Assassin’s Creed Shadows Enhances a Standout Feature from the Series

Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes players on a journey through an expansive and stunning world, vast enough to sometimes feel overwhelming. In games as ambitious as this open-world RPG, having a map screen that’s easy to read and visually appealing is crucial. Equally important, though, is the objectives screen, which keeps track of your main story tasks and the numerous side quests you unlock as you interact with NPCs and explore new areas. Shadows offers one of the best objectives menus in the series to date. It builds on recent improvements to quest maps, creating an interface that’s intuitive to use and deepens your connection to the storyline and the world itself.

The objectives screen in Shadows takes a cue from its predecessors like Odyssey, Valhalla, and Mirage. It’s designed similarly to a family tree, with distinct sections representing different quest groups, regions, and the characters you assist.

Unlike many games that hide branching objectives, only letting you access the main task after completing several smaller ones, Shadows lays it all out for you. This transparency about multi-step tasks, organized visually with clear links to people and places, gives you a much clearer sense of your progress than a simple checklist of completed tasks.

Different sections on the objectives screen mirror both the game’s world and your personal gameplay journey. This unique setup tracks not just your tasks by priority but reflects the choices and paths you’ve taken. In my experience, I focused heavily on assassination missions, leading to a screen filled with various red Xs, in stark contrast to colleagues who spent similar hours in the game but took different routes.

Although I skipped over Valhalla, Odyssey, and Mirage, Shadows is my first foray into an open-world RPG with this kind of layout. I find it visually appealing and straightforward, making me feel more engaged with the game’s world and narrative. My missions have personal stakes, linked to real characters and goals, rather than a faceless list on a generic interface.

Fellow players familiar with the franchise agree that Shadows elevates this feature to new heights. Despite some repetitive RPG elements within its breathtaking world, the series continues to innovate in how it presents objectives, making player actions feel genuinely impactful.