As you all know, Ubisoft decided not to release a new Assassin's Creed installment last year for the first time in several years in a row. This, in turn, gave more time to the developers working on Assassin's Creed Origins, which is set to deliver an unprecedented scale in the series by allowing players to freely roam the entire Ptolemaic Egypt with protagonist Bayek.
In the September issue of PC Gamer (#308), Game Director Jean Guesdon (who is sharing the position with Ashraf Ismail) explained just how important that extra year was.
When we started the game three-and-a-half years ago, we wanted it to be global, to be full, so this is why we aim for a fully seamless entire country now. We touched a bit on that with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, this sense of massive scale and total freedom, and we wanted to bring that on land, for the very first time, with an entire country. This extra year really allowed us to take the time to deliver on that high quality.
Perhaps if Assassin's Creed Origins is well received, Ubisoft could elect to keep at least two years between new installments. Yves Guillemot already hinted at that in the past, so here's hoping.
Guesdon also explained that no two players can possibly have the same experience in the game, meaning less scripting and handholding.
For us, it's something that we really want to push. We want players to have their own personal experience, which means less scripting and less handholding. We create a world, we place some content in it - we have dozens of quests, and people that you will meet who will tell you stories. But in between, when you're in the world, a lot of things can happen. And no two people will have the same experience - it's just not possible.
We've reworked the AI so that all living beings in the world are real AI. The lions are hunting antelopes, the crocodiles are attacking hippos if there are any around, and the world is much more living than before.
This apparently doesn't just apply to animals, but also NPCs, with enemy factions fighting among each other dynamically in the open world. As a whole, Ubisoft definitely seems to have taken some cues from action RPGs like The Witcher 3 for the open and dynamic world and Dark Souls for the combat system. We'll know whether this new formula is successful when the game launches on October 27th.
Meanwhile, IGN published a new 4K gameplay video of the game running on Xbox One X. You can check it out below.
