Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has received some exceptional critical and commercial praise, debuting at number one in the UK across all formats and being lauded for improving upon its predecessor. However, according to game director Ashraf Ismail, achieving a high level of quality on current-gen consoles was a “nightmarish” experience.
Speaking on a Reddit AMA session, Ismail stated that, “Development on both [PS4 and Xbox One] was very smooth since they are both very similar to PCs. Last generation was very difficult and even nightmarish. Both Xbox One and PS4 were easy to deal with and the 1st parties were both there to help us out. The one gray area was understanding both Sony and MS requirements for the consoles. They were trying to figure them out themselves.”
As for implementing the DualShock 4’s features, Ismail revealed that, “The touchpad is used for scrolling through the map, adding waypoints, zooming etc. Overall it was super smooth to develop on [next-gen].”
You can check out our review of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag here on how well it fares on current-gen technology.