Ubisoft is preparing to release the latest installment in its long-running Assassin's Creed series in a few months, and has already hinted that future games will take longer to develop.
When Assassin's Creed Shadows launches this November, it will have been in development for four years. This will mark the longest development period for the series to date, coming in a year longer than the previous entry in the series, Assassin's Creed Valhalla (released in 2020).
However, according to Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée, four years is “the right balance to go from concept to production and get the feedback needed to adapt” an Assassin's Creed game.
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“It's great to be working on a game that follows something with the pedigree of Valhalla… but obviously there are high expectations,” Onnée told Eurogamer's sister site GamesIndustry.biz. “We always want to do better, and that's what we're trying to do with Shadows.
“We're pushing the limits of what we can do.”
This desire to continue making the series better than any of its predecessors and the various iterations a game goes through is something the Assassin's Creed developer said can't be rushed. While Onnée appreciated that there is – obviously – a balance that needs to be found between time and overall costs, he said that the more time developers have, the more “you can iterate” on the final product. This is regardless of whether the team is large or small.
“Yes, you can put more people on a project and get it done in less time, but that doesn’t give you more time to iterate, because it takes time to get feedback from your players, from your team… and then see what works and what doesn’t and how to improve it,” he said.
Regarding Shadows' setting in feudal Japan, Onnée said it was “something [Ubisoft has] “I always wanted to do it”, but it was a matter of finding the right time to do it.
“I'm sure other teams would have wanted to do it too. We had the opportunity because we had done Assassin's Creed Odyssey [set in Greece]so we had the experience,” the developer explained. “But it also felt like the right time, because we have the horsepower in terms of hardware, but also our new version of the engine, so we could really realize our vision.”
The Shadows team now hopes that its setting will allow the game to reach a wider audience. “Since we're making a game in Japan, we hope to attract more Japanese players. So, it's very important that we try to be as authentic as possible,” Onnée said. “We start from a humble position, we don't know anything and we have to learn everything from scratch. We're making sure to respect things, because it's something that's very important to the Japanese, as it is in many other countries.
“When you come in, you don't want to come in like you know everything. We want to build something that when they see it and play it, they'll recognize their country.”
Onnée's comments follow talk of Shadow's co-protagonist Yasuke, an African samurai. When Ubisoft unveiled Assassin's Creed Shadows in May, there was some backlash over the inclusion of the historical figure.
In July, the Shadows development team apologized for elements of the game's marketing campaign that had offended some Japanese fans, and said the game will “continue to evolve” as it heads toward its November launch. It specifically mentioned Yasuke in its post.
Prior to this apology, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot had spoken out to condemn the “malicious and personal online attacks” directed at the Assassin's Creed Shadows development team following its reveal in May.
Assassin's Creed boss Marc-Alexis Coté also addressed the issue, sharing his reaction to a post by billionaire X-player and Tesla owner Elon Musk criticizing diversity in game design.