By the time Assassin's Creed Shadows launches in November, the game will have been in development for four years.
It's the series' longest development cycle yet, and 25% longer than its critically acclaimed predecessor, 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
“It's great to be working on a game that comes after something on the level of Valhalla,” explains lead producer Karl Onnée. “But there are obviously high expectations. We always want to improve, which is what we're trying to do with Shadows. We're pushing the boundaries of what we can do.”
The key to ensuring that goal is met is constant iteration, he says, and that's something that can't be done lightly.
“It's always a balance between time and cost, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate. Yes, you can put more people on a project and get it done in less time, but that doesn't give you more time to iterate, because it takes time to get feedback from your players, from your team… and then see what works and what doesn't and how to improve it. Four years, I think, is the right balance to go from concept to production and get the feedback you need to adapt.”
Assassin's Creed is one of the industry's leading franchises, so it's not an IP that Ubisoft is going to cut corners on. One aspect of the series that's widely admired is its commitment to historical accuracy (within the confines of a fictional story, of course), and that's not something that can be done lightly, either.
“We're trying to make the game as authentic as possible. That's something we're proud of,” Onnée tells us. “And it's also a very long process. When we build a Japanese house in feudal Japan, it's very different from, say, a medieval French house or an English one. So as artists, we have to learn where things go inside a feudal Japanese house… maybe food doesn't go there. We have to get everything we need to know and learn it. And that process is long.”
It's a little surprising that it's taken so long for the series to visit Japan, especially its feudal period, and Onnée explains that the technical capabilities of the hardware are the reason why now was the ideal time to do so.
“It’s something we’ve always wanted to do, but we wanted to find the right time. And I’m sure the other teams would have liked to do it too. We had the opportunity because we’d done Assassin’s Creed Odyssey[set in Greece]so we had the experience. But we also felt like it was the right time, because we have the power in terms of hardware, but also our new version of the engine, so we could really get our vision across. It was important for us to have elements like light and shadow, which are very performance-intensive. And elements like dynamic weather.”
“You can put more people on a project and get it done in less time, but that doesn't give you more time to iterate.”
The research process for Assassin's Creed is already pretty well-honed. It starts with internal research, before working with outside consultants and historians. In the case of Shadows, the team also involved its Osaka and Tokyo teams. Then, once that research was complete, the team hopped on a plane and visited the locations where the game will be set.
“It’s not feudal Japan, obviously, but it’s nice to go there, because only then do we realise it’s very different from what we thought it was,” Onnée explains. “It’s very interesting, because when the team went there, one of the things that stood out was the forests and what they’re like. We had done some forests based on the landscape of Greece[for Odyssey]but when we went, we realised it was very different from what we’d 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 little things that are very important, because they give you a better idea of the dimensions of the building, the culture, the monuments and shrines that are still standing today… it is important to represent all of that correctly.”
It’s important from an artistic perspective, but also a commercial one. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a chance for Ubisoft to grow the series in Japan. It’s unusual for Western-developed action games to sell in huge numbers in Japan, but it does happen, and one notable example is Sony’s Ghost of Tsushima, which is also a historical action-adventure game set in Japan and developed in the West (by American studio Sucker Punch). That game sold over a million copies in the country, and Ubisoft will look to it as an indicator of what’s possible here. All of this means it’s vital that Shadows is as authentic as possible.
“Obviously, when we make a game, we try to appeal to a global audience,” Onnée tells us.
“Because we're making a game in Japan, we hope to attract more Japanese players. So it's really important that we try to be as authentic as possible. We start from a humble position, that we don't know anything and we have to learn everything from scratch. We make sure to respect things, because that's a very important thing for Japanese people, as it is in many other countries. When you come in, you don't want to come in as if you know everything. We want to create something that, when they see it and play it, they'll recognize their own country.”
This is the first major Assassin's Creed game in four years, but a smaller entry in the series called Assassin's Creed Mirage was released last year. Mirage was more in keeping with the older Assassin's Creed titles and was well received by fans, particularly for its more stealth-focused gameplay.
There wasn't much time for Shadows to react to Mirage's reception, but Onnée says they were following that game's performance and were able to take advantage of the stealth work the Mirage team had done.
“During production, we playtest with people from different places and at different stages,” he explains. “We see what works and what doesn't, and we also look at playtests with Mirage and see what people like. We knew we were going in a stealth direction with Shadows, so we looked at what they were doing and learned from it. We said let's use what they'd done and build on that, rather than going our own way.”
He concludes: “We’re all part of the brand, so it’s important that we talk to each other. We need to avoid duplicating work. Making games is hard, it takes a lot of time and passion, and we need to avoid doing the same things differently. We need to build on the work and improve it. We talk a lot with other teams to make sure that if we’re doing similar things, we can collaborate, and if they want to do something next, we can take that into account. That’s what we do with our new Anvil pipeline, which is having technical teams work together. When we build new features, we make sure they’re available to all projects. We keep building and improving all the time.”