Assassin’s Creed games could have longer development cycles as Shadows hit “right balance”

We’ve not got too much longer to wait until we can start collecting the Assassin’s Creed Shadows achievements, as it launches on Xbox Series X|S and PC on November 15 after four years of development at Ubisoft Quebec. The open-world Xbox game has now been in development for longer than any other game in the series, and its lead producer suggests we could continue to see longer development times for future Assassin’s Creed games.We could see future Assassin’s Creed games taking longer to developAssassin’s Creed Shadows has been in development for 25% longer than Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, taking the crown for the longest development cycle for an Assassin’s Creed game. It’s a good chunk of time, and while it feels like a long wait for fans looking forward to exploring feudal Japan in the upcoming game, Ubisoft feels like it’s “the right balance to go from conception to production and get the feedback necessary to adapt.”Shadows’ lead producer Karl Onnée recently told GamesIndustry.biz, “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.”As Onnée explains, Ubisoft is “trying to create a game that is as authentic as possible,” which takes time. Each time an Assassin’s Creed game pivots to a new setting, region, or time period, the team needs to learn how to represent that new style. “When we build a Japanese house from feudal Japan, it is very different from, say, a French medieval house or an English one,” Onnée says. “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.”Ubisoft also visits the countries they’re trying to represent to ensure the games are as authentic as possible, and Ubisoft’s visits to Japan led to design changes. “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,” Onnée said. “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.”If, like us, you’re looking forward to playing the next Assassin’s Creed game, we’ve got a handy article featuring everything we know about Assassin’s Creed Shadows for you to check out.



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