Speaking with Assassin’s Creed III associate producer Julien Laferrière in Sydney the Ubisoft Montreal dev revealed that, while the vision of their incredibly broad title was vast, they never felt the need to draw a line on their ambitions during the project.

“Well, I mean, we obviously wanted to do something very special,” said Laferrière. “I think having a new hero, a new era, is a good foundation for that. It’s a good reason to do so.”

“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.

“

[W]here do we draw the line? I feel that we didn’t have to draw the line.

“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.

“We wanted to have the forest; the forest was a pretty big deal for us. You can’t really tell a story about America without having something going on in the forest, especially when you have a Native American character, so forest was a big deal. We did a bunch of prototypes and the forest came out the way it is now and we’re super happy with it.

“Naval battles are also another big thing. When you look at American history there were some pretty epic battles at sea. When you think about having ships near the shore, just bombarding the troops, like the English man o' wars, you know, those huge ships with, like, three rows of cannons firing at the rebel troops, it would’ve been impressive. So we wanted to have ships in the game so, again, three years ago we worked on some prototypes and we said, ‘All right, we can do this, so let’s do it.’

“Then it becomes a matter of choices, I guess. We have the forest, we have the sea, we want to have cities, so Boston and New York. What can we do inside those cities? The line drew itself, kind of naturally in terms of what sort of story we wanted to tell. We didn’t say, ‘Oh well, let’s not do the sea. Let’s not do this.’

On that note, the team has been pleased with the response from fans to the content they’ve showcased during the lead up to the game’s release next week.

“We were pretty happy, actually, about the response on the naval battles,” said Laferrière. “Because for us it made a lot of sense, but obviously Assassin’s Creed wasn’t about boats before, right?”

“So we included a new element that, for us, we designed with the same philosophy as the rest of the game. I think it fits in not only in the narrative sense but also in an experience sense. I mention combat, navigation and stealth; you’ll get to have those elements in the naval battles as well. But obviously it might seem like a risk.

“Another thing is the American Revolution. If you go back to the history of the announcement, when it was first announced it was in the American Revolution and so on, and people were like, ‘The American Revolution? Really?’ It’s not a moment that’s touched very much in video games. It’s not like if we did World War II, for example; people could pretty much imagine what’s going on. For the American Revolution, it’s not as easy.

“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].”

Despite early cynicism, however, the team never felt they had to justify the game.

“We knew we had something,” said Laferrière. “We knew we had something interesting to tell. We knew we had a real Assassin’s Creed game in the making; true to the franchise but very new in other ways. So we knew we had something."

“It’s just a matter of, ‘Well, wait and see what we have.’ It was more of a nice challenge, if you want. ‘We can do this, just wait and see; we’ll show some stuff!’ And right now I think that there’s nobody doubting the American Revolution as a setting for an Assassin’s Creed game.”

 Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about games, cars and why Master and Commander is definitely the best movie-on-a-ship he can think of right now on IGN here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com