(Image credit: Ubisoft)
I recently sat down with Pierre Fortin, the brand and pipeline technology director at Ubisoft Quebec, to explore the inner workings of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Fortin, a pivotal member of the Anvil engine team, navigates the balance between historical game mechanics and futuristic technological innovations. He works to predict and integrate the next big trends even before they fully unfold.
“My role is to basically advise other directors,” Fortin explains. Early on in conception, we assess future technologies, advising on how we might leverage them. I collaborate closely with the engine teams to bring our tech visions into players’ hands.
This journey into the mechanics of Assassin’s Creed Shadows draws from the past successes and challenges, beginning with Assassin’s Creed Unity. Fortin first optimised Unity before his full-scale involvement in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, pivoting the series from city-centric to expansive open-world RPG designs. The dramatic scale shift with Assassin’s Creed Origins set a new technical precedent as Ubisoft transitioned into unexplored waters.
Fortin elaborates on the complexity of this transition: “In a city like we had with Syndicate, Unity, our big Global Illumination pipeline was tailored for dense urban landscapes. If we extended that to Shadows’ vast world, we’d deal with data requirements hitting 1.9Tb.” This demanded a complete technical reevaluation of Ubisoft’s systems.
Ubisoft has come a long way since the PS4/Xbox One era game, Assassin’s Creed Unity, to the state-of-the-art PS5/Xbox Series X Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The evolving tech radically redefines game dynamics, like the seasonal global illumination. Fortin notes, “Evolving the engine from six square kilometers to 256 is colossal, impacting all game production phases.”
As hardware advances, new barriers inevitably arise. Fortin remarks on the newfound creative freedom with Assassin’s Creed Shadows shedding last-gen support, saying, “You start feeling unshackled, but new systems reveal fresh challenges.” Shadows strives for unparalleled world dynamism, from realistically animated trees leveraging new consoles’ physics, to compatibility with PCs lacking ray-tracing.
Fortin emphasizes the impact of movement and weather dynamics in Shadows. He and art director Thierry Dansereau dreamed of such features but lacked feasibility until now, leading to enhanced screen movement: dynamic weather, fluid animations, and environmental interactions. “It was crucial both tech and art aligned for Shadow’s magic,” Fortin enthuses.
The teams synergized to conceptualize Japan’s vibrant landscapes. Fortin highlights innovations like a fluid-based wind system and responsive vegetation. “In Shadows, the world changes with seasons, and our multi-state system ensures interactions adapt dynamically.”
Fortin details how even static items like chairs are now responsive to environmental shifts, employing a ‘multi-state entities’ system. This tech marvel translates to dynamic seasonal interactions across the game’s massive world.
As noted in our review, Shadows is the most animated the series has ever been, overcoming the vast technical challenge posed by interwoven seasonal, weather, and time of day axes.
One of the enduring hurdles is compressing vast game data under optimal storage limits. Fortin states, “We focus heavily on compression to prevent burdening players with massive downloads.” Even as the tech team pushes hardware limits, Ubisoft maintains efforts for clever optimization.
Discover future developments with the Assassin’s Creed Shadows roadmap. For more, explore our best Assassin’s Creed games list.