Shadows, you have to grind through several levels in order to access the later sections of the Assassin skill tree required to get true one-shots from stealth kills. You won’t have access to it until damn near the end of the game.
However, one small setting that’s kind of hard to find changes this completely.
By going into difficulty tuning on the gameplay tab, you can go into a small menu and enable Guaranteed Assassination. This setting is completely divorced from the other two difficulty sliders as well, which is key to it being a well-implemented feature.
If you’re like me, you’ll ignore the story completely once you hit the open world, see the big threatening castle on the horizon, and run right to it. This is exactly what I did, and I had a blast with it. But it wouldn’t have been possible without this setting enabled.
Because I was able to one-shot the three Samurai I had to take out in order to lay claim to the big reward lying at the top of Osaka, I was able to do this much earlier than intended even playing on Expert difficulty.
The moment I got detected, it was curtains. Or, at the very least, I was forced to run and hide. Playing on a high difficulty while being forced to interact with the game’s stealth systems is a vastly improved experience to the last few entries that expected you to fight your way through everything.
Before, adding difficulty only forced you to commit more time to the grind. Why not just play on Easy to get through the game faster if everyone’s going to be a sponge? Shadows gives you the ability to be an actual assassin for once and come out on top through skill, patience, and planning rather than a time investment.
DexertoAC Shadows’ new stealth mechanics like going prone really shine when you can one shot everyone
Considering how great the game’s core mechanics are (when you’re not playing as Yasuke), it’s a refreshingly great stealth experience that brings back the feeling that made me fall in love with this franchise in the first place.
To think I’d have missed out on that magic if I didn’t notice this setting. There are a few other settings in Assassin’s Creed Shadows that are both easy to miss and drastically improve the experience, like the innocuous Immersive Mode that is, for all intents and purposes, the way this game is meant to be played.
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