I think AC will do at least low 80's. They'll have had 4 extra months to polish out as many of the bugs as possible from the earlier gameplay they released, as well as to fix some of the other criticisms that the game received that they are able to fix in 4 months time (things like the wrong time period architecture and outfits that people found). The latest gameplay footage they released just a few days ago looked very good, basically no reused animations or assets from earlier AC games it looked like. AC Valhalla averaged about 83 and AC Shadows looks significantly better than Valhalla to me at least, a proper return to AC form with an actual ninja assassin we can choose to play as for most of the game, and the best stealth options the series has ever seen.
The vast majority of game critics were never going to care about the whole Yasuke "was he actually a samurai" controversy imo, most game critics are not in the culture war camp that cares about that. On top of that, Ubisoft is practically on death's doorstep and the critics know that AC Shadows is probably their last chance to turn things around before they are forced into a sale that will result in probably at least a dozen studio closures and thousands of laid off developers, or forced to close those studios and layoff those developers themselves, I can't see game critics being willing to put the final nail in Ubisoft's coffin, they are more likely to try and bail them out with inflated review scores in the hopes that it will boost the game's sales.
I'll wait for the final previews before the game releases and adjust my AC score then if necessary.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - 4 days ago