How to turn Assassin's Creed Shadows Canon Mode off or on (2025)

Having Assassin's Creed Shadows Canon Mode off or on is a choice that players will make at the start, allowing to choose whether or not the story of ACS is more fixed or flexible accordingly. This option effectively takes away control of the dialogue in Assassin's Creed Shadows and locks both characters into specific responses, but is that better? We'll explain the benefits of Canon mode in AC Shadows below, as well as what it actually does for your experience of the game and if you can turn it off or on later.

What is Assassin's Creed Shadows Canon mode?

If you turn on Assassin's Creed Shadows Canon Mode then all of the dialogue choices are removed. This means that cutscenes run linearly and you can't interact to steer the direction of any conversations. In this mode you don't even get a notification as to when a choice would normally have been available – so in the above early example where Yasuke can choose to reveal he understands Japanese or remain silent, in Canon Mode the cutscene plays out automatically with Yasuke confirming he can understand what is being said and you wouldn't know that staying quiet was an option.

In our experience with AC Shadows, dialogue choices do not have any significant long-term effect on the storyline, so you aren't missing much other than some short-lived flavor in conversations.

How to turn Canon Mode on or off in Assassin's Creed Shadows

It is important to note that you cannot change Assassin's Creed Shadows Canon Mode once you've started a game, either to turn it on or off. You should therefore give careful consideration to whether you want to use it or not before beginning a fresh playthrough, as this setting is much stricter than other options such as Assassin's Creed Shadows Immersive Mode that can be toggled on or off at any time with little or no progress lost. The only way to change Canon Mode is to start an entirely new game, and given the overall size of AC Shadows that is certainly not a decision to be taken lightly, so settle on the level of interaction you want to have with the story before you begin and be prepared to stand by your choice.

Not long after starting the game, you'll have to figure out how to retrieve the box in Assassin's Creed Shadows for your first infiltration mission.

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