Given that Assassin’s Creed Unity is not a cross generation title, it obviously has to look and feel better than last year’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. So how is the team at Ubisoft taking advantage of the increased processing power that the new consoles provide?
“In terms of next-gen I think it’s all about the crowd,” explains Bruno St-André who is the level designer of Unity. “The number of people we put on screen and the number of reactions those can have is important. It’s not only about putting a large number of people on screen but those need to be more believable than ever-before. They need to react to what you do and they need to react to other events. For the first time since you’re playing multiplayer/co-op it’s not a player-centric game anymore. They have their own key reactions and reactions that occur,” he said to GamingBolt.
He also talks about the new lighting system which can only be done on the new systems. “That’s one thing and the graphics is another thing to share. The lighting which we are using is only possible on next-gen and we showed a little bit of it in the demo and you’ll see it more and more as we get more done with the game. The seamless interior and exterior of the game goes far beyond on what we have seen so far. You can actually go up, in and out [of monuments] without any loading and it’s fully modelized from exterior to interior. You can enter via different routes, enter the catacombs and finding the ways inside. This is all done seamlessly, of-course it’s due to the next-gen consoles that were able to do so.”
Assassin’s Creed Unity’s demo was showcased at last week’s E3. You can check it out here. The game is due this October for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.