- Assassin’s Creed Shadows will allow more freedom to the player
- Associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois says exploration is “much freer”
- The development team wanted to find “the right balance between discovery and wonder.”
Ubisoft Quebec has reworked exploration in Assassin’s Creed Shadows to allow more freedom to the player in its open world.
This is according to Simon Lemay-Comtois, associate game director at 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 ‘the exact point where we want players to go,’ and that has changed across the industry,” Lemay-Comtois said. “For us we already started this with Odyssey A while ago we had a default mode, which is [the] The classic ‘go here’ and then we had, I think we called it explore mode, if I remember correctly, and it was less guided.
“Now stop DarknessThis is what we start from. The default mode is much freer and has to be rebuilt.”
Lemay-Comtois also noted that if players so choose, they can turn the default mode back on if they want, which will offer a more direct experience that will help them know where they need to go.
“It feels better to use the information that is found and the objectives that are being set,” he added. “Is it some form of reward? I think that’s what the industry has been showing us these last five or six years: Finding things for yourself is rewarding, so why don’t we put that at the forefront?” exploration?”
The game director also explained how the team tried to make Darkness‘ setting up Japan as a less overwhelming place to explore, compared to games like Valhalla and Odyssey.
“It’s always complicated, because we know that we want to represent a much more precise landscape scale for Japan than we had before, say, for OdysseyGreece was very compacted compared to [the] real world,” he said.
“With Japan, we’re not doing that, but we’re trying to get closer to a one-by-one scale, especially on castles and things like that. So we first start with ‘How big should the map be?’ to accommodate the different important places where the story will 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 sit right between those things, to take you to the side and find the things?'”
The development team went through several playtests to achieve this, Lemay-Comtois said, to “make sure we found what seems to be the right balance between discovery and wonder,” as well as other things in the world that players might notice. in the distance they can find for themselves.
“[The] “The landscape of Japan is a flat terrain with very pronounced, steep mountains that are not very high, but completely block the line of sight at a distance,” Lemay-Comtois added. “So it’s a little complicated… 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 do it, you do it, you try again, you try again until enough people say it feels good and, hopefully, You make it.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on March 20 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.
