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,
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