- Assassin's Creed Shadows will allow for more player freedom
- Associated game director Simon Lemay-Comtois says exploration is "much more free form"
- The development team wanted to find "the right balance of discovery and wonder"
Ubisoft Quebec has reworked exploration in Assassin's Creed Shadows to allow for more player freedom in its open world.
That's according to Simon Lemay-Comtois, associated game director for Assassin's Creed Shadows, who 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, right we want players to go', and that has shifted across the entire industry," Lemay-Comtois said. "For us, we already started this with 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 recall, and it was less guided.
"Now for Shadows, this is what we start 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 default mode back on if they wish, which will offer a more direct experience that will help you with where you need to go.
"It feels better to use information that you find and objectives that you piece together," he added. "Is it some form of reward? I think that's what the industry has been showing us these last five, six years, is that finding things by yourself, it's rewarding, so therefore, why don't we just put that in the forefront of exploration?"
The game director also explained how the team tried to make Shadows' setting of Japan a less overwhelming location to explore, compared to games such as Valhalla and Odyssey.
"It's always tricky, because we know we want to represent a much more accurate landscape scale for Japan than we had before, say, for Odyssey, Greece was very compacted compared to [the] real world," he said.
"With Japan, we're not doing it, but we're trying to get closer to a one-for-one scale, especially on castles and stuff like that. So first we start with 'How big does the map need to be to accommodate the different important location where the story is going to take place?' And 'How much space do we need between those things?' And then, when we have that, 'How much content do we need for it to feel right between those things, for you to be pulled off to the side and find things?'"
The development team went through various playtests to get this right, Lemay-Comtois said, to "make sure that we find what feels to be the right balance of discovery and wonder" as well as other things in the world players might be able to notice in the distance that they can find for themselves.
"[The] landscape of Japan is flat ground with very sharp, steep mountains that are not very high, but they completely blocked line of sight over distance," Lemay-Comtois added. "So it's kind of tricky to... you need to be able to climb on a mountain to see what's on the top of the other mountain.
"So it's been, it's been a fun challenge to do, but it's there's no formula to it. You do it, you iterate, you try again, you try again until enough people say that feels good, and hopefully you nail it."
Assassin's Creed Shadows launches on March 20 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.
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