Over the years, many Ubisoft titles, most notably the Assassin’s Creed series, have been built upon versions of the Anvil engine. The latest iteration of this technology debuted in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and is being leveraged once more, in an enhanced form, for Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced.
As this technology reaches new heights in the soon-to-be-released remake, we had the opportunity to speak with Technical Director Jussi Markanen and Anvil Engine Architect Nicolas Lopez to learn more about how this technology is being used like never before in the upcoming title.
When asked how the team leveraged their experience with the Anvil Engine on AC Shadows and evolved that work for Black Flag Resynced, Markanen stated:
“Yeah, we took the version from AC Shadows as a base, but we improved it even further. So we’ve done a lot of optimizations and enhancements on a lot of different points. I think Nicolas can tell you more about ray tracing, but I’ll talk about the water rendering technology because, of course, water and its rendering are very important in Black Flag. So we’ve really doubled down on improving the water rendering and its quality, even compared to AC Shadows, which already had a very beautiful version of water. But in Black Flag Resynced, you’ll see absolutely incredible water.”
Lopez then elaborated:
“Yeah, I could say it’s the same, but it’s not the same, because the amount of work we’ve done since Shadows has been released is incredible. And you know, we’re never satisfied. Even after Black Flag, we won’t be satisfied, we’ll go even further. But from the perspective of Shadows, you couldn’t play with ray tracing at 60 FPS on the base Xbox Series X and PS5, and on Series S, ray tracing wasn’t available. In this one, ray tracing is everywhere. So it’s the baseline. And we’ve even integrated Ray-Tracing reflections in quality modes. So it’s the standard. As a result, the experience is now much more homogeneous.”
“This is feedback we’ve really taken to heart, because it was one of our goals from the beginning. But you know, at some point in development, you have to stop and release the game. And the way we work at Ubisoft has completely changed, because now, developments extend beyond a single production. So we knew that the work done on Shadows wouldn’t stop at Shadows, and that we could continue it in subsequent games. That’s what we’ve done with Black Flag Resynced.”
As Lopez mentioned that “developments extend beyond a single production,” he was asked if this meant that the work on Black Flag Resynced would set the stage for the next Assassin’s Creed Hexe, to which Lopez responded:
“You have no idea, but I don’t want to reveal too much. If there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s our virtual geometry pipeline, Micropolygon. For now, it only handles static opaque geometry, so it’s mainly the environment that represents the bulk of the rendering. But we’re doing everything we can to evolve it, so that it also becomes the reference base for all the world’s geometry.”
You can watch the full interview below to learn more about the technology behind Black Flag Resynced, which has just achieved ‘gold’ status ahead of its release on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on July 9th.