We got a look at the extravagant world tech behind Assassin’s Creed Shadows

With Assassin’s Creed Shadows still more than two months away from release, it feels like a lot of information about the game remains shrouded in mystery. We know the protagonists, we know the setting, and we know a bit about the different gameplay styles, but beyond that, Ubisoft has been playing things fairly close to its chest when it comes to rolling out information.

Back in late August at a behind-closed-doors meeting at Gamescom, we got to take a sneaky look at Assassin’s Creed Shadows, seeing some parts of the game that hadn’t yet been shown to the public. While a lot of what we saw was big-picture technical details—things like ray tracing and Virtual Object Geography work—there were some really interesting insights shared into the effort being made behind the scenes to make the game's world feel alive and authentic through dynamic simulated environmental design.

Let’s start with the basics. Assassin’s Creed Shadows has a weather system where each in-game environment looks and behaves differently in specific weather conditions. This overlaps with the game’s particle system, which allows particles to behave naturally in system-driven ways. Trees don’t sway in the breeze because of pre-designed swaying animations but rather because the wind that dynamically blew their way naturally impacted how they swayed.

Then there are seasons; each in-game environment has four unique seasonal designs determined by when you play the mission, which can interact with the weather systems too. There’s also a day and night system, further challenging the devs to make their environments look good in poor lighting.

But then we start to get silly with things like the cloud system. Ubisoft couldn’t just put clouds in the sky in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, oh no. They have apparently simulated topological humidity and temperature systems that cause clouds to naturally and dynamically form.

Now, all of this stuff might on paper sound like overkill, and perhaps it is, but the end result is hard to argue with. In practice, this means seeing fog that fades really naturally in the middle distance, dense forests that stay detailed and continue to sway at ridiculous distances, and breakable boxes and doors scattered liberally throughout levels.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows looks gorgeous, I find that hard to deny. That it looks this good at close and far distances with tactile breakable elements, a protagonist character who can move around this fast, and all of these systems layered on top of each other is astounding. Everything looks equal parts aesthetically ambitious and easy to read in terms of mechanics. 

It’s clear that a lot of love has gone into the very smallest details of the world in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. From top to bottom, it’s looking filled with details the average player would never think to look for. It’s design extravagance, and I find that hard not to praise.

You can find Assassin’s Creed Shadows on the Epic Games Store now!