Ubisoft Bordeaux is quietly making a big name for itself within Assassin's Creed. Founded in 2017, it had scarcely touched the franchise before Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a game on which it would eventually take the lead with the Wrath of the Druids DLC. From there came Assassin's Creed Mirage, which grew from humble origins into the studio's first game as lead devs. Now it's been entrusted with Assassin's Creed Shadows' Claws of Awaji expansion – a very different approach to the series' post-launch content, but one that content director Simon Arsenault says was once a little more traditional.
"We pitched a couple of ideas," he tells me. "'If we keep [Shadows] political, what do we do? If we keep it fantastical, what do we do? If we keep personal, what do we do that's at the end?'" Where the series' previous expansions have often existed apart from the main game, that's a direction the Bordeaux team couldn't go down: "There's a great vengeance story in the main game," Arsenault explains, but if you start telling a new narrative, "you're diluting it."
