Assassin's Creed Shadows PS5 trailer hit with backlash after showing unfinished animations

The next installment in the Assassin's Creed franchise will be released on November 15, and ahead of the launch Ubisoft has released a new trailer for the title on the official PlayStation YouTube channel.

The new "World" trailer states at the beginning that any footage seen in the video has either been captured on a PS5 or PC. Shadows will take players to Feudal Japan, where they will get to experience an open world similar in scope to previous Assassin's Creed titles, Valhalla and Odyssey, but through two main characters. The new trailer release has been met with heavy criticism as, at the time of writing, it has received 5800 Dislikes versus 3000 Likes of its 54,0000 views.

Many of the criticisms point to choppy and seemingly unfinished animations, with a particularly egregious example being at 0.33 seconds into the video, where the horse appears to be ice skating across the ground. Other criticisms point to Ubisoft's failure to showcase any gameplay of Shadows ahead of its release while still leaving pre-orders open. "Release in two months. Still little to no gameplay showed. Says a lot," read one YouTube comment

On the other side of the fence, Ubisoft has taken to its blog to share how Shadows will be a significant step up in terms of graphical fidelity, saying Shadows will be the best-looking Assassin's Creed ever. More specifically, the developers have "rescaled the world to more realistic ratios, added ray-tracing global illumination, and utilized micro polygon tech."

"Assassin's Creed Shadows features distinct seasons, these make the world visually distinct so that the same location can look and feel vastly different depending on the time of year. But the world can change even within those seasons thanks to dynamic weather, meaning that missions have several environmental factors that can all alter your gameplay experience. With ponds frozen over, for example, there'll be no taking cover beneath the water. Take on the same mission during a nighttime spring rainstorm, and you'll find your footsteps muffled by the rain and enemies less likely to spot you in the dark," reads the blog

With no gameplay for Shadows being shown, it's hard to say how much of a graphical improvement Shadows is compared to previous Assassin's Creed titles. Furthermore, I really do hope that Ubisoft hasn't prioritized incredible graphics over animation and performance.