Fixing core issues with games can often be an involved process, but in the case of hands-on with the game in January, bugs already seemed infrequent, and by launch, it was in much better shape than any of Ubisoft's most problematic releases.

Of course, it's still not perfect, and the shortcomings of Assassin's Creed Shadows go beyond bugs. Some of its biggest weak points aren't really things that the game could patch, like the open-world excess of repetitive content that's become a core part of the franchise's design philosophy. Text, however, is easy to patch in, and a bit more writing could be the ticket to a more satisfying experience overall.

Assassin's Creed Shadows Needs Characters In Its Codex

A Massive Missing Element

On the whole, I absolutely love the codex in Assassin's Creed Shadows. As a way to learn details of the historical context surrounding Assassin's Creed titles, the Codex has always been a far more fascinating inclusion than text dumps in the average game. It's had its ups and downs, with some games containing more robust references than others, but Assassin's Creed Shadows is one of the more impressive entries as far as information on cultural practices and key locations is concerned.

The average Assassin's Creed Shadows player isn't likely to know every character that shows up.

Despite those strengths, the Assassin's Creed Shadows Codex is completely lacking when it comes to characters, principally in that it doesn't feature them at all. Considering the subject of this game, it's a baffling exclusion. Assassin's Creed Shadows primarily takes place in 1582, a year that saw convergence and conflict between an unreasonable number of notable daimyo, and it doesn't hesitate to weave many of these figures into the narrative.

While the name Nobunaga may be familiar enough to many, the average Assassin's Creed Shadows player isn't likely to know every character that shows up, and it can become difficult to track them all or separate fact from fiction. Hour after hour, the game unveils new circles of assassination targets, making it hard to keep up with anyone's identity when they're not on-screen. Playing through the game at a constant pace, I managed just fine, but I imagine that taking breaks could quickly induce disorientation.

There's No Good Excuse For The Codex's Shortcomings

Fact & Fiction Could Still Be Distinct

If there's a discrete reason for the lack of characters in the Codex, I can only assume that it's due to the merging of fact and fiction. As a game that grounds itself more in the historical world than in Assassin's Creed's impulses toward sci-fi and fantasy, Assassin's Creed Shadows sticks to concrete knowledge in the Codex. Covering all the key characters would touch on a few that never existed, and Ubisoft might be concerned that this would confuse history rather than clarify it.

Even setting aside the various ways the franchise has handled this before, I still don't think it's an excuse that would hold much water. There's no reason the Codex couldn't have a separate tab for fictional characters or simply leave them out altogether. Assassin's Creed Shadows features more than enough real-world figures to justify the effort, and it would significantly enhance the game's potential as a learning tool.

Adding Characters To The Codex Could Be A Win-Win

Better History & Better Gameplay

By including characters in the Codex, Assassin's Creed Shadows could both highlight the surprising accuracy of the game's chronicle and clarify where creative liberties were taken. The pace of events surrounding Nobunaga's death was even more breakneck than the game portrays, and highlighting that by providing chronicles of the characters would show that there's no significant compression of history going on. At the same time, the Codex could make note of the exceptions to this rule, like Ukita Naoie, who died several months before the events of the game.

I've done more research of my own than most players are likely to, and there are still points of clarification that I'd love to receive in Codex character entries. I've been assuming that Akechi Kagemitsu is a take on the historical figure Akechi Hidemitsu, for example, but there might be more to that story than I'm aware. Even if I'm right, the Codex could shed light on why the team switched up his character a bit more than others, a peek behind the curtain that would be interesting for both students of history and those interested in game development.

On the most practical level, it's equally hard to ignore the clarity that Codex character entries would offer for anyone struggling to keep track of who they're assassinating and why. Providing more information wouldn't just serve a historical function, it would make for a more seamless game experience and help the narrative land without getting lost among its non-linear sprawl.

Fixing The Codex In AC Shadows Wouldn’t Be Hard

A Minor Ask With Major Benefits

I don't want to minimize the effort necessary to compile an accurate and accessible character Codex, but implementing one into Assassin's Creed Shadows would be a fairly simple addition on a technical level. Considering the years of development that went into the game and the extensive work necessary for its bug fixing, the value added by including characters to the Codex would provide an unusually big return for a straightforward update.

It would also be a nice way to honor the work that historians and the narrative designers undertook, especially considering how much information surrounding minor figures of the period is currently relegated to Japanese-only texts. In light of the unusually fervent conversation surrounding the historical accuracy of Assassin's Creed Shadows, reflecting that research in text form could highlight the hard information behind the game's creative depiction of events.

This is probably all just wishful thinking, and as things stand, I'd rather have a Codex that knocks it out of the park in all the areas it does than a mediocre attempt that also happens to include characters. I don't feel like asking for both is an unreasonable request, though. Out of anything that Assassin's Creed Shadows could reasonably add in the future, expanding the Codex to cover characters would be my number one pick.