We recently had the chance to speak to Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag‘s lead game designer Jean-Sebastien Decant. Here he talks about the scale of the game, (“20 hours to finish the main story, 50 or 60 hours open world stuff”), how to, “refresh the challenge”, in such a familiar game and how Abstergo’s modern day setting could have been populated with friends from your PSN list.
Be warned: there are spoilers ahead if you’ve not finished all the previous games!
Assassin’s Creed 4 interview
OPM: With regards to the present day story of Black Flag outside of the Animus, what was behind the decision to go with a kind of different story than in previous Assassin’s games?JSD: I think we have to consider Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag as a new beginning for Assassin’s Creed. And we took the opportunity to redefine what we were doing with the present day. And with Desmond dead, we decided to go for something different. [And we wanted to] put it in perspective with what we do at Ubisoft… so: Abstergo, you walk in that building, it’s a bit like walking into Ubisoft… we wanted to offer to the fans a way to dig into the mysteries of Assassin’s Creed and the templars.
OPM: And how does that play out and work in the game?
JSD: So basically, at any time you can exit the Animus and get off your desk and start walking around. You have a device which can hack machines around you. So that’s the open-world part. And as for the mystery, throughout the game, many times, a few hundred times, you have moments that are narrative-based, we tell you something about being a researcher at Abstergo, your hacking capacities and so on…
OPM: Comparatively, how much bigger is this world than in previous games?
JSD: I wouldn’t be able to give you any numbers, but what I can tell you is we have three big cities, compared to the other games, there’s three huge cities and then fifteen unique locations – like continents – throughout the world, and then lots of [islands where] you can find buildings, stuff like that. The size of the map is like fifteen, twenty minutes, if you were just to sail without stopping, so that’s huge. We really tried to increase the feeling of adventure. At the same time it has to be easy to use so we added a number of teleports, in fact every [objective] you do becomes a teleport. So as you soon as you win somewhere, you can send people there.
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OPM: How are the resources from plundering ships and so on used between Edward and his fleet?
JSD: Basically you have three systems. You can choose weapons and costumes in the stores, you can improve your character – the health bar and number of potions or guns you can carry – through hunting. Then plundering for cargo, this is for the ship to be able to sail anywhere.
OPM: Something quite a few players liked previously was having a home you could upgrade, that homestead, is the ship the replacement for that this time?
JSD: In fact we have those, at the end of sequence 3 you [get your own] hideout. So it’s the new homestead, I would say. You can improve it and everything you gather throughout your journey will be in your mansion there. And there’s a lot of secret tunnels and stuff.
“We spent time revisiting core mechanics.
We didn’t want to create a hardcore game
but we wanted to make a challenge”
OPM: In terms of gameplay it seems quite similar [to previous games] with some tweaks. It feels like it’s been sped up a bit so you traverse, fight and escape a lot faster. Was that a conscious decision? Did you think people maybe found it irritating to be stuck in a chase for too long? Or a fight for too long?
JSD: We spent a lot of time revisiting the core mechanics. Speeding them up was one aspect, but there was also how to refresh challenge in Assassin’s Creed, because up until now it’s been quite easy to traverse the city and do whatever you wanted and we didn’t want to create a hardcore game but we wanted to make a challenge. Put a bit more “weight” on your steps. And how do we do that? We wanted to have stronger enemies, more accurate enemies, they push you to hide-and-seek, be stealthier to kill them. And part of that is, yes, when you get in trouble you can get away fast. But even if you escape, are you going to die? We wanted consequences.
OPM: In terms of the balance between core missions and outside activities, what do you see in terms of how much content there is time-wise and also how much do you hope each player invests in these side-stories? Different players have different inclinations.
JSD: We have so much content it’s quite crazy to say it. The main story is at least 20 hours. In the open world you have stuff to do for at least 50 or 60 hours. You have super-ships at the corners of the map, which are ships you wouldn’t be able to destroy until you are maxed up, then you have to understand the Captains which are like in-game bosses. So 20 hours to finish the main story, 60 hours to kill the ships and we are really trying to sort of tie both in together. So for instance sometimes you need to upgrade your ship to survive in a mission, so then you’ll probably start to wonder outside the main game.
