- Assassin’s Creed Shadows will allow for more player freedom
- Associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois says exploration is “much more free-form”
- The development team wanted to find “the right balance between discovery and wonder”
Ubisoft Quebec has reworked the exploration in the Assassin’s Creed Shadows to allow for more player freedom in its open world.
That’s what Simon Lemay-Comtois, associated game director for Assassin’s Creed Shadowswho told TechRadar Gaming during a special preview event that the team decided on a more guided experience for the upcoming game compared to previous entries in the series.
“It used to be ‘point exactly where we want the players to go,’ and that’s changed across the whole industry,” Lemay-Comtois said. “For us, we have already started this The Odyssey a while back where we had a default mode which is [the] classic ‘go here’ and then we had, I think we called it exploration mode if I remember, and it was less guided.
“Now for Shadowsthat is what we are starting from. The default mode is much more free form and you have to piece it together.”
Lemay-Comtois also noted that if players wanted to, they can turn the default mode back on if they want, which will offer a more direct experience that helps you where you’re going.
“It feels better to use information you find and goals that you put together,” he added. “Is it some kind of reward? I think that’s what the industry has shown us in the last five, six years is that finding things yourself, that’s rewarding, so why don’t we put that at the forefront. exploration?”
The game director also explained how the team tried to make Shadows‘ setting Japan a less overwhelming place to explore, compared to games like Valhalla and The Odyssey.
“It’s always difficult because we know we want to represent a much more accurate landscape scale for Japan than we had before, say. The OdysseyGreece was very compressed compared to [the] the real world,” he said.
“With Japan, we don’t do that, but we try to get closer to a one-to-one scale, especially on castles and things like that. So first we start with ‘How big does the map have to be to accommodate the different important place, how the story should take place?’ And ‘How much space do we need between those things?’ And then when we have that, ‘How much content do we need to use to make it feel right between those things, for you to be pulled out to the page and find things?'”
The development team went through various playtests to get this right, Lemay-Comtois said, to “make sure we find what feels like the right balance of discovery and wonder” as well as other things in the world that players can be in able to notice. in the distance that they can find themselves.
“[The] the landscape in Japan is flat land with very sharp, steep mountains that are not very high, but they completely blocked the line of sight over distance,” added Lemay-Comtois. “So it’s a little difficult to… you have to be able to climb a mountain to see what is on top of the other mountain.
“So it’s been, it’s been a fun challenge to do, but there’s no formula to it. You do it, you repeat, you try again, you try again until enough people say it feels good, and hopefully you can make it.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on March 20 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC.
