When Assassin’s Creed Shadows would be released later this year, the development cycle would be longer than any game in the series, at four years. Ubisoft believes that this is the perfect length of time to make a game.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.bizLead producer Karl Onnée explained that Shadows took longer to make than Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘S three years, as the team wanted to create a true representation of feudal Japan and make the game “as authentic as possible.”
“It’s great to work on a game that follows something with the pedigree of Valhalla,” Onnée said. “But of course there are high expectations. We always want to be better, and that’s what we’re trying to do with Shadows. We’re pushing the boundaries of what we can do.”
The developer went on to say that the team had to take their time to deliver on this promise.
“It’s always a balance between time and cost, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate,” he said. “Yes, you can put more people on a project and do it in a shorter time, but that doesn’t give you more time to iterate, because it takes time to get feedback from your players, your team … and then see what works and what doesn’t and how you can improve it. Four years I think is the right balance to go from concept to production and get the feedback you need to make adjustments.”
About the making Shadows an “authentic” experience, Onnée explained that it was something the team was “proud” of and that it was a “very long process”.
“If we’re building a Japanese house out of feudal Japan, it’s very different from, say, a French medieval house or an English house,” the developer said. “So you have to learn as artists where things go in a feudal Japanese house… maybe the food doesn’t go there. You have to learn everything you need to know. And that process is a long one.
Onnée added: “It’s not feudal Japan, of course, but it’s good to go there because only then do we realise that it’s very different from what we think. It’s very interesting because when the team went there, one of the things that stood out was the forests and what they are like. We had made some forests based on the Greek landscape (for Odyssey), but when we went there, we realised that it was very different from what we had done, and we had to change it. You don’t necessarily discover things like that when you do historical research.
“These are some of the small things that are very important, because you get a better sense of the size of the building, of the culture, of the monuments and shrines that are still standing today… it’s important to get all that right.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be launched on November 15th for PlayStation5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Moonand PC.