The Assassin’s Creed games of the modern era have made distinct efforts to become less linear with their stories. You can pick one of two protagonists, for example, and you can also make decisions on quests that will affect the story later on. However, Ubisoft has always had a bit of a caveat with this, as it has often referred to some events, protagonists, and more as canon, while others are left by the wayside.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ director highlighted how players can live a canon-friendly experience in the game over on a Reddit AMA (thanks, PC Gamer). “Choices come more into play when recruiting allies and romance some of the characters,” he said. “Since the fan base is divided on branching dialogues, we have incorporated an option called Canon Mode which allows you to play the game with choices already made for you, to give you a choice free experience. Hope this makes it fun for everyone.”
For the people in your life who can’t make a choice, this seems like a pretty good option, but then it raises the question of why have choices in the first place if some of them are going to be considered wrong?
Other RPG series like Mass Effect, The Witcher, and more go to painstaking efforts to ensure player decisions are respected, even in game sequels, but Assassin’s Creed here still seems like it can’t decide whether it wants to fully dive into that RPG space or still be a stealth action game.