There’ll be more of a return to the ‘modern day’ setting in Assassin’s Creed moving forward, says Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed: Unity only had brief moments through cutscenes where we weren’t assuming the role of an ancestral assassin.
Lead writer Darby McDevitt pointed to Assassin’s Creed 2 and the town of Monteriggioni, which was playable in both past and present, and so they plan to ”smartly reuse things” for a modern experience.
Apparently the team had already had more ‘modern day’ in Unity’s Paris, but it never materialised.
”We always plan to have more modern day but we have to be really smart about how we do it. There was a plan for a little more modern day in Unity - a plan,” he stressed, ”nothing that was actually cut.”
”The thing with Unity was that it was a completely fresh game on a completely fresh generation. So creating any kind of modern day is a pretty huge ask. To create a city, for instance, or even part of a city, would require six months of work by many, many artists, designers, modellers. And then you’d need gameplay systems that didn’t feel like you were just fencing.”
Considering the horrific launch of Unity from a technical standpoint, it was likely for the best they didn’t stretch themselves any further beyond what they could manage.
The writing team has also been delving more into the historical lore of the Assassin’s Creed universe.
”I particularly love the lore. I’ve been working the past two years, with all the other writers, on getting a great document together on the First Civilisation,” said McDevitt. ”We’ve created 500, 600, 700 years worth of history that we hope to start teasing out for the next 10, 20 years or however long we’re around.”
”…me and the other writers have been, as a side-project to really make sure all future projects have this cool timeline to go from, creating this huge First Civ history. With all the big moments and a ton of small moments you’ve never thought of.”
“So every future writer can say ‘I want to reference Juno again, or Minerva’ and see where she was at a specific date… and how far along was the First Civ-human war going.”
The next major Assassin’s Creed is codenamed Victory, and is believed to be London during the Industrial Revolution. Assassin’s Creed Rogue releases on PC March 10th.
