Assassin's Creed Rogue Producer Ivan Balabanov spoke in a new video posted today about how Ubisoft's upcoming last-gen game is taking inspiration from both Assassin's Creed III and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag while adding a whole host of new features to give a fitting send-off to the Kenway trilogy.
Rogue Predictions: Historical Characters And Events We Might See In Rogue
Assassin's Creed III's Frontier was a great addition to the franchise's formula, but its naval gameplay was underdeveloped. Black Flag, in contrast, did wonders with the naval gameplay, but it then lacked a lot of engaging land settings. Assassin's Creed Rogue is looking to take the best of both worlds by taking AC3's wilderness settings and Black Flag's maritime settings and sticking them in the same game with a rich city setting for good measure.
In the video, Balabanov describes the three settings that Rogue will feature. The first is the River Valley, an open wilderness setting reminiscent of AC3's Frontier. Judging by the quick look the video provides, this valley is probably located in the mountainous northern region of the northeast U.S., and it looks particularly fun to explore. The North Atlantic is Rogue's answer to the Caribbean of Black Flag, a naval exploration setting filled with icy hazards and Assassin pursuers. Finally, New York is the game's main city location, a must for any Assassin's Creed game.
It's hard to tell at this point whether Rogue's New York will feature the wide streets of AC3 that were lovely to look at but made rooftop traversal cumbersome or whether it will be more like Black Flag's cities whose narrow streets were more reminiscent of locations in the Ezio trilogy.
The whole experience is capped off with a couple of new features and slick new weapons, which are on display in the gameplay trailer. As a Templar, Shay has access to many cool experimental weapons like the air gun or grenade launcher. New game mechanics in Rogue include poison gasses, which Shay can detonate then watch from afar as it spreads out in an area of effect. Shay will also need to be wary of enemy Assassins, which can ambush him at any time, much like the stealthy attackers Ezio would sometimes encounter in Revelations.
Assassin's Creed Rogue looks like it's set to take the best parts of its two most recent predecessors and add a couple of sleek new features into the pot. Hopefully, this game will be able to send off the Kenway trilogy – and the previous generation of consoles as a whole – in fitting fashion.
Assassin's Creed Rogue is set to launch for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 systems on November 11.
