In open world games, the cloud always takes up a quarter of the screen. They are huge, important, and often completely ignored. I could list some of my all-time favorite game worlds (Destiny, The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, etc.) and you know what they all have in common? Gorgeous skyboxes help you immerse yourself in the novel you’re playing; god-ray and weather systems and a sense of scale keep you firmly rooted in any virtual environment you play today.
But Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is not fiction. Not quite yet, anyway. In the current tradition of the series, Ubisoft will take you back in time to real historical places and periods, rooting this fantasy in reality. This time, we travel to Japan in the late Sengoku period, exploring the central regions of Kobe, Kyoto, and Osaka in 1579, as civil war threatened the life of the burgeoning empire.
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Like Phantom, Valhalla, Odyssey and Origins before it, Shadow is keen to show us an idealized version of its setting – it won’t be a perfect, scaled-down Japanese version, no. This would be a ridiculous undertaking. Instead, Ubisoft will cherry-pick the area’s most aesthetically and mechanically valuable elements, condense them down to a scale that won’t be too overwhelming for the average open-world player, and make them available in a coveted digital form we can Hundreds of hours spent staring at this bag (which is about the size of Origins, by the way).
During art director Thierry Dansereau’s speech at Gamescom 2024, I saw how much effort Ubisoft put into the art direction of this game. Dansereau knows how to build a world; he’s been with Ubisoft since Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and served as art director on Revelations, Syndicate, and Odyssey (the latter being my favorite AssCree setting ).
But utilizing a new version of the Anvil engine, Shadows has a unique trick that really sets it apart from other games in the series: clouds. Simulated and rendered with a new tool developed by Ubisoft in Anvil called Atmos, clouds in Shadows look, behave, and affect gameplay differently than you’re used to in AssCree games.
“From an artistic point of view, the sky represents a major visual element that greatly enhances the perceived visual quality and level of immersion,” I said when I asked why so much effort was put into making Anvil deliver a realistic, believable of clouds, Dansereau explained to me about the game. “Having clouds that look realistic in shape and behavior is important to support our ambitions for a dynamic world that is constantly changing.”
This isn’t just a matter of aesthetics, either. In Ubisoft’s 16thC Japan release, the appearance and behavior of the clouds have a real impact on gameplay. “In AC Shadows, the entire weather is simulated, which means the clouds are dynamic and they change over time,” AC Shadows technical lead Maxime Beaudoin told me. “[…] Atmos drives not just the clouds you see in the sky, but the entire weather (precipitation, wind, moisture buildup on the ground, lightning strikes, etc.). These parameters, in turn, affect gameplay. For example, during a storm, NPCs have difficulty spotting players due to noise and reduced visibility.
In short, Ubisoft is letting Atmos “think” the weather across Japan—indeed, the island nation is famous for its gorgeous skies, changing seasons, and beautiful scenery. Shadows is the first Assassin’s Creed game to feature a proper seasonal cycle, taking us through spring, summer, fall, and winter, so Ubisoft needs to make sure all that open sky at the top of the screen properly reflects the world around you.
So instead of having artists spend hundreds of man-hours manually sculpting these skyboxes and “painting” the clouds, Ubisoft has Atmost calculate the humidity, temperature, and water vapor density in the air and spit out the correct weather and season for the time.
“The artist adjusts some parameters and the cloudscape appears automatically,” Baudoin continued. “This meant they couldn’t control the exact shape of the clouds like they had in previous games; instead, they focused on composition, determining the overall look they wanted to achieve, and letting the simulation fill in the gaps. This made it possible to create a very realistic Cloudscapes become possible.”
The problem is, as any developer will tell you, simulations are often difficult to work with: artists need to be very careful, as one wrong number can completely ruin what you’re working with. As Beaudoin told me, “In the past, it was often a process of trial and error.”
But with Atmos, Ubisoft has managed to create a powerful tool – not just some shiny, hard-to-use tech demo. “It’s a ‘Photoshop for weather,’ if you will,” says Beaudoin.
“One way to think about it is how brushes work in modern digital painting tools: software simulates the interaction between canvas, brush and paint. Compared to pixel art, where the color of each pixel is completely controlled by the artist – Atmos is more like The former rather than the latter; we give up a bit of control, but what we gain in return is efficiency, realism, and consistency.
The result? I can’t tell you how amazing Shadow looks. In real life, I’m what friends politely call a “cloud pervert”; point out that systems are moving into the skies above my home in London, go to the seaside to watch “rare clouds” meet, merge and morph, often in groups Received a snap from a friend in a group chat, asking for identification and explanation. I confidently say that the shadows are the greatest treat a Cloud Pervert could ask for; both beautiful and relevant to the way the open world works. It’s no exaggeration to say it’s a game changer.
“Traditional skyboxes will still be relevant in the coming years, but analog systems like Atmos would likely be increasingly used, if not for the simple fact that experienced artists can Create a very realistic and dynamic skybox in a fraction of the time,” said Beaudoin.
“Shadows will be Ubisoft’s first game to feature Atmos, but we’ve only scratched the surface of it. It’s a very different way of doing things and we’re still learning how to best use it, so you can look forward to the future Games can take advantage of it more deeply.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows It will be released on November 15th on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