OPM: How do you feel about competing and standing out in the open-world genre? It’s a busy genre with GTA 5 obviously out, Watch Dogs from you guys…
JSD: The thing with GTA is obviously it’s going to be a crazy, crazy time-sink for everyone but it’s also going to create interest in those games for more people, they’ll crave something more exciting in a month or two. They’ll play it like crazy, as some do even for the past five years, that’s the only game they’ll play, but then they’ll be like “open-world games are so cool, what’s that?” Then they’ll be like “pirate game – woohoo!” And with Assassin’s Creed, we’re very different in our approach to the open-world. It’s two different fantasies: do you want to be a thug in the modern day or a pirate in the Caribbean? It’s also different [to GTA] because of the mechanics.
“Everyone’s excited about next-gen, so
we have to show the game on next-gen.
It’s gorgeous [on PS3]. I don’t think that
people will feel at a disadvantage”
OPM: Do think anyone who doesn’t upgrade to PS4 is going to feel short-changed if they get the PS3 version having seen trailers and footage of this version being so beautiful? Will they be disappointed?JSD: I think, again, we’re going through a time of transition, so even for communication – everyone’s getting excited about next-gen, so we have to show the game in next-gen [form]. We’ve maybe seen less of the game in current-gen [so far]. But, seriously, it’s gorgeous, great [on PS3] and I don’t think that people will feel at a disadvantage. So yes, if you have the money for the new hardware, just go for it. It’s going to be even more beautiful. But if you want to continue with your machine and wait the experience will be exactly the same.
OPM: At the start of a new console cycle typically we see – as you’ve mentioned- better textures, graphics, draw-distances and then innovation tends to take a little while longer to take place. Where do you think next-gen hardware, and PS4 in particular, allows for more innovation than PS3 did?
JSD: I think it’s a question of connectivity and the capacity to have open-worlds that are spaces of opportunity with other players also. So I feel like we’re going to a place where the games are going to become platforms that will be used for years and also used as [social] spaces. Soon it’ll be a situation as with the app store, so it will be a very easy opportunity to release the game. Creating games that are around a few years [too], that are around for years, as platforms [themselves], not just a few weeks and then [it's onto the next game]. For the PS4 especially, there’s the Vita, which is really something we’ve loved to explore.
OPM: We’ve seen the Remote Play demonstrated, is it really as good as it looks?
JSD: Yes, yes, it’s super-cool. And we were talking with Sony about how we would allocate the buttons, because there were questions, sometimes you’d trigger something [by accident] so we worked with them on that.
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OPM: Multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed sort of came out of nowhere, people said “do we need this?” And then people really liked it. What are the big innovations this year? How do you see it moving forward?
JSD: For Black Flag there are two main innovations. One is the mode that allows you to cast your own modes, parameters and share them with friends, the community. And the other is they pushed way forward the Wolf Pack mode, taking down AIs with friends: now there’s a story with that and many more levels. More conditions to be played. That’s the biggest innovation this time. For the future we’ll see multiplayer and co-op having way more weight for many games, for many years to come.
OPM: We see a lot of things on the horizon – shared worlds where you’re playing your game, someone else is playing their game but you’re in the same place; it seems to me that’d work well in Assassin’s Creed. Do you think that sort of shared world experience could have a place in the series?
JSD: Actually, in terms of multiplayer and shared world, they are things we had to deal with, and even cut, on this game. First, the present day was supposed to be exactly what you’re talking about. So the Animus next to yours would have been your friend on PSN. And after that we had to make decisions to show that we could ship the game and make it the best possible and so it was dropped. We also wanted to have Naval battles and we’re still dreaming of that but… yeah. I think Assassin’s Creed is totally relevant for this kind of experience.
via - official playstation magazine
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