Assassin’s Creed Is Planning A Whole Lot Of Free DLC

Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been out for just over a month. But if you’re already wrapped up Naoe and Yasuke’s lengthy quest to rescue their home from the jaws of tyranny, Ubisoft just revealed plenty of reasons to revisit its gorgeous recreation of feudal Japan this summer, including some highly requested community features.

Ubisoft revealed its post-launch roadmap for Shadows this week, and it includes a lot of content set to drop in the months ahead. The biggest reveal was a peek at the game’s first expansion, Claws of Awaji, which will bring players to a new region that looks overgrown and haunting.

According to Simon Lemay-Comtois, the game’s Associate Director, the expansion will pick up after the main game’s epilogue and will include new abilities, new enemies, and a brand new weapon exclusive to Naoe, a bo staff. Claws of Awaji will launch later this year as the first of two multi-hour story DLCs announced so far.

More surprising is the steady schedule of free content set for May and June. In May, Shadows will get the first of what developers are calling “story drops,” which are meant to flesh out the many characters Naoe and Yasuke meet along the main quest. The first character to get this post-launch treatment is the real-life Portuguese priest Lois Frois, who will get a new questline.

These story drops will also include more new abilities, allies, and activities, as well as additional bug fixes and expansions to the game’s already robust Photo Mode. May’s second update will further refine the game’s parkour mechanics, adding a niche, but sorely missed feature from past Assassin’s Creed games: back-ejects, a move used to quickly gain height on walls positioned behind the player. Meanwhile, side ejects, used to scale walls perpendicular to the player, are being reworked to be more reliable.

Finally, a new move called the vertical ledge jump is being added to rid Shadows of awkward moments where Naoe can’t climb an awning jutting out from a building. These additions may seem minor, but for the subset of Assassin’s Creed fans obsessed with perfecting cool-looking parkour lines, they’re game-changing abilities.

In June, players can expect another new character quest, a new recruitable ally, and a new difficulty mode for both stealth and combat. The widely requested ability to toggle headgear during cutscenes is coming too, as is a new “open-world alarm system” that will extend the alert mechanic of castles to the rest of the game. And for those who want to run back the game’s story, a New Game Plus mode will raise the level cap and let players relive the journey with all their gear. Ubisoft’s Community manager says the precise dates for these content drops will be revealed closer to their releases.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of the year’s biggest success stories: after a string of mediocre releases, troubled publisher Ubisoft delivered a compelling open-world RPG that’s sold very well. Now, with the next year of content already plotted out, there will be plenty to keep fans busy ahead of the release of the series’ next game, Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe.