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Assassin's Creed IV - video interview, more gameplay and details

by rawmeatcowboy
07 October 2013
GN Version 4.0

Information comes from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag game director Ashraf Ismail...

On why ACIII didn't getting a spin-off

"Not so much. We have this brand team at Ubisoft. It’s the Assassin’s Creed brand team. They are outside of the development team. So this team that is outside of the developers and overlooks this brand, we did the trilogy of Ezio and for the next set of games, we didn’t want to do the sort of trilogy of Connor.

We like the idea of when we announce a new game, people get excited about the new setting and time period, but they also get excited about the character. In our case, what we decided is we have this Kenway family and so we told the story of Connor and a little bit of Haytham and then they have this grandfather named Edward.

So the point was always to tell Edward’s story as well. We really didn’t want to do a trilogy with Connor. We also pay attention to fan feedback. If fans were going ballistic and saying ‘we need more Connor, we need more Connor,’ I’m sure someone in business would’ve said, ‘push another Connor game, eventually.'

Honestly with Connor, I think he was a bit more polarizing than Ezio, there were some people that loved him and then there were some people where he didn’t connect with them at all. For business reasons, our job is to make characters that are more intriguing and interesting and if you don’t like them because of who that person is in the world, then that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with that.

If we made a really boring character that is not interesting, then that’s bad for us. But the goal has always been to tell the story of the Kenway family saga with these sets of games. We of course, always listen to what people have to tell us though."


On the ending of ACIV defining who Edward is

"I’m super proud of Edward’s story that we’ve done here. Altair was duty bound. Ezio was revenge, effectively. With Edward, we wanted to tell kind of a more human story where it’s about a guy who hasn’t figured out who he is in life. So yes, we do explain his origins a bit.

We explain why the life of piracy attracted him. You start to see that he is a guy that’s looking to figure out, what does life mean to him? I always say the ending to this game, it’s not about Edward saving the world or saving the pirates. It’s a really human ending, he effectively decides who he is in life. I’m really proud of that because it’s much more humble, but I think it makes him much more human.

You can connect to him because he’s going through problems that a lot of us face. They may be a bit more extravagant, but at the end of the day it’s a human issue he’s trying to figure out."

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