Assassin's Creed III (and AC:Liberation) launched 10 years ago today and I am still in awe of what the animation team produced. We had to refresh the series despite the same-generation hardware limitations and an already-high quality bar. The first thing we tackled was combat... Beyond adding cameras and facial animation, the "fight" took a giant leap with recorded and choreographed rehearsals. Previously captured by the animators themselves, we retained the technical piecemeal structure of shoots as mocap takes were torn apart and rebuilt.

GenDesign CTO and animation director for Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian, Masanobu Tanaka, gave a CEDEC 2021 talk last month on "5 Rules for Animating Giant Characters" he arrived at over the course of both those games. They are as follows... 1. Mass
While able to stop suddenly, large mass is unable to start suddenly, always following a smooth motion curve. Small mass can come to a sudden stop, a sudden start, and motion curves can break. While generally slow, large mass is not limited in terms of maximum speed.

When I left Naughty Dog late last year they threatened to withhold my final paycheck until I signed additional paperwork stating I wouldn't share their production practices. They finally relented when I assured them that was most likely illegal... The truth is I have no awful crunch tale. The "story animators" as we were known were averaging 46hrs a week when I left and I personally never went over 55. The story team is super organised and we reacted to whatever was thrown at us. That's not to say others weren't suffering.