Q&A: Assassin's Creed developer talks trilogy, sci-fi twist (page 2 of 2)

Most games tend to rely on the illusion of freedom, rather than freedom itself. In Assassin's Creed, it really seems like the player can run, climb, and jump to just about anywhere. What's the key to making such freedom intoxicating, as opposed to overwhelming?

It's all about structure. You structure the player's learning so he's not overwhelmed in the first hour or two. You teach him how to play, and what's going on, what the challenges and obstacles are and how to get through them.

We're still an action/adventure game. It's not only a sandbox game. The narrative part of the game is much more integral than Grand Theft Auto, for example, where the story is almost secondary to the things you can do in the city. Here, in the beginning, I'm telling you a story, I'm taking you by the hand, and you'll understand why you're doing things, who Altair is, who the bad guy is, why you have to go assassinate your targets, and then, as you head toward the third, fourth, fifth hour, the game opens up. Then you go into a city.

Also, we divided the cities into districts, and then we divided each district into smaller side quests. If you do a view point mission, you'll know more about what's going on in the area, instead of just telling you everything on the map immediately. What's cool is, everything is still there; I don't do view point missions anymore. I know where my investigation missions are, so I just do them. But that was a challenge.

It's almost the same structure as Mario 64. When you start, you only have one level open. Then you do two or three of the missions, and then you have two new levels to explore. Once you do one or two things in those two, like four others open up. Then it'll ask you "now complete some stuff in the previous levels, and then I'll open up new ones." So we have a little bit of the same structure: it's little bit more linear in the beginning, then it opens up, then it opens up more, and then it'll be closing down until there's a big climax at the end. So it's really much the same thing, it's just hidden. And that's the thing I like about: hiding the game design roots as much as possible.

I hide them by using "common sense design." That's what I call it. I'm just using the rules of human life, putting them in a game, and trying to get players to forget they're playing a game. You're the dude. You're Altair, just like you were the Prince. You tend to forget that the maps were done, and the puzzles were there for you to solve, you're just in the palace. That's why there was a big earthquake in Sands of Time: at the beginning it was important to explain why the maps are all weird. The palace was falling down. There are no booby traps until you set off the alarms of the palace, then they appear. It's because you did it. Everything has to make sense. The game design rules are put in the narrative, so you tend to forget that they are video game rules.

You and many members of your team worked on the Prince of Persia games. Does Assassin's Creed feel to you like an evolution of the ideas in those games?

At the beginning, maybe, but those games are more where we learned how to do a really good third-person action adventure game. There are some animations and ways of interacting that are similar, but this is not Prince of Persia. What's cool about the third person is that you can really explore these ideas. There are so many things you can do, but it's much harder to do than in the first-person, because you can see the guy, and the camera is the eye of the player. As soon as the camera is not good, you feel it. In the first-person, you don't see the camera, you don't see the character. You're moving the camera all the time. So the real challenge of the third person is character vs. camera and how everything works together.

And then we put 120 NPCs and guards, and let you climb everywhere, so it's a little bit crazy. But again, the medieval setting is perfect, because the walls of the city are the constraints.

How important was it to you to be historically accurate?

It was really, really important at the beginning, but eventually we took some liberties. In a movie or a TV series it's easier, since there's no interaction involved. But as soon as you start interacting, it's like whoa, how do we manage this? History is finished, and behind us, at least in our conscious life. Quantum physics tells us that it's not, but still. In general, it's behind us. So, you know, Richard the Lionheart had his life, and so you cannot go and kill him, because he didn't die in 1191. He died in 1198 in France by an archer, so it cannot be Altair coming in.

So how do we do it, you know? So, we tried to find people that died in that year, or close to it, and sometimes that we didn't find, so we had to invent a little bit. But something that is as historically accurate as possible is the setting, visually. Some landmarks are still there now. Like the Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem. You can go and visit them today, and we have it in our game. It's the same thing.

And the costumes. For the characters, what they wear is more important than what they look like. They're all humans. I cannot do a character that is like eight feet tall. It's not possible, because it just doesn't exist. There's no giant crab.

There's been talk of Assassin's Creed growing into a trilogy...

Well, we have a plan. We know where we're going. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

I play a lot of sports games, and I feel like action/adventure has to go more towards a sports game mentality, of developing, but also of playing. You have a pretty vague objective -- go to Acre, and assassinate a particular person -- and then it's almost the same set of rules in each of the other cities, and it's how you play it. Just like in Madden, I'm there to play a football game; but will I play it on the ground, or will I be passing all the time? Depending on your mood, depending on the AI, you'll have different experiences. Assassin's Creed has that core, but with a really strong narrative on top of it, and that's where the adventure comes from.

I'll end on a question that you probably won't be able to answer. Between the molecular diagram flashes, the twisting double helix of the pause menu, the hints at genetic memory, there are a lot of science fiction elements surrounding what we've seen so far. What are these elements hinting at?

Well, we don't want to talk about that yet. Yes, there's something else, and people know it's coming, but we won't talk about it until it ships. It's really part of the game. It's not a gimmick, it's part of the game, but I cannot say what it is exactly. In November, when the game ships, I'll probably be talking about it and debating it, whether it's a good idea or not. Maybe people are expecting too much. It's crazy, it's just because we didn't want to talk about it.

Well, like David Lynch said "mystery is like a magnet. Whenever there is something that's unknown, it has a certain pull to it."

Well, we wanted to first talk about Altair and the Crusade and everything -- and there's a lot to talk about -- and then you'll understand that there's more still. I hope people will like it.

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