When Assassin's Creed Shadows launches later this year, its development cycle would have been longer than any game in the series at four years, and Ubisoft thinks that's the perfect amount of time to make a game.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, lead producer Karl Onnée explained that Shadows took longer to make than Assassin's Creed Valhalla's three years, because the team wanted to create an accurate depiction of feudal Japan and make the game "as authentic as possible".
"It's great to work on a game that comes after something with the pedigree of Valhalla," Onnée said. "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."
The developer continued, saying that in order to make good on this promise, the team had to take its time.
"It's always a balance between time and costs, 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 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 to improve it. Four years, I think, is the right balance to go from conception to production and get the feedback necessary to adapt."
On making Shadows an "authentic" experience, Onnée explained that it was something the team took "pride" in and that it was 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," the developer said. "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.
Onnée added, "It's not feudal Japan, obviously, but it is good to go on site, because it is only then that we realize it is very different to what we think it is. 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."
Assassin's Creed Shadows launches on November 15 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, and PC.
