14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft has released yet another statement concerning Assassin's Creed Unity and its performance figures of 900p resolution and 30fps framerate, this time going in-depth about the development process of the new title.
Assassin's Creed Unity impressed quite a lot of franchise fans this summer when it was revealed to the world via some stellar gameplay videos and demonstrations at trade fairs like E3 2014. The game is quite ambitious, as it overhauls core franchise features like combat or exploration, but also stealth, while delivering a near 1:1 recreation of Paris during the French revolution.
While many fans were impressed with its quality judging by the videos, they were surprised to hear that Unity runs only at a 900p native resolution and has a framerate of just 30fps. Statements from Ubisoft exacerbated the matter, causing more controversy as it seemed that the company deliberately lowered the performance to ensure parity between PS4 and Xbox One.
Ubisoft isn't holding Unity back
Now, the studio has released a new explanation via its own UbiBlog, with Senior Producer Vincent Pontbriand clarifying his previous statements, emphasizing that the studio has worked for quite some time on Unity and won't do anything to hold it back.
"We’ve spent four years building the best game we could imagine. Why would we ever do anything to hold it back? I simply chose the wrong words when talking about the game’s resolution, and for that I’m sorry."
The NPC number and the AI requirements are huge in Unity
Among the key technical feats of Unity is the huge number of non-playable characters that are present on the Parisian streets, and according to Ubisoft, this required a lot of power to be diverted to the AI system, which in turn meant less of it for the visual side of the new game.
"This is something that the new hardware allows us to do," Pontbriand says about the number of characters on screen. "We want you to feel that density, the chaos that was happening back then. Paris was a huge city, with almost a million people. So we cranked up our number of NPCs."
Ubisoft chose to focus on gameplay, not visuals
In the end, Pontbriand says that Ubisoft's Montreal team wanted to focus more on Unity's gameplay than on its visuals. While the studio would have liked to see Unity run at 1080p and 60fps, the huge crowds, the realistic city, and the seamless co-op mode were more important that the performance.
"We made the right decision to focus our resources on delivering the best gameplay experience, and resolution is just one factor. There is a real cost to all those NPCs, to all the details in the city, to all the systems working together, and to the seamless co-op gameplay. We wanted to be absolutely uncompromising when it comes to the overall gameplay experience. Those additional pixels could only come at a cost to the gameplay."
Assassin's Creed Unity launches next month on PC, PS4, and Xbox One worldwide.
