Huh. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is actually launching day one on Mac

By Carli Velocci Published May 15, 2024

Yasuke with his sword up and and Naoe with a shuriken in her hand in Assassin's Creed Shadows — Ubisoft

Ubisoft’s biggest upcoming game is arguably Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is set to release on November 15 across all the usual platforms, including PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. That also seems to include some unusual ones, too, including Mac.

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While the official store page only mentions that the game will be available digitally on PC, a press release sent to Digital Trends features a few more details, including that the standard edition will release on Macs with Apple silicon on day one via the Mac App Store. However, players won’t be able to buy more premium editions for the platform.

This move is in line with both Ubisoft’s and Apple’s gaming strategies over the past few years. The former hasn’t shied away from releasing its games on newer, less-established platforms. It was one of the first publishers to release games on the now-shuttered Google Stadia, along with other cloud streaming services like Amazon Luna. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was even the first demo for Stadia, back when it was known as Project Stream. The Ubisoft+ subscription service was also available on Stadia and Luna.

Baldur's Gate 3 being played on the M3 MacBook Air. — Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

As for Apple, the company has been attempting to make strides in the video game space for years. In 2022, it revealed two new features: MetalFX Upscaling and the Fast Resource Loading API. It also announced that Resident Evil Village, No Man’s Sky, and Grid Legends would be coming to Mac and would show off how supporting these features would improve performance. The next year, Apple brought noted game director Hideo Kojima out during WWDC 2023 to announce the Game Porting Toolkit, which makes it easier for developers to port their games to Mac.

The most recent silicon chip, the M3, does make gaming on Macs much better than it has been in the past. Digital Trends’ Luke Larsen was impressed with the M3 MacBook Air’s gaming performance, and was even able to run Baldur’s Gate 3 (with some caveats).

All of this is to say that while Mac might not be the best way to run Assassin’s Creed Shadows, it is possible, and Ubisoft is betting on that with a day one release for MacOS.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…

Gaming

How to get Knowledge Points and what they do in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

One of the protagonists in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

By the time we get to Assassin's Creed Shadows, most of us will be familiar with how the games work. Since transitioning more towards RPGs than stealth games, the titles have not only gotten longer but also embraced skill trees. Naoe and Yasuke each have unique progression paths to work through, but right away you will notice that most of the best abilities are gated off. Like Scouts, Knowledge Points are a new feature that you will need to master if you want to be the best assassin possible. We'll share all our knowledge about Knowledge Points with you.
How Knowledge Points work and how to get them

Knowledge Points are a separate system to XP that allows both Naoe and Yasuke to unlock the better and more powerful skills in all their skill trees. Unlike XP, you can't earn them by performing normal tasks or taking out enemies. Instead, Knowledge Points are rewarded for doing specific non-violent activities in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Gaming

How long is Assassin’s Creed Shadows?

Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows fighting an enemy. He's dressed in his samurai armor.

It's no secret that the Assassin's Creed games have gotten longer and longer over the years. This is typical for Ubisoft open-world titles, but many are hoping that Assassin's Creed Shadows has scaled back on the bloat a bit. There's always fast travel and finding the fastest ways to earn XP to cut down on the grind, but there's only so much time that can be saved. If you're worried that this game might be another 100-hour time investment to fully complete, let's use our Eagle Vision to scout out how long Assassin's Creed Shadows is before you start playing.
How long is Assassin's Creed Shadows?

As you would expect, the amount of time you could put into Assassin's Creed Shadows will vary wildly based on how you approach it. You can focus on just the story and nothing else, tackle a handful of side missions and activities, or attempt to complete anything and everything the game has to offer.

Gaming

Assassin’s Creed Shadows fixes my biggest problem with the series

The two protagonists in Assassin's Creed Shadows

The Assassin's Creed games have been on a steady path away from stealth ever since the series' first entry. I don't mean that stealth options were stripped out or haven't evolved, but it lagged behind the pace of a more direct approach. While Origins is seen as the major splintering point for the series into a full-blown action RPG, the series' identity crisis can be traced back much further. By the time we got Black Flag, stealth had become so inefficient and inessential that there was hardly a reason to bother with it at all outside of self-imposed challenges.

When the series did pivot into action RPGs, complete with weapon and armor scores, and made the protagonists more and more powerful, I fell off of the franchise. It not that I don't enjoy that style of game, rather that it wasn't what I came to Assassin's Creed for. With Assassin's Creed Shadows Ubisoft finally fixed that power creep problem without stripping those options out of the game. And that's thanks to its two character setup.
Jack of all trades, master of all
What caused me to fall out of favor with Assassin's Creed isn't that the series wanted to give players more options outside of a stealthy approach. Plenty of games proudly boast how they offer players the freedom to play sneaky or go in guns blazing. However, the issue with Assassin's Creed's for me was that one method invalidated the other.