Jade Raymond: Assassin’s Creed living up to being “next-gen”

Assassin’s Creed took a long time coming but, looking at the game’s development, the game seems to be worth the wait. Ubisoft Montreal producer Jade Raymond had a sit down with BBC to talk about why the game took four years in the making.

As if in reply to David Braben’s claims that Halo 3 and BioShock weren’t next-gen games, Raymond explains that, as a next gen game, Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) should live up to the increased standards of gameplay and not just graphics. Assassin’s Creed isn’t just about looking pretty, it’s about taking the gameplay to the next level by taking advantage of the power of the next gen consoles.

First of all, the game has a larger playing environment, set in three huge cities that are populated with thousands of characters and every single thing within the city can either be “grabbed, climbed on [or] jumped from.” The challenge is having to create each object to become interactive.

Another big challenge for the developers was to make the characters in the game act more lifelike, even the faceless populace. And as for looking pretty; the faceless populace will all have randomly created factors so each of them will be, in a way, an individual and not just a clone.

So will Assassin’s Creed herald the way for taking games to the next level? Says Raymond:

As an entertainment medium, games are really just scratching the surface. I think we are at where we were with film when we made the transition from silent films to films that were telling a story with sound and dialogue. We are just at the point of discovering what we can do with interactivity and what’s an interactive story where you are creating a story for players, but it really has to become the player’s story.

Buy: [Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360)]
Buy: [Assassin’s Creed (PS3)]

Assassin’s Creed took a long time coming but, looking at the game’s development, the game seems to be worth the wait. Ubisoft Montreal producer Jade Raymond had a sit down with BBC to talk about why the game took four years in the making.

As if in reply to David Braben’s claims that Halo 3 and BioShock weren’t next-gen games, Raymond explains that, as a next gen game, Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) should live up to the increased standards of gameplay and not just graphics. Assassin’s Creed isn’t just about looking pretty, it’s about taking the gameplay to the next level by taking advantage of the power of the next gen consoles.

First of all, the game has a larger playing environment, set in three huge cities that are populated with thousands of characters and every single thing within the city can either be “grabbed, climbed on [or] jumped from.” The challenge is having to create each object to become interactive.

Another big challenge for the developers was to make the characters in the game act more lifelike, even the faceless populace. And as for looking pretty; the faceless populace will all have randomly created factors so each of them will be, in a way, an individual and not just a clone.

So will Assassin’s Creed herald the way for taking games to the next level? Says Raymond:

As an entertainment medium, games are really just scratching the surface. I think we are at where we were with film when we made the transition from silent films to films that were telling a story with sound and dialogue. We are just at the point of discovering what we can do with interactivity and what’s an interactive story where you are creating a story for players, but it really has to become the player’s story.

Buy: [Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360)]
Buy: [Assassin’s Creed (PS3)]