Ubisoft announced today that the release date for Assassin’s Creed: Unity has been pushed back by 2 weeks. Speaking on Ubisoft’s official blog, Senior Producer Vincent Pontbriand highlights the reasoning behind the delayed release.
“This being a fully next-gen game, it requires a lot of work, a lot of production, and a lot of learning. It’s always hard to be precise and to quantify exactly how much work is involved. So as we get close to the finish we often realize we’re near the target but we’re not quite there yet.”
Pontbriand suggests that part of the delay comes from working with the latest technology available with the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, with the aim to provide the best Assassin’s Creed experience for gamers.
“We rebuilt most of the systems. Sometimes to improve the experience. Sometimes to improve the gameplay itself. Sometimes to reskin it, to make it look fresh all over again. Or sometimes because we had to make everything online-compatible … AC is a huge open-world game. We have thousands of NPCs on screen. We have more depth in the types of AI we’ve built. The graphics are spectacular. The processes are way more complex. Which makes it exponentially harder to grasp everything than it was in the previous generation … We’re very confident in the game we’re making.”
Ubisoft will continue to make improvements to the game up to and after the day of release, with a Day 1 patch being included with the game’s initial installation. Pontbriand expresses his gratitude to the fans and stresses that the released game will be worth the wait.
“We honestly appreciate their commitment to the game and their patience. It’s just a couple more weeks. And it’s going to be worth it”.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity will now release alongside Assassin’s Creed: Rogue on November 11th 2014 (North America) and November 13th 2014 (Europe & Australasia).