adventureCertainly! Here’s a reworded version of your title: “Create Your Assassin’s Creed Shadows Hideout in Animal Crossing Style”

A new blogvert for Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ hideout customisation appeared yesterday, just when you thought it was safe to play another open world game following the merciless time vacuum that was Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth‘s Dondoko Island.

The hideout is an acre of “fully customisable” land for Naoe and Yasuke to visit for a breather. Once there, you can pop down buildings, shrubbery, animals, and decorations. The blog also specifies the placement of “mossy rocks”. No other types though. Moss or piss off.

Here’s some grid snapping action.

“Each building & upgrade will also have a direct impact on gameplay,” the blog says. The dojo trains combat allies. The forge upgrades weapons. A tea room lets you “increase ration efficiency”, and so on. I assume that’s something to do with health, although I’m now picturing a radical late nineties console advert in which a spiky-haired youth shouts downstairs at his parents that he can’t go to grandma’s house because he’s “increasing ration efficiency, Mom!”. Nothing says excitement like upgrade names that evoke board room minutes.

As you can see above, the grid snapping action also applies to animal companions, who you can pop down and visit to pet at your leisure. “We had all these endearing critters all over the world already,” writes Dany of the senior design team, “and everyone’s instant reaction is to drop everything they’re doing and stare at them for a minute. It made sense for us to make them available inside of the Hideout.”

This isn’t entirely accurate to my experience with Assassin’s Creed, since I actually spent a good chunk of Odyssey on a personal quest to find every bear in Greece and kick them in the face. Call me out for being an awful cynic here, but this also feels like a case of “give the player what they think they want” at the expense of those moments Dany describes. I’m not sure how often I’d stop and to stare at wildlife in the open world if I’ve already got a hideout carpeted in deer poo.

To further populate, upgrade, and decorate your hideout, the open world is scattered with resources for you to collect – or possibly pay for since it’s Assassin’s Creed, a pioneer in the groundbreaking “give us a tenner for this bag of wood” monetisation field.

This is purely speculation on my part, however. Ubisoft have already announced they’re dropping the season pass model, although the Steam listing does offer a pricier edition that includes some DLC, so this feels more like a token rebranding than the (currently flailing) company turning over a new mossy rock.

I’m aware that I’m emanating pessimism like a snow hater dissecting a spoon-shaped persimmon seed, so I should say that I think this all sounds like a pleasant and serene way to spend time between the hustle and/or bustle of the Sengoku period. A few customisation tools go a long way in helping you feel ownership over a space, and I’m a sucker for anything that lets me enjoy the vibe of pruning a bonsai without the anguish of having that bonsai die approximately fourteen seconds after I bring it home. Also, I like the sound of the ally conversations at the hideout:

“Having our allies in one place creates opportunities for character development,” the blog says. “We gathered the writers (from 4 different studios all over the world) in a meeting and had them create interactions inspired by questions like, ‘What would happen if these two characters suddenly became roommates?’ I really love all the cool little moments they came up with. It makes the Hideout feel like the beating heart of the league”.