Ubisoft: “Greatest strength,” of the Assassin’s Creed series is “the freedom it gives to the player”

By Stephany Nunneley

Ubisoft Montreal’s Alexandre Breault has said the team’s goal with adding new moves and weapons to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was to create a “bridge between navigation and combat.”

Speaking in an interview with CVG, the game design director said giving the player new weapons also gave Ezio’s moves a new “purpose,” instead of just making him a more powerful character.

“It’s a good challenge to add new abilities to Ezio,” said Breault. “In Brotherhood, Ezio was already extremely versatile and deadly. For the new move we added, we wanted to make sure that they would bring something new to the player, and that they would feel powerful. To make sure to reach that objective, we focus on new movement that would act as consolidating elements between the various system.

“All the hookblade moves are representative of that design approach: our goal was to make a bridge between navigation and combat. In that sense, every move have been created to bring the player faster in the combat (hook and throw, zipline assassination, extended ledge kill) or to make him exit combat faster (hook and run, accelerated climbing, extended reach, ziplines…). To make sure it keeps the right balance, we focus on giving the moves a new purpose instead of just making them even more powerful.”

With the addition of bombs, players are given more choices and freedom as far as attacks are concerned, so the decision was made to change the game’s controls in order to implement a secondary attack button.

“That way, the player can more easily change his play style, alternating faster between melee combat and range weapon,” said Breault. “This is a good example on how we evolved the player style for Assassin’s Creed Revelations. We know that one of the greatest strength of the series is the freedom it gives to the player.

“We really worked hard to make sure that the player could still play the way he wanted. Our new moves support the various approaches the player could choose.”

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is due on PS3 and Xbox 360 in November, with a PC to follow.