Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Accessibility Options Revealed
Ubisoft has released a breakdown of which accessibility features will be included with Assassin’s Creed Shadows at launch.
Youssef Garcia-Maguid sat down with UX Director Jonathan Bedard to discuss what players can expect in regards to accessibility in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
No matter who you’re playing as, the development team wanted to ensure that as many people as possible are able to enjoy everything that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has to offer.

Highlights
YGM: Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an evolution for the franchise, with many elements being rebuilt from the ground up. In what ways did that allow you to change your approach to accessibility?
JB: Having changed the way we built the game, we had to redo many things, and it allowed us to revisit some elements that weren’t working as well as we’d hoped. Certain features benefited from this by being retooled or by simply changing the interface itself – or in some cases, the functionalities – to elevate our offer and our experience to higher standards. One example of that is our input remapping. Not only can you adjust the inputs of any of the buttons, but you can adjust the action of that input, whether you want it to be a hold or a press.
YGM: Are there any new features you’re particularly proud of? Or that the community has been requesting for a while?
JB: Audio descriptions for cinematics is something that really made me happy to see come to the game.
It also made me happy to see an initiative coming from the team’s passion and making its way into the game. This shows how far we’ve come along in the last few years, in terms of people being aware of and caring about accessibility at Ubisoft. I am proud to see this evolution, awareness, and care spreading and making our games more accessible every time.
Accessibility Options Breakdown
VISUAL
- Colorblind options – Ability to change colors for certain gameplay elements from a list of presets
- Screen Narration – Not only most menu items, but also many HUD modules and time-sensitive elements can be narrated
- HUD Customization – Ability to turn all HUD elements on or off either all at once, or individually, either with shortcut or using presets – increase opacity, resize text, resize Icons or add background to increase readability
- Screen shake on/off toggle
AUDIO
- Subtitles – Better color modifications, speaker directions and speaker emotions
- Gameplay Captions – Surfacing stimuli and points to their origins
- Audio Description for Cinematics – Cinematic will be audio descripted
- Audio Cues/Audio Glossary – New signs and feedback allowing navigation and path finding with non-visual cues
- Separate, isolated audio sliders
NAVIGATION and GUIDANCE

- FTUE – First time user experience flow is back, offering first-access critical options
- Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
- Tutorials Section – Tutorials can be found in the Codex section at any time
- Menu Tutorials – Always alerts when there are new menu functions
- Conversation Log – Every line can be perused from the start to the end of a dialogue

CONTROLS
- Control Remapping – Remap gameplay inputs, and their action (hold, press, double-press)
- Many inputs devices – Mouse and keyboard, controllers, combinations
- Lock-On Camera – Lock the camera on an enemy
- X and Y axis inversion – Ability to invert the axis for aiming actions
- Stick inversion – Invert the analog-stick behavior
GAMEPLAY
- Stealth and combat each have four separate difficulty settings
- Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
- Canon Mode – Enable automatic selection of narrative decisions for the “canon” story to unfold
- Melee Attack Mode – Simplifies the combat by using a single input instead of multiple buttons or complex combinations
- Quick Timed Events – Type of input required to complete Quick Time Events can be simplified, or skipped entirely
- Aim Assistance – Four levels of aim assistance are offered (off, light, moderate, full)
Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on March 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, Macs with Apple silicon via the Mac App Store, and Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store.
Set during the late Sengoku era in Japan, the game will have players will play as both the stealthy shinobi Naoe and the formidable samurai Yasuke.
The full article can be found HERE.
Cerebral Paul Says:
As one of my most anticipated games for 2024 2025 this information only adds to my excitement. Many of these additions will enable me to truly enjoy the game, hopefully without many of the frustrations that the previous entries in the Assassin’s Creed franchise sometimes include.
If you have any thoughts on the accessibility options being added to Assassin’s Creed Shadows or if you thing something has been omitted, let us know in the comments or reach out to me on X.