Next gen gaming is just around the corner. We’ve already been treated to the dynamic fish AI that more powerful consoles affords Call of Duty: Ghosts. Now, Ubisoft are showing how they can create the most realistic rain you’ll see in a game this year.
Snark aside, it’s a very pretty game, and it’s about time we were able to experience real-time drizzle. (Dammit, it’s hard not to be cynical.)
Actually, snark genuinely aside this time, the work ubisoft have done with dynamic boarding is impressive as hell. Having two ships moving and rocking on the ocean but still mapped with constantly updating nav meshes that allow NPCs to leap from one ship to the other and animate believably the whole time is a little brilliant. Other games that pull similar stunts have relied on scripting the movement of both objects so there’s no worry of NPC models missing their jumps or not knowing where to move to.
The risk with a franchise releasing a new iteration each year can be that innovation between titles becomes stagnant. So, while each Call of Duty game advances its technology year on year it can be difficult to see it because the game overall remains pretty similar. Assassin’s Creed, so far, seems to be avoiding that trap, not necessarily through complete innovation but by hiding the small jumps. For instance, that boarding technology, it’s only a small development on the dynamic movement system Ubisoft introduced in Assassin’s Creed 3, but by moving the setting to an ocean it seems like a huge leap from jumping from tree to tree.
We’ll see just how much all this environment tech adds to the game when it’s released later this year.