In an interview with GamesIndustry, Karl Onnée, lead producer of Assassin’s Creed Shadowsrevealed that it was necessary 4 years to develop the game. This is the longest run of the series, about 25% longer than 2020’s Valhalla.
On the other hand, as you surely know, as technology advances and games become more complex, development times get longer. Onnée in particular states that the 4 years required for Shadows “are the right balance to move from concept to production and get the feedback needed to adapt”, perhaps suggesting that this could become the new standard timing for the main games in the series. In that case, it wouldn’t be an excessive amount of time for a AAA game, but Assassin’s Creed fans until Valhalla had been accustomed to a release cadence of an annual or almost annual nature, which evidently may no longer be sustainable.
Words from the lead producer of Assassin’s Creed Shadows
“It’s always a balance between time and cost, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate,” Karl Onnée said. “Sure, you can put more people on a project and get it done faster, but that doesn’t give you more time to iterate, because you need time to get feedback from the players, from the 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.”
One of the things developers focus on the most is historical accuracy and settings, which require a lot of historical research. With more than ten games under its belt, Ubisoft’s modus operandi in this sense is already well-established, but it still requires time and site visits to ensure that the team’s vision coincides with reality.
“There is no feudal Japan anymore, of course, but it’s good to go there, because only then do we realize that it is very different from what we think,” Onnée explains. “It’s very interesting, because when the team went there, one of the things that stood out were the forests and their structure. We had made some forests based on the landscape of Greece. [per Odyssey]but when we went there we noticed that it was very different from what we had done and we had to change it. These things are not necessarily discovered when you do historical research.
“These are some of the little things that are very important, because you get a better sense of the scale of the buildings, the culture, the monuments and shrines that are still standing today… it’s important to represent all of that correctly.”
We remind you that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be available from November 15th on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. During the same interview, Onnée also talked about how the game will take full advantage of the potential of PS5 and Xbox Series X|S from a graphical standpoint.
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