Assassin's Creed Shadows Director explains why you can't hurt animals

Summary

Assassin's Creed Shadows director Jonathan Dumont has revealed exactly why there is no hunting in the game this time.
According to Dumont, it was feudal Japan's lack of large wildlife a problem, while Devs also wanted activities to be more “zen -like” this time.
Future Assassin's Creed games can reintroduce hunting based on the attitude and the player's imagination, but it was omitted in shadows as it “made sense”.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has slicing and dice through countless villains, but there are some things that Naoe and Yasuke will not send a leaf that flies through. Unlike most Assassin's Creed games in the past, especially the more modern RPG such as Valhalla and Odyssey, you can kill all types of wildlife to upgrade your equipment and weapons.

This is not the case in Assassin's Creed shadows, and going a step further, you can't actually hurt wildlife at all. It is a rather massive change in how the series works, and one that went without much of an explanation from someone at Ubisoft. Thankfully, the game's director has cleared the decision behind this change in a new interview with Kotaku.

Assassin's Creed Shadows Director explains why you can't hurt animals

Naoe under a cutting scene in AC shadows.

According to Dumont, one of the main reasons for hunting in Assassin's Creed Shadows is the attitude. Dumont explains that when the team began to look into wildlife in feudal Japan, they found that the country “did not have many large, aggressive animals to challenge players”, and that it would have been more appealing to simply observe the wildlife that the country had.

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Secondly, Dumont explains that the team behind the game also wanted to add more “zen -like” activities to the open world this time, and running around killing wildlife is about as far from zen as you can get.

“In addition, we wanted to integrate world activities that offer a zen -like experience, which provides spiritual or contemplative moments in nature to balance Naoe and Yasuke's journey.”

If you were a fan of the hunt in previous games and were a little disappointed to see it missing in shadows, you have no need to fear. On the question of hunting will return to the series in the future, Dumont says it depends on the “attitude and player's imagination”, and for shadows is simply “sensible” not to include the feature. So hunting is on the cards for Assassin's Creed Hexe, when it actually comes out.