What Assassin's Creed Shadows' Co-Op Mode Should/Shouldn't…

The upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows is rumored to bring back one seldom used feature from the Assassin’s Creed franchise: a co-op mode. While Shadows has been delayed to February 2025 and the co-op mode is rumored to have been in development before the delay, this new feature is already expected to be released sometime post Shadows’ launch. Details on this mode, Codenamed LEAGUE, are slim, but Ubisoft could be basing Assassin’s Creed Shadows co-op mode on its previous Assassin’s Creed game to feature the mode, Assassin’s Creed Unity, for better and for worse.

The History of Assassin’s Creed Multiplayer Systems

Assassin’s Creed from its inception was designed to be a single-player game, focusing on players covertly exploring historical settings as they search for their targets. This remained Assassin’s Creed’s core gameplay experience only ever so briefly as the third mainline game in the series, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, was the first to introduce a multiplayer mode in the franchise. Here, players embodied present-day Abstergo Templars who entered the Animus to train in assassination scenarios, to become acquainted with delving into genetic memory and to gain skills for eliminating modern-day Assassins. This system of multiplayer appeared in every succeeding Assassin’s Creed game up until Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.

Assassin’s Creed Unity saw the series’ traditional multiplayer be thrown away to be replaced with a simpler co-op mode. Unity’s marketing appeared to showcase this mode, particularly with the game’s cover featuring four Assassins and its TV Spot trailer which displayed dozens of Assassins running around 18th century France. Even Assassin’s Creed Unity’s E3 2014 Co-Op Demo illustrated a seamless integration of four-player co-op within Unity’s campaign.

What Assassin’s Creed Shadows Should Take From Unity’s Co-Op Mode

While the traditional free-for-all matches of traditional Assassin’s Creed multiplayer disappeared with Unity, the game still offered players to play with random people in co-op matchmaking. This allowed players to still experience co-op missions even if their friends were offline and Ubisoft should strive to include some form of co-op matchmaking in Shadows. No matter players’ levels or skill in Unity, the co-op feature allowed each player to showcase their own custom Assassin in multiplayer instead of being simple Arno clones. In this sense, one co-op mission could feature an Assassin wearing Altair’s outfit, one wearing Edward’s outfit, and another wearing a customized yellow-dyed attire. Shadows should still allow players’ customized Naoe or Yasuke to appear in co-op sessions.

What Assassin’s Creed Shadows Shouldn’t Take from Unity’s Co-Op Mode

Despite Assassin’s Creed Unity’s promising marketing, several flaws in its co-op mode appeared from the get-go and persisted throughout the game’s lifetime. For one, each player in co-op played as their own unique copy of Arno rather than other distinct Assassin characters as depicted in Unity’s trailers and cover art. Additionally, players could not explore France’s open world or play through the main sequences in co-op. Instead, co-op was limited to a few short missions and heists whose stories barely impacted Unity’s main campaign, and rewards primarily resulted in money to purchase other cosmetics. On top of that, co-op matches often resulted in glitches such as players getting stuck in areas while waiting to be revived.

Unity’s co-op was a fun but flawed experiment that Ubisoft immediately abandoned, with Unity being the last mainline Assassin’s Creed game to feature multiplayer to date. If Shadows does incorporate a co-op mode post-launch, Ubisoft should strive to make sure the mode is properly tested and polished to avoid frustrating glitches Unity’s co-op displayed. Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ co-op mode should offer more unique and desirable rewards to better encourage players to try out the mode in the first place. Additionally, Assassin’s Creed Shadows should allow players to play through the entire game in co-op rather than a select few missions. This could finally make the dream of playing through an Assassin’s Creed game’s story cooperatively in full a reality.

Only five mainline Assassin’s Creed games have had multiplayer systems so far, including Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Assassin’s Creed 3, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, and Assassin’s Creed Unity.