Assassin's Creed Forum

Background:
I'm on an M1 Mac Mini on macOS 11.2.1, with CrossOver 20.0.4. I installed Assassin's Creed through Steam, launched it, made it through the opening cutscene, then got stuck on a black screen where the menu should be.

Solution:
Assassin's Creed includes two versions: a DirectX 9 version and DirectX 10 version, where the latter is the default. This issue seems to be specific to the DirectX 10 version. To switch to 9:

1. Install the game through Steam normally.
2. Open the game directory in Finder (by default: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/<Bottle name>/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Assassins Creed/)
3. Delete AssassinsCreed_Dx10.exe, or rename it to something else.
4. Rename AssassinsCreed_Dx9.exe to AssassinsCreed_Dx10.exe
   4.5 (Advanced users) Instead of renaming AssassinsCreed_Dx9.exe, you can leave it and use a symlink named AssassinsCreed_Dx10.exe instead.
5. Launch the game normally.

So far the game seems to work fine for me from here.

Side note: If you make a mistake or want to reset for whatever reason, you can have Steam restore the game files to their original state by telling it to "Verify Integrity of Game Files", which will cause it to undo any changes you've made.

Thanks for that Garrett. Saved the day!