18 Oct, 2010
The good people of Ubisoft Montreal have spoken frankly about their disappointment with the first installment of their Assassins Creed franchise, claiming that it was ‘dumbed down and lacked variety’. Journalists from Games Radar visited the studios this week for a hands-on on the forthcoming Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, and managed a candid interview with developers Patrick Plourde and Vincent Pontbriand who have worked on the series so far.
When journalists broached the subject of Assassins Creed being a major franchise, Plourde who is now working at the director on ‘Brotherhood’ spoke of how the hype for the original brought a lot of pressure on them and their vision:
“Ever since Assassin’s Creed got revealed, the hype went through the roof. So we’ve always had to deal with that. With the first game we knew it had some weaknesses, but at the same time we didn’t want to go out in public and say ‘don’t expect the earth’. So that was challenging.”
Plourde also spoke about how hugely ambitious the original concept behind the first game was, admitting that to some extent they fell on their own sword.
“We wanted to push the envelope in all areas – we didn’t want regular cut-scenes, we wanted to climb every wall, have two alternate realities… maybe that was a lot of stuff to get right the first time. So we succeeded with the core, but there wasn’t enough variety, the missions had problems, the exposition wasn’t the best…”
“We went too epic with AC1 – it was traditional ‘save the world’ style. The mistake we realised and corrected in AC2 was that even with epic movies there needs to be an element of stress relief, comedy relief. It’s not necessarily normal that people are as formal as they were in AC1… I think the pressure on the team during Assassin’s 1 made everybody a little stiff. The atmosphere in which games are designed, it’s reflected in the product.”
When asked if the decision to take a slightly less epic scale approach to the production came from overhead pressure, Plourde spoke of how it was a mixture of overhead influence and the overwhealming burden of hype which eventually lead to the finished product. The developers claim that they felt they made their penance for their failures with it’s sequel, by adding a touch of comic relief as not to buckle the player under the hard philosophy of the story.
This interview is certainly interesting when you consider how disappointed many were with the original game, especially for the very reasons that Ubisoft have addmited themselves. The full comprehensive interview is due to be published later this week, and certainly sounds worth a read!
Source: Games Radar
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