How Ubisoft Brought Feudal Japan to Life: Rendering 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' with Nicolas Lopez
25 Feb 20253 min video
Transcript
during my first interview in Industry when I was asked about my dream dream project I answered Assassin's Creed so I'm where I [Music] belong so I'm Niar Lopez I'm a Hing technical architect on Assassin's Creed and the envil engine and uh I've been at Ubisoft for close to 5 years uh it's the first Assassin Creed I work on actually uh it's been like uh more than four years so it feels much longer than that the the scope of the game is huge actually it's the the largest I've ever seen we have time of day we have seasons we have um uh systemic weather system and the world is very large just testing and being able to reproduce an issue is is is already a challenge like when testers have to describe where the issue happen and what where are the circumstances we have to make sure we have exactly the same weather parameters the same time of day the same time of
the year with a season and to up to the point I was thinking about crazy ideas like generating QR codes to uh reproduce the exact setup we had in game during an issue we developed many uh new technologies in the engine it's really like the next gen version of envil uh such as a retracing pipeline uh microp polyon technology and all this was developed at the same time as the game so we had to anticipate uh the cost of many things and produce data and it's very challenging because in this kind of game there is a little room for error if you make a mistake in this you potentially have to go through all the assets of this large world and review everything working on such a large game can be daunting and very intimidating but um I hope people who are not used to work on open worlds or such large games can um can get more confidence uh from this talk to see that it's it's a lot of staging and Imagination in a sense and
that to work on power games it's about shifting your mindset from going to maximum quity to going to scalable Solutions at every stage stage of the production [Music] [Music]
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Key insights
6 takeaways · ~2 min read- 01The development of Assassin's Creed Shadows required a next-generation overhaul of the Anvil engine, incorporating a new ray-tracing pipeline and micropolyon technology.
- 02Managing the game's massive scale—which includes dynamic time-of-day, seasonal changes, and systemic weather—necessitated the development of specialized debugging tools, such as generating QR codes to replicate exact in-game environmental parameters for testers.
- 03Working on an open-world project of this magnitude requires shifting the engineering mindset from pursuing maximum individual asset quality to prioritizing scalable solutions across all production stages.
- 04Because the game's scope is so vast, technical errors carry high risks, as a single mistake can necessitate a manual review of assets across the entire world map.
- 05Nicolas Lopez, a lead technical architect at Ubisoft, has been working on the title for over four years, marking his first contribution to the Assassin's Creed franchise.
- 06The technical breakdown of the rendering process for Assassin's Creed Shadows will be presented at GDC 2025 on March 20, 2025, from 11:00am to 12:00pm in Room 3001.
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