Assassin's Creed Shadows Photo Mode Review

Mik Bromley

5 days ago7 min read

ℹ️ - Assassin's Creed Shadows Photo Mode Review

Developer: Ubisoft Québec

Publisher: Ubisoft

Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox X|S

Initial Release: 20th March 2025

Reviewed on PS5 with a digital copy provided by Ubisoft

he run up to launch was admittedly not the smoothest for Assassin's Creed Shadows, with multiple delays and cultural faux pas threatening to tarnish the game's reputation before anyone wielded a Hidden Blade. Thanks to Ubisoft then for providing a copy for me to find out what is actually in store.

A setting in feudal Japan has been the most requested for Ubisoft's era-hopping series for some time and, although a recent trend in popularity might make it feel like we've been here before, Shadows does things a little differently.

That is not least thanks to the dual-protagonist story that has you play as both Naoe, an agile shinobi, and Yasuke, a powerful samurai. Much more than a cosmetic choice, the two have differing backgrounds and separate skill sets that emphasise the RPG elements with extremes of stealth or direct combat.

They're also two sides of the same story, one that affords you some choices along the way or that can be played as intended with the new canon mode. Settlement building and ally recruitment fill out the roster, and hunting is replaced with observing and sketching animals for a better sense of harmony with the world.

The game feels fresh then and, without any cross-gen compromises, the visuals are suitably upgraded too. Even the photo mode has finally been given a long-overdue refresh to take advantage. Or has it?!

"Many of the main features are more re-arranged than replaced..."

Key Photo Mode Features:

New tabbed UI
DoF with focus & aperture control
Interactive photo locations map

Controls & Implementation:

Jumping in with a combined click of L3 & R3 brings up what, on first sight at least, appears to be a completely new photo mode. The first one for the series since 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins, but many of the main features are more re-arranged than replaced.

Gone are the separate Composition and Edit modes in favour of a much more cohesive tabbed UI with camera movement being available all of the time. This is arguably where the majority of the improvements have been made as the new layout replaces the previously muddled controls with more intuitive use of the analogue sticks and triggers to move and aim the camera.

There's a decent range of 15 m too, ±90° of roll for portrait orientations, and a strong zoom range for wide-angle or telephoto shots. You should have no trouble finding the right composition then. Well, that is despite the best efforts of the on-screen UI to really get in the way.

It can be hidden with a press of △ but it comes back immediately upon any input, including a nudge of the camera itself. That means that you never have an unobstructed view of the frame while composing a shot, and there's quite a lot of stuff on the screen.

The menu itself sits in a big black box, a control legend lines the bottom of the screen, apart from Take Shot and Preview (amusingly), they get their own black box right in the middle. Then there's a new descriptive info banner, and don't forget one of the five grid guides that are also always on.

It might not seem that important but, honestly, it is. Composition is the most important part of any shot, and I just want to be able to see what I'm doing. Oh, and don't get me started on how slow the settings are to get from one end of a slider to the other.

Still, at least the menu will be full of shiny new features, right? Well, not exactly, no. There isn't anything groundbreaking here and it actually loses a couple of features from Assassin's Creed Valhalla – those being the useful Bloom and Fog effects.

Where there are positive changes are with the use of more photography-relevant values for some of the camera settings that make things less vague. That lengthy zoom is given with lens focal lengths of 12 - 135 mm so it is easy to choose the right lens for a job, or to find the same settings again next time.

Depth of field follows a similar trend and features manual focus distance and aperture f-stop values. Smaller F-numbers mean a larger simulated aperture that creates a shallower depth of field with defocused blur on the background and foreground, either side of the point of focus.

It even reacts to the focal length with shallower acceptable focus on longer lenses, just be careful of an ugly halo that can occur around objects when the effect is too strong. There is another problem though, in that the manual focus steps are enormous at 1 metre each!

That obviously gives no finesse and means that you'll need to pick the closest metre and fine tune the focus using the camera dolly. Functionally, it's a downgrade from the previous cursor-based setup and sadly the auto-focus doesn't help much either. It locks onto the playable character yes, but the focus is on the centreline of the model, leaving the face out of focus when using a shallow depth of field.

Elsewhere, things do work better and if anything, the film grain actually works too well. The effect is extremely strong so should be used (very) sparingly, and the same goes for vignette. There's a sweet spot that does the job, but it can also do some pretty weird things that you may or may not find some creative use for.

Most of the genuinely useful tools for altering the style of the image come on the Filters tab. It's not merely a selection of colour filter presets, although there are a few of those too of course. Topping the list are 5 FX Filters which are actually customised rendering modes.

With interesting styles like blood red surroundings or the look of ink on parchment paper, these are a bit more unique and tend to work well with the fully scalable paint-like sticker logos. The only downside is that all other filter settings are disabled, so what you see is what you get.

That's not the case with the regular colour filters which essentially act as presets for the other options and can each be tweaked and adjusted from their starting point. Temperature, Tint, and Saturation bring some handy colour toning control and are perfectly easy to use. Once again, the effects can be quite strong, particularly in the case of increasing saturation, so just don't push it too far.

Finally, Brightness and Exposure let you drastically alter them amount of light in the image. If you're wondering what the difference is, don't worry, you're probably not alone. In simple terms, Brightness will adjust how bright or dark the image by shifting everything together as a whole, while Exposure is biased towards the brightness of light sources.

Using different balances of the two is a nice way to manipulate the black or white levels to give matte blacks for example, and they work well together with the accompanying Contrast option. Sadly though, these tools remain limited to using only the light that is available at the time.

There are no custom lights here and, perhaps more surprising given that it is a feature of the game, no ability to change the time of day either. In fact, there aren't really any 'advanced' features at all so, for now at least, let's call this a photo mode reboot rather than an upgrade.

Photographic Opportunity:

Aside from a short prologue, Assassin's Creed Shadows will make you wait a while to see more of Yasuke as the opening hours are exclusively played a Naoe. Eventually though, both protagonists are available and often look resplendent in their various armour sets that can be found as loot items or bought through the Helix Store.

The map is also pretty huge and serves as a beautiful representation of traditional Japan with castles, towns, markets, ports, temples, and shrines everywhere you go. Being set during the turbulent Sengoku period, you can expect a lot of military presence, and battles are never far away. Just as well then, that both characters can be equipped with a range of interesting and artfully crafted weapons.

Away from the action, Shadows is packed with beautiful landscapes and surprisingly large populations of native dogs, deer, and other furry creatures. It's a gorgeous place to photograph and all the more so thanks to dynamic time, weather, and even seasons.

While it remains a shame that the photo mode offers no way to take control of any of these conditions, that just means you can spend more time out there waiting for them to be just right.

Verdict:

A major update for the Assassin's Creed photography tools has been a long time coming and it's hard not to be disappointed with the supposedly new photo mode on offer here. It's more of a reboot than any kind of upgrade – one that shifts to more established standards but fails to add any advanced contemporary features.

A dew irritating design characteristics and a lack of finesse on some features leave this feeling like a photo mode that is still stuck in the past.