Xbox Gazette : How long has Assassin's Creed been in development ? Can you present the main designers?
Jade Raymond : Assassin's Creed has been in development for over two years. Immediately after shipping Prince of Persia the sands of time a small core team was given the mandate to create a new IP specifically designed to take advantage of next-gen hardware. Patrice Desilets: Creative Director, David Chateauneuf Level Design Director, Alex Drouin Animation Director and Richard Dumas Lead Gameplay programmer already had a ton of ideas of where they wanted to take next gen gameplay. Claude Langlais and Dominic Couture who led the technology for Sands of time had their own vision for the engine and tools of the future. The fact these people as well as other core members from The Sands of Time had already worked together means that they were up and running with a long list of ideas to prototype from day one. I joined the team a few months into conception to help give more focus to the team's pre-production efforts, add a little more structure to the milestones and build out the team. While the core team is same core team from The Sands of Time we have also added specialists from other teams at Ubisoft and the Game industry at large. Ubisoft asked us to redefine the action genre for the next-generation of consoles and the only way to achieve such an ambitious goal is to put together the right team: People who have proven that they can work together to deliver a hit as well as experts with diverse backgrounds.
Xbox Gazette : Can you describe for our readers the principles of Assassin's Creed? What kind of game is it ?
Jade Raymond : We set the bar really high. We've taken one of the most senior teams in the industry and challenged them to redefine action gameplay for Next Generation Systems. These are our creative best, they have all worked together before and they each have over 8 years worth of ideas that they are anxious to put into practice now that the consoles have caught up. 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 a breathing obstacle that you can influence though your second to second actions as well as through longer term strategies. The character has over 1000 distinct moves and can interact with everything in the environment. These elements are pretty cool on their own but the magic lies in how they come together. Patrice Desilets, Assassin's Creed's creative director calls his philosophy organic design and I think it's this approach paired with the team's experience and ambition that is making the game different and great but you will have to judge for yourself when the game comes out.
Xbox Gazette : Is the game more directed towards fiction or History?
Jade Raymond : Actually the game is directed at the same time towards fiction and history. It's a speculative fiction, and it's a fun genre to work in. By grounding a story in reality, you increase its credibility. Suspension of disbelief becomes easier because it's happening in our world. You're exploring cities that still exist today - encountering infamous individuals whose names everyone knows - witnessing battles that really occurred.
At the same time, because our setting is far removed in time (this is nearly 1000 years ago), there's plenty of freedom to tweak people's personalities and motivations. It's fun to explore the idea that something else was happening beneath the information gleaned from historical textbooks. People are also fascinated by "History's Mysteries" and the Templar Treasure was ripe for exploring. What did the Templars find beneath Solomon's Temple? Why did they want it? Where is it today?
Xbox Gazette : Can we travel freely from one city to another in the game?
Jade Raymond : As a matter of fact yes. 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 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.
