PS4/XB1 Fully Harnessed For Assassin’s Creed Unity, Says Ubi
Tomorrow, Assassin’s Creed Unity will be released, the first installment of the franchise to only be available on PlayStation and Xbox One (alongside PC, of course), while Assassin’s Creed Rogue will be available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Ubisoft‘s Creative Director Alex Amancio talked about the game during the latest podcast episode of Major Nelson Radio, stating that the developer harnessed as much as it could from the latest consoles built by Sony and Microsoft.
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 then spoke about some of the specifics - for example, the NPC crowd in Assassin’s Creed Unity is much larger than that players could see in previous games, lighting has been overhauled and there are no loading times while roaming around in Paris.
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.
Are you excited yet? If so, come back tomorrow at 5PM GMT for our own review of the game!