Assassin's Creed III Remastered

Assassin's Creed III Remastered was developed and published by Ubisoft and released on 29th March 2019.

About the Game

Relive the American Revolution or experience it for the first time in Assassin's Creed III Remastered, with enhanced graphics and improved gameplay mechanics. Also includes Assassin's Creed Liberation remastered and all solo DLC content.

Fight for Freedom

1775. The American Colonies are about to revolt. As Connor, a Native American Assassin, secure liberty for your people and your nation. From bustling city streets to the chaotic battlefields, assassinate your foes in a variety of deadly ways with a vast array of weaponry.

A New Visual & Gameplay Experience

Play the iconic Assassin's Creed III, with enhanced graphics, now featuring: 4K resolution, new character models, polished environment rendering and more. The gameplay mechanics have been revamped as well, improving your experience and your immersion.

Additional Content

Also includes all the original solo DLC, including The Tyranny of King Washington, and the full game: Assassin's Creed Liberation Remastered.

Skills and Experience

Having worked on the Total War series for a long time, I needed a new challenge, and to professionally push myself further. I always wanted to work for Ubisoft, being a big fan of their games, and I was ready to start a new chapter of my career and life there.

Ubisoft Barcelona appealed to me for several main reasons. I was presented with the opportunity of working on the Assassin's Creed franchise (which is a huge franchise, and a household name in the games industry). In addition, to move abroad to Barcelona, a city I had travelled to with its vibrant culture and climate. To work with new development teams amongst the best of the best.

Assassin's Creed III Remastered was an interesting project. Although we were not making the game from scratch, it is a huge sprawling triple-A game with hundreds of thousands of assets and complexities. The game was six years old when we started remastering it. The version of the Anvil engine we used was even older. Our goal was to rejuvenate this classic game for the 2019 players and beyond. Upgrade the game for new hardware and higher expectations.

My role as Project Coordinator was split. On one hand, I managed the day-to-day production for the in-house Art team (3D Artists, Texture Artists, Lighting Artists, VFX and Technical Artists). I worked very closely with the Lead Artist to manage the team's tasks and ensure they were completed in a timely fashion and to a high quality standard. On the other hand I was responsible for co-development with two external Ubisoft studios. One in Philippines and one in Shanghai. The Barcelona Art team was 14 artists Philippines was 22 Artists, and Shanghai was 13 artists.

With the Philippines and Shanghai teams, I was responsible for defining their mandates, setting up their pipelines (the development and review processes for their assets) and tracking their work was correctly prioritised and completed on time. Each studio had their own Producers, for their day-to-day work and distributing the tasks to the artists. We maintained regular reviews and communication to keep each other up to date and tackle any risks or opportunities.

Assassins Creed III contains thousands of art assets. There are characters, animals, props, environments, set pieces, weapons, visual effects, water, trees, vegetation, the list goes on and on. In some instance we had access to the original files made by the previous development team, and in others we just had the data that was inside the game engine. Some art work needed to be improved and some needed to be totally remade. We re-modelled or improved the polygon counts on most of the original 3D models based on their priority (how important the asset is from a player's perspective). New visual effects were authored for fire, waterfalls, breaking glass, blood and more.

Ambitiously we wanted to improve some of the fundamental rendering systems in Assassins Creed III Remastered, to bring the six year old game up to modern visual quality. These included:

Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials, to accurately represent real-world materials. Virtually all of the materials had to be converted or re-authored to PBR.

A similar the sky system to Assassins Creed Syndicate, improving the clouds and the day to night cycles.

Oceans from Assassins Creed Origins to bring the rolling tides in the naval section closer to the later games in the Assassins Creed series.

Global Illumination (GI) for realistic "current gen" lighting and shadows.

4K output for Xbox One X, PlayStation 4 Plus and PC.

Screen Space Reflections to replace for improved shine and gloss on materials such as marble, water and glass.

Sub Surface Scattering from Assassins Creed Syndicate to make skin look more lifelike.

Our process was to quantify and priorities all of the art assets from the original game, divide them between artists in 3 Ubisoft Studios. The remastered art was rigorously evaluated and polished in the game. Our goal is to make Assassins Creed III Remastered visually stand alongside its modern counterparts for new players, and live up to the fond memories held by those who have played the original. Overall I believe we achieved this.