The thing I’m most excited about in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is my hideout: ‘a little over one acre of fully customizable land’ to build on, decorate, and fill with pettable baby deer

Morgan has played six hours of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and officially announced he’s excited for it: his preview in January made “a fantastic first impression.” I haven’t gotten my hands on Ubisoft’s next stabby stealth game yet, but as of today I’m extremely interested in one particular aspect of it: building and managing my base, or as Ubisoft calls it, my hideout.

This week Ubisoft shone a light on the player hideouts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and when I finally get to play the game this month I feel like this will be my 99% of focus. Sure, I know there are dudes in Japan who need to get neck-stabbed, and I will neck-stab them. I’ll run from guards and clamber up walls and do the whole eagle-screech-dive into piles of conveniently located hay.

Mainly, though: I’m gonna be working on my hideout.

Ubisoft says our hideouts will be set on “a little over one acre of fully customizable land” where we can place buildings and pavilions, decorate interiors and exteriors, create pathways, lay down trees, bushes, and ponds, and even populate the land with the best kind of animals: pettable animals.

You can see the blog post here, but I’ve listed a few of my personal hideout highlights below:

• Place, rotate, and connect buildings as if it’s a little settlement-building game
• Build more structures by finding resources like wood and minerals while out on stabby missions
• You can have a tea room, which sounds cozy
• You can have a sake room, which sounds rad
• Build a gallery to store and display your extra armor and outfits
• Add blacksmiths, duelists, and other people you meet during the game to your community
• These community members will have conversations and not just ignore each other
• Build stables to allow your scouts to run smuggling missions to collect those building resources I mentioned
• Observe animals in the wild and sketch them, and you’ll be able to place them (the animals) right on your land.
• This includes birds like the grey heron, cats and dogs, and baby deer
• You can pet many of these animals
• Look, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a zoo management game as far as I’m concerned

Here’s a little peek at the animals you can add to your acre and proof you can pet them:

There have been some cool player hideouts in other Assassin’s Creed Games: I remember quite liking the base on a moving train I had in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. But this sweet, secluded hideaway in Shadows has me ready to strap a blade to my wrist and do just enough sneaky neck-stabbing so I can afford to keep my base packed to the rafters with baby deer.