Ubisoft Reveals How Big Assassin's Creed Shadows Map Is

How big is the world map in Assassin's Creed Shadows? Associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois said in a new interview that fans can expect the world map of the Japan-set open-world game to be similar in size that of Assassin's Creed Origins.

"It's about roughly similar to Origins, so it's smaller than Valhalla in terms of territory," he told VGC. "There is some body of water around Japan, but it's not like [Odyssey's] Greece was, [which was] half water. With Japan that's not the case. We have the coastlines and lake Biwa is a very big lake, but [the map's] roughly the size of Origins."

The world in Assassin's Creed Shadows is "much more mountainous," Lemay-Comtois went on to say, adding that the team visited Japan to scout the local area.

Japan is a huge place and Assassin's Creed Shadows doesn't cover the whole country, of course, but it does feature major cities like Kyoto and Osaka. The developers spent time considering how much of the world they needed to put between those places to make the game feel credible but also approachable. It wouldn't necessarily be fun for Assassin's Creed Shadows to be realistic in the sense that it would take four days on horseback to get from one place to another, the developer said.

"So it's kind of a tricky thing to develop, but eventually we find our footing with the types of cities and castles that we want to represent and that’s what justifies the size of our world map," he said.

Assassin's Creed Shadows releases on November 15 for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. An extended gameplay trailer was released during the Ubisoft Forward event this week, highlighting the game's two playable protagonists and their vastly different play styles.