Assassin’s Creed Shadows map size is ‘roughly similar’ to Origins

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the upcoming open-world title in the series, and one of the most obvious questions surrounding the game’s world is about the size of the map in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Simon Lemay-Comtois, associate game director at Ubisoft Quebec has now given a rough idea about how big the map based in Japan will be.

Lemay-Comtois told VGC in an interview that fans can expect Assassin’s Creed Shadows map size to be “roughly similar to Origins” which makes it “smaller than Valhalla in terms of territory.” He also explained that there are “some body of water around Japan” but it is not similar to how “[Odyssey’s] Greece was, [which was] half water.” He adds that “coastlines and lake Biwa” will be a part of the Shadows map.

Fans can also expect mountains and valleys, with some temples situated at the top of the mountains. However, most of the mountains are too steep with “impregnable bush” so it would not be possible to reach the top of many of these mountains.

The associate game director elaborated that Ubisoft decided on the map size, based on the scope of the story they wish to cover. “The story that we focus on is mostly on central Japan, so we don’t expand all the way to the entirety of Japan, so therefore we knew we had a rough idea for the territory we wanted to cover,” Lemay-Comtois said during the interview.

With important events taking place in Kyoto, Osaka, and Azuchi, it was important for the team to be “faithful to these castles” which will have “a very big footprint.”

It seems to be the right call from Ubisoft to limit the size of the open-world map, as the map for Valhalla was massive. While a big open-world map sounds attractive at first, ensuring that the world feels alive and its nooks and corners are worth exploring, is a challenging task.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set to take players to 16th-century Japan with two playable protagonists. Naoe is a female shinobi whereas Yasuke is a male samurai. Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be released on November 15, 2024, for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.