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New Assassin's Creed Interview:

Perhaps the dark horse of this year's pre-Christmas blockbusters, if only for the medieval setting and lack of big guns, Assassin's Creed is an action adventure set in the 12th Century. Containing elements of stealth, platforming and action and seemingly inspired by Verve's Bittersweet Symphony video - where Richard Ashcroft barges through some punters on the pavement - AC is more ambitious than the average gaming biggie. I've played a small part of the game and found the controls "interesting" - ie not exactly intuitive - and this was one of the topics I recently discussed with the creative director Patrice Desilets.

The historical setting makes AC look very different to most videogames. Was this a conscious decision to try and do something different?

I think it's safe to say that the Crusades are an area we've wanted to explore for a long time, but we've been waiting for technology to reach a point where we can do it justice. It's not enough for us to simply set the game here - we needed to capture the experience of living during this tumultuous time: The fusion of European and Middle Eastern art and architecture. The hustle and bustle of medieval city life. The intrigue and political machinations of regional leaders. The gritty nature of ancient combat. The air of mystery that surrounds the secret societies that rose to power around this time.


We also choose this setting to keep a strong focus on the crowd. The team decided to focus on crowd and freedom of movement to deliver new emergent types of gameplay. The Crowd has been designed as a living & breathing obstacle that you can influence though your second to second actions as well as through longer term strategies. Basically we want to provide gamers with a level of immersion that was not possible on previous consoles. What better setting for interesting crowd gameplay then narrow medieval streets filled with merchants, nights, public hangings and all of the street life from this gruesome time?


We also think gamers want more then another Hallo or GTA clone. Maybe there is room for games to bring to life the kinds of settings that movies have made so memorable. Movies like Braveheart or Kingdom of Heaven both share this epic feeling we try to achieve in Assassin's Creed.

What are the main influences - both gaming and non-gaming - when making AC?

It may look quite strange but I would say there's a direct connection between our inspiration for the story and the setting and the game mechanics. A book called Alamut was an influence. Though this book is a fictional work, it's based on the Historical Clan of Assassins and it prompted the team who were passing the book around to do further research about the Assassins and their time period - the 3rd Crusade. The more we discovered about these people, the more we wanted to make a game about them. Even the Assassin's Creed "Nothing is True, Everything is permitted" fits the game medium perfectly and eventually became the game's title as well as inspiration for a new type of gameplay. Is there a better setting for crowd gameplay that narrow streets from the epic time of the Crusade?

You can apply the creed to the game itself - traditional game design rules that enforce linear level design and restricted gameplay are thrown away. The player is given the freedom to experience this adventure in a manner that fits their individual play style.

The game also takes its influences from modern elements like parkour running/jumping. We all think that the sport of free-running is incredibly cool and wish we could do it in real life so it seemed like a logical thing to try to deliver in our game. The idea of climbing anywhere happens to suit our master Assassin well and it turns out that having this ability in narrow medieval streets filled with large stone buildings and gothic details creates great gameplay too. Mixing modern free-running with a crusade setting ended up working so well for us that we extended this approach throughout development into a bunch of different aspects of the game including the story and art direction.


You seem to be taking a number of elements in the game - platform, stealth,
RPG etc. What are the main gameplay features?

Our goal with Assassin's Creed was to use the new tech to deliver new types of gameplay and a more relevant experience. We have created a unique gaming experience that we call a "Flower Box" game. It's a sandbox experience that is heavily story driven. The player has the freedom to complete missions when they want and using that strategy that they find the most satisfying but all of these missions are tightly woven into an intricate story and are essential to the big reveal at the end.


Not only you'll be to able to travel freely from on city to another but we are also trying to do something a little different that was not possible before. We focused on building a character that can do over 1000 contextual moves, and paired this new freedom of movement with a highly interactive environment and crowd lets players develop their own style. Any architectural detail that sticks out more then 2 inches can be used as a hold for your hands or feet. Not only can you create your own path on the rooftops you can also create your own flashy or subtle style for doing so or skip the roofs entirely and use a strategy through the crowd. Place a highly mobile and skilled Assassin in a fully interactive living environment and the possibilities are endless.

So basically the pace of the game really depends on how you play it. For instance in Assassin's Creed there aren't any "fighting" or "platforming" sections. All the gameplay elements are embedded together. Gamers will be able to use any gameplay ingredients such as free running, crowd gameplay etc to create their own experience.


Some people think it's slow paced because they think Assassin's Creed is a stealth game. It's true that we have a feature called social stealth. This is a rule that says that you are hidden as long as you are behaving in a socially acceptable way. But this rule results in a much more fast paced type of gameplay than traditional stealth. We wanted a more action packed type of stealth and one that really takes advantage of all of the work we have put into the crowd simulation. Instead of using the hidden in shadow rule we used the rules of everyday life. You are hidden when you are behaving in a socially accepted way. Think about walking around in a crowded city like New York or at a crowded concert. In crowded circumstances it is very easy to go unseen by simply obeying rules that everyone knows: follow the crowd flow, walk at the right pace, don't aggressively shove people out of the way to make room for yourself, don't start yelling at the top of your lungs, etc. We have put these everyday social rules into the game. Which means that our rules are intuitive and also a lot of fun to break because you don't get to go around shoving people and causing commotions in everyday life.

How important is the horseback action to the game? Is it just a mode of transport?

It's more than just that. You can ride your horse at multiple speeds from a very slow walk that allows you to sneak past guards without attracting their attention to a very fast gallop that will leave all of your enemies in the dust. Besides riding around, you can also attack enemies on horseback with your sword, you can use your horse to reach higher locations by standing on it to jump onto near by objects, you can make your horse jump over obstacles and even ride it on top of rooftops and jump from roof to roof. Your horse will follow you around if you get off of it. Which I think is cool because it kind of makes it feel like he's your pet. And your horse may even rear and kick enemies if he gets agitated.