The day is almost upon us, and many fans of the Assassins Creed series will finally get their hands on the long awaited Assassins Creed Unity.
During the latest podcast episode of Major Nelson Radio, Ubisoft‘s Creative Director Alex Amancio talked more about the game, and stated that the developer made sure that the game harnessed as much as it could from the Xbox One and Playstation 4.
He stated that “We really harnessed every ounce of power from both these consoles as much as we could. We could not have made this game on previous-generation consoles.” He went on and explained how the crowd and lighting system in Unity is far superior and has been overhauled, so much so that there are no loading times when you roam around Paris.
He further elaborated “We had something like 200 NPCs on screen before, now we have 5000 and over. We have one scene where we actually get to 10000 NPCs, and these aren’t just decorative – you can actually run up to them, interact with them, these are real AI NPCs. We completely rewrote the lighting model, we actually calculate ambient occlusion so that it gives a completely new layer of realism to all of Paris.
Our shader materials are physically based now, they’re much more realistic, they no longer look like polygons with pictures on them, they look and react to light like real materials. We have no loading within Paris, so when you’re walking from one side of the city to the other or going into buildings or underground there’s no loading, it’s all seamless. One building every four in the city has decorated interiors, with different stories; most important landmarks of the French revolution are there, including their interiors in most cases. The simulation is always running unlike before, regardless of where you are.”
Assassins Creed Unity is set to release for the Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC later today.
