Ubisoft has released three new short videos showing us what the progression system in Assassin's Creed Shadows will look like, consisting of: passive skills, learning and adapting to the environment, and weapon customization.
Main features of skills will be:
- the main skill development system in Shadows will be called Mastery and will be divided into weapon skills and character archetypes
- in weapon and tool skills, new moves will be learned and the effectiveness of the equipment itself will be improved
- skills related to character archetypes will unlock new possibilities, e.g. Yasuke will be able to unlock the ability to switch weapons mid-combo
- unlike previous AC games, skills in Shadows will be unlockable in multiple ways – at each level through collecting XP, but also by eliminating special enemies called Samurai Daisho
- all skills will be able to be reset and redistributed at the player's discretion at any time
When it comes to raising knowledge, it will look like this:
- each type of weapon will be able to have two active skills at the same time
- not all skills will be available immediately, but characters will have to reach a so-called Knowledge rank which will have six levels
- Knowledge rank is tied to completing non-violent activities – meditating, praying, drawing, etc.
- Knowledge rank is shared between both playable characters
For most players, the most interesting part will certainly be the ability to change the appearance of equipment, which will include:
- equipment will also have its levels and quality ranks in the game
- equipment will be able to change in appearance using the transmog system, but will take it a step further by introducing modification of the appearance of individual equipment parts – for example, it will be possible to change the hilt of the sword, the appearance of the blade
- higher quality equipment in the game will have special bonuses in the form of skills that cannot be unlocked through the Mastery system
- there will be four types of harmful effects during attacks in the game: bleeding, poisoning, confusion, and knockout
