Patrice Desilets, Creative Director at Ubisoft's Montreal Studio, answers questions set by Forum members at eu.playstation.com on Assassin's Creed for PlayStation 3.
Birds of prey seem to be a main source of inspiration for this game, as well as history of course, but were there any films, books or games that you had in mind while designing the look of the game? (Animal)
For many reasons there’s a metaphorical resemblance between Altair and this well known bird of prey: our hero, like an eagle or a falcon, will hunt his target down, observe his every move, then strike with a single killing blow. He is always in control, analysing his environment so he can choose the best possible course of action, all the while he keeps an incredibly low profile. And like a falcon, Altair’s outfit resembles it aesthetically. His hood was designed like the beak of an eagle while his cape was inspired by its wings. Also, when Altair performs certain acrobatics, to give him a feeling of weightlessness, his cape deploys itself like the wings of an eagle.
What originally gave you the idea to make a game set in this era? (CaptainCortez)
It came from different things. First I wanted a character that has “action” in his title. I remembered a book about secret societies that mentioned the Assassins and the myth of the Old man of the Mountain, and I figured that it would be a really cool character to do. Then, we wanted to centre our experience on crowds. It’s way easier to make a crowd in a small back alley of a Medieval town than on 5th Avenue in NY… And the last reason why we picked that era as our setting was the fact that the Third Crusade is one of the best known. When you put it all together, you then have the concept of Assassin’s Creed.
Will our choices in the game affect the story? (Pasadera)
Not really, but the narrative structure of the game is up to the player to “write” because of the open-ended nature of the game. There are a lot of story elements that can be missed if you don’t do everything or don’t pay too much attention… Also, you can play with the way you experience the story, since you can still control the character and camera movements in a lot of different scenes… But the story is already written for you to discover, and you’ll understand why you cannot change it when you play…
Altair is a killer, is there any limit in the "morality" of the character? (Ihsahn)
Not in the character per se, but in the Creed, yes. You can kill innocent people, but you will lose health since it’s not part of the Creed. But you’re free as a player to decide…
How long did the research about Crusades and Jerusalem take? (Nikolastation)
All the way through the development of Assassin’s Creed we have consulted experts and books of the era to ensure it’s as authentic as possible and at the start of development we spent a good six months researching.
Are Altair's movement done with motion capture? If not how? (Tib)
There’s a big part which has been done with motion capture, mainly fighting, and then generic movement such as walking, running, etc. This gives us a basic framework to start with and then we rework this framework by hand to then create Altair’s assassin style.
Almost all of the animation was edited by hand, taking out frames and polishing for timing, stylistic and gameplay reasons. Motion capture isn’t even a fifth of the animation system as most of it is complex movements which people can’t physically do – like climbing and certain fighting styles. Because of this, there are loads of small linking animations which are only able to be created by hand and these are the key elements of animation which create the fluid movement that you see in the game.
Will the character learn new moves and get stronger during the game, like a RPG? (Charizard)
Assassin’s Creed is not a RPG but more an action adventure game with a level up system – every time you rank up, equipment is restored to you. Sometimes it’s a new weapon that changes the dynamic of fights, like throwing knives that let you dispatch of enemies at a distance. Other times you get items that change the way you are able to interact with your environment.
For example, at Rank 4 you obtain a pair of Gloves which give you better grasping ability. This completely changes climbing and free running because you can descend buildings quickly by letting go and then grabbing back on. When you jump towards an edge your new gloves allow you to reach and grab on to things that were previously out of reach, and if you are falling because you have been hit by an arrow or other projectile, you can grab onto something before you plummet to your death. Other items like boots and special belts allow you to interact with the crowd in new ways. Ranking up is more than just getting a sword that does more damage – it changes your gameplay.
Is the game based on something real? Especially the group of secretive assassins, did it exist? (Komir)
Yes… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin.
Are the weapons Altair uses based on the weaponry available to him in those times or did you create some of your own? (SaDistic)
Altair’s hidden blade was inspired by the initiation ceremony which potential assassins have to go through to join the brotherhood. The rest of the weapons in the game are as closely related to authentic medieval weaponry which you can research and find out more about.
Are there environments which are re-created from how they looked in the past? (Warjan)
When doing research for the game we found a lot of maps and books which had real cities and locations, all of which we’ve tried to recreate as closely as possible but they won’t be 100% exact. The assassins' fortress in the game is based on our research from books about the real Masyaf so we used this as inspiration for it.
On |
