Assassin's Creed III is going to be one of the year's biggest games...literally.
In speaking to NowGamer, Ubisoft Montreal creative director Alex Hutchinson explains how they wanted to build on the core concepts of the franchise, so as to give the fans an entirely new - yet still familiar - experience.
"The goal with the new game was to take the core features of Assassin’s Creed in terms of navigation, combat and stealth and to apply them to new environments. We didn’t just want to add features, we wanted to take players to entirely new worlds and show them entirely new styles of gameplay.
Our goal with Connor was to create a character that is as comfortable climbing cliffs and moving through trees, fighting on uneven terrain and hiding in forests, as Altair and Ezio were comfortable in cities. While many games have built forests, we want to show people that forests can be fully realised gameplay environments and not just obstacles to avoid."
As for the size, Hutchinson reconfirmed a fact we already knew, that the frontier map would be about 1.5 times the size of Rome in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. But he also elaborated on what we'll see: There will be historical locations like Valley Forge, Lexington and Concord, and it's a realistic combination of wilderness and villages. Plus, Hutchinson says they're implementing new mission delivery systems (the "Clubs" is an example), and we'll be able to hold more than one active mission in our mission queues at any given time. ...sounds very RPG-ish, yes?
In the end, he said we should anticipate a "vast" experience and they "can't wait to get it into people's hands." Yeah, well, we ca't wait, either.