Assassin’s Creed has always been defined by its thorough recreations of historical settings, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows is setting a new standard among the largest games in the series. While the most recent entry, Mirage, went back to a focus on one city, Shadows follows in the tradition of the open-world maps of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. The landmarks in these games attempt to stay close to their actual size, but the overall lay of the land tends to be more compressed to make the scale manageable.

In an interview with Screen Rant, Assassin’s Creed Shadows art director Thierry Dansereau confirmed that Shadows has the largest scale ratio of any of the open-world games in the franchise. According to Dansereau, this change was necessary to do justice to Japan’s tree-covered mountains.

“[W]e have the biggest scale ratio since the open-world formula because we had an issue —the Japan landscape is filled with mountains, and if you try to cover too much, the mountains will look like hills as soon as you put trees on them. So we needed to have a scale that’s more realistic, because we wanted to feel mountains, like, it feels like mountains.”

Following up on the interview, Screen Rant received confirmation that the approximate scale ratio of the map overall is 1:16, with 15 kilometers in-game representing 250-260 in real life.Dansereau also expanded on the process of filling out the land as a whole, which relied on historical information about the landmarks and production in various regions. Staging moments that reveal key areas also comes into play — as Dansereau puts it, “the road will open up, and then now, okay, I see Osaka in front of me.”

Scale Ratio Isn’t Everything, But It’s Impressive

Central Japan In All Of Its Glory

Having the largest scale ratio of the open-world games doesn’t necessarily mean that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will have the largest map size overall. Shadows is sticking to central Japan rather than attempting to cover the entire nation, and although that will still make it significantly bigger than Mirage or the older games in the franchise, it isn’t operating with zero restraint.

An intensified scale ratio does mean that traveling across the mountain ranges could take some extra time, but Naoe, the shinobi option, is capable of covering ground quickly. The playable samurai Yasuke isn’t as fleet of foot, but he can still ride horseback for more efficient travel.

How Assassin’s Creed Shadows Fills Its World Matters

Depth Is More Important Than Size

I’m not one for bigger is better when it comes to Assassin’s Creed, and getting to know the streets of Venice intimately in Assassin’s Creed 2 has stuck with me more than traveling the desert in Origins. Locating the game in central Japan and employing a larger scale ratio sounds smarter than attempting to cover the entire nation, though, and preserving the impact of mountains makes a lot of sense as justification.

Ultimately, the aspect that matters most will be how well Shadows manages to fill out its open world. In franchise tradition, there shouldn’t be any need to worry about underwhelming urban locations, but I’m interested to explore more than just the region available for Screen Rant‘s hands-on preview and see if Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ gorgeous landscapes have as much to offer in content as they do in scale.