Assassin’s Creed Shadows Gamescom Preview – The Most Visually Advanced Assassin’s Creed To Date

In some way, Assassin's Creed Shadows marks the end of an era for the Ubisoft series, being the last entry in the franchise to feature the role-playing game mechanics originally introduced in Assassin's Creed Origins. In other ways, however, the upcoming next entry in the series will mark the beginning of a new era for the franchise, sporting some technological advancements that will not only make it the most immersive and visually advanced Assassin's Creed game to date but that will also benefit future games.

During last month's Gamescom, I attended a preview session focused on the game where Art Director Thierry Danserau provided an in-depth look at how Ubisoft Quebec recreated feudal Japan. To understand Japanese culture, the developer went back to school, painstakingly analyzing documents and pictures to properly represent such a unique culture. All the hard work, according to the game's Art Director, will pay off, as players will be pleased by how the game will represent the Japanese culture of the time.

Related Story Ubisoft Selects Intel As Official CPU & GPU Partner For Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Game Bundle For Core CPUs & Arc GPUs Announced

Right from the start, Assassin's Creed Shadows was developed as a current-generation-only game, and its creation was centered around three pillars - photorealism, realization, and dynamism. To support photorealism, the development team spent some time in Japan and took a lot of photos to better represent the country's unique aspects, which are unlike most locations in the world. As such, they also had to revise shaders to properly recreate the region in the game. Also, this recreation will be rendered at a more realistic scale, and it won't feature the entirety of the country but only its central regions.

Adding to photorealism will be ray-traced global illumination, which will also provide better ambient occlusion. Global illumination will be further enhanced by the use of virtual geometry for static objects, a first for