Ubisoft On ACIII: "We Redefined What The Game Is About"

Assassin's Creed III

Assassin's Creed III is a very ambitious game. So ambitious, in fact, that they needed a brand new engine, built from scratch, in order to make the game work on current-generation hardware.

So thanks in part to AnvilNext, ACIII might be the biggest, most impressive virtual world we've ever seen. As to how it compares to previous titles in the series, associate producer Julien Laferrière says the development team didn't bother with boundaries, and they didn't just want to copy what they had done before. Here's what he had to say in a recent IGN interview:

"Where do we draw the line? We didn’t have any obligations, if you want, to take something from the franchise. Like, ‘Oh, we did that in previous games; we need to include that. Oh, we did that in that other game, we need to include that.’ It was more of a clean slate, and we really built the fresh new game that we wanted to make.

We obviously wanted to make sure that it’s an Assassin’s Creed game; it’s about combat, navigation and stealth basically, but we kind of redefined what the game is about. We treated it almost as a new IP, if you want. So where do we draw the line? I feel that we didn’t have to draw the line."

As for the setting, many tried to picture getting the full size and scope of that time period into a video game like Assassin's Creed, and ended up concluding that it really couldn't be done. Laferrière said that when they announced the American Revolution setting, people were immediately skeptical and perhaps rightly so:

"I remember we were reading one specific forum when we announced the American Revolution and they were like, ‘Well, if they do the American Revolution they need to have massive battles, they need to have the forest, they need to have snow, and they can’t do it. They won’t be able to do it. It’s crazy. And if they don’t include that in the game it’s not the American Revolution.’ And we were building those exact features; we had those elements working. We were laughing. People were worried; ‘How can they pull it off?’ In the end we managed to surprise them with the scope [of this game]."

If they do pull this off in fine fashion, most assume ACIII could be the automatic Game of the Year. It's just so ridiculously mind-boggling in so many different areas...don't worry, October 30 isn't far off now!

Tags: assassins creed iii, assassins creed 3, assassins creed sequel, aciii, ubisoft

10/22/2012 11:03:50 AM Ben Dutka

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