Four years offers "the right balance" to make a new Assassin's Creed game

By the time Assassin's Creed Shadows launches this November, the game would have been in development for four years.

It's the longest development cycle for the series so far, and 25% longer than its acclaimed predecessor, 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

"It's great to work on a game that comes after something with the pedigree of Valhalla," explains lead producer Karl Onnée. "But obviously there are great expectations. We always want to go better, which is what we're trying to do with Shadows. We are pushing the limits of what we can do."

Key to making sure it delivers on that is through constant iteration, he says, and that's something you just can't hurry.

"It's always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate. 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 the feedback from your players, 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 conception to production and get the feedback necessary to adapt."

Assassin's Creed is one of the industry's leading franchises, so it's not an IP that Ubisoft will cut corners on. One aspect of the series that is widely admired is its commitment to historical accuracy (within the confines of a fictional story, of course), and that is something that also can't be rushed.

"We are trying to create a game that is as authentic as possible. It's something we take pride in," Onnée tells us. "And that is also a very long process. When we build a Japanese house from feudal Japan, it is very different from, say, a French medieval house or an English one. So you have to learn as artists where things go inside a feudal Japanese house… maybe the food doesn't go there. You have to get everything you need to know and learn it. And that process is long."

It's a bit surprising it has taken this long for the series to visit Japan, especially its feudal period, and Onnée explains that the technical capabilities of the hardware is why now was the ideal time to do it.

"It is something we have 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 had done Assassin's Creed Odyssey [set in Greece], so we had the experience. But it also felt like the right moment, because we have the power in terms of the hardware, but also our new version of the engine, so we could really deliver our vision. It was important for us to have things like light and shadows, which is very performance hungry. And things like dynamic weathers."

"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 on it"

The research process for Assassin's Creed is well honed by now. It begins with internal research, before working with external consultants and historians. In the case of Shadows, the team also involved its teams in Osaka and Tokyo. Then, once that research has been completed, the team hop on a plane and visit the locations where the game will take place.

"It's not feudal Japan, obviously, but it is good to go on site, because it is only then that we realise it is very different to what we think it is," Onnée explains. "It is very interesting, because when the team went there, one of the things that jumped out was the forests and how they are. We had made some forests based on the Greece landscape [for Odyssey], but when we went, we noticed it was very different to what we'd done, and we had to change it. You don't necessarily find that stuff out when doing historical research.

"These are some of the small things that are very important, because you get a better sense of the dimensions of the building, of the culture, of monuments and shrines that are still standing today… it is important to represent all that correctly."

It's important from an artistic perspective, but also from a commercial one, too. Assassin's Creed Shadows is an opportunity for Ubisoft to grow the series in Japan. It's unusual for Western-developed action games to sell in large quantities 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 US studio Sucker Punch). That game went on to sell over a million copies in the country, and Ubisoft will be looking at that as an indicator of what's possible here. All of this means it's vital Shadows is as authentic as possible.

"Obviously when we make a game, we are trying to appeal to a global audience," Onnée tells us.

"Since we are making a game in Japan, we do hope to appeal to more Japanese players. So, it is very important that we try to be as authentic as possible. We come from a humble position of we don't know anything and we need to learn everything from scratch. We are making sure we respect things, because that is something very important to 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 build something that when they see and play it, they will recognise their own country."

This is the first big Assassin's Creed game in four years, but there was a smaller title in the series released last year called Assassin's Creed Mirage. Mirage was more akin to older Assassin's Creed titles and it went down well with fans, particularly its more stealth-focused gameplay.

There wasn't much time for Shadows to react to Mirage's reception, but Onnée says they were tracking how that game was doing and were able to build on the stealth work that the Mirage team had done.

"During production we do playtests with people from different places at different stages," he explains. "We look at what works and what doesn't, and we also look at the playtests with Mirage and see what people like. We knew we were going into the direction of stealth with Shadows, and so we saw what they were doing and learned from that. We said let's use what they've done and build on top of it, rather than going our own way."

He concludes: "We are all part of the brand, so it is important that we all discuss with each other. You want to avoid redoing work. Making games is difficult, it takes a lot of time and passion, and you want to avoid doing the same things but differently. You want to build on top of work and improve on it. We have a lot of discussions with other teams to make sure if we're doing similar things, we can collaborate and so if they want to do something afterwards, we can take that into account. That's what we do with our new Anvil pipeline, which is the tech teams working together. When we build new features, we make sure those features are available for all projects. We are continuing to build and improve all the time."