Assassin's Creed 3's Creative director Alex Hutchinson recently sat down for an interview with VG24/7. Here are some of the highlights...
* On Desmond
"Desmond is getting more screen time than ever before! But any more info would be a spoiler."
* On the Playspace
"Between the two new cities in Boston and New York, the Frontier as a map that's 1.5 times the size of Rome in Brotherhood, and the modifying effects of weather in all areas, the playable space is vast."
* On Historical Accuracy
"We spend a big chunk of the early development of all of our games on historical research, reading books, watching documentaries, searching the internet, trying to find not just the well known history but any conspiracy theories that might be useful. We also have historians on staff and hire consultants for specific roles. On Assassin's Creed 3 we have a cultural advisor from the local Native American community who helps us with accuracy and language. Then, once we have a base of 'fact' we weave our story into it, again checking back both with documents and historians, to make sure our fiction is supportable enough to make it fun and interesting for players.
As far as I know we've never bent history significantly in the game. For example: every target in every game is a real person who dies in the right year at the right place, although we take liberty in 'how' they died of course. When it's a completely fictional character, such as Connor, we can invent some things, but even the weapon you mention, which is probably the biggest fantasy element in the whole game, is an actual weapon from history and we explain how it came to America. Although again, in history it's strong enough to kill a man throwing it forward, but probably not strong enough to hang a man from a branch!"
* On Multiplayer
We revealed one new mode at E3 called Domination which is a team based mode (4 VS 4) where players need to work together to attack/capture and defend various zones on a map to score points. It's the famous multiplayer mode based on zone capturing with the Assassin's Creed multiplayer twist. This mode introduces a whole new dynamic in Assassin's Creed multiplayer.
Wolfpack is a 2-4 players versus AI mode. In this mode every second counts as you need to hunt AI targets. A fast pace experience which rewards flawless navigation and quick reactions before the clock ends. Finally, we are always working on refining the overall multiplayer experience. Data tracking and feedback from Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed Revelations players have helped us in improving our core mechanics as well as working on the overall performance of matchmaking and group system. Now Kill and Stun interactions are merged on the same button (to stop having the game revealing the pursuer and to improve player reactivity), thanks to a third Ability slot, you can play with 3 active abilities at the same time and we have a brand new 'player focused flow'.
* On the Future
"I really don't know what the future holds on the franchise, I'm 100% committed to shipping Assassin's Creed 3 at the moment."
Assassin's Creed 3 is out October 31, for PS3 and XBox 360. A PC release is also expected.
