Assassin's Creed Shadows' Art Director Reveals The "Biggest Scale Ratio" Of The Open-World AC Games

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has always been defined by its thorough recreations of historical settings, and is setting a new standard among the largest games in the series. While the most recent entry,, went back to a focus on one city, follows in the tradition of the open-world maps of ,, and The landmarks in these games attempt to stay close to their actual size, but the overall lay of the land tends to be more compressed to make the scale manageable.

In an interview with, art director Thierry Dansereau confirmed that has the largest scale ratio of any of the open-world games in the franchise. According to Dansereau, this change was necessary to do justice to Japan's tree-covered mountains.

[W]e have the biggest scale ratio since the open-world formula because we had an issue —the Japan landscape is filled with mountains, and if you try to cover too much, the mountains will look like hills as soon as you put trees on them. So we needed to have a scale that's more realistic, because we wanted to feel mountains, like, it feels like mountains."

Following up on the interview, received confirmation that the approximate scale ratio of the map overall is 1:16, with 15 kilometers in-game representing 250-260 in real life.Dansereau also expanded on the process of filling out the land as a whole, which relied on historical information about the landmarks and production in various regions. Staging moments that reveal key areas also comes into play — as Dansereau puts it, "."

Having the largest scale ratio of the open-world games doesn't necessarily mean that will have the largest map size overall. is sticking to central Japan rather than attempting to cover the entire nation, and although that will still make it significantly bigger than or the older games in the franchise, it isn't operating with zero restraint.

The first trailer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows reveals its release date, dual protagonists, and the first inklings of a story. Here’s what to expect.

An intensified scale ratio does mean that