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Ubisoft on telling a story in the open world of Assassin's Creed IV

by rawmeatcowboy
09 October 2013
GN Version 4.0
A portion of a GamingLives interview with Lead Writer, Darby McDevitt...

GL: What are the challenges you’ve faced with AC4 in trying to tell a story in such an open world? How do you approach the challenge of keeping players focussed on the story that you’re trying to tell?

DM: The story that I want to tell is only part of the fun. I just want to make sure that the story that I want to tell is a simple one. It’s of a man, named Edward Kenway, who from the opening scenes of the game clearly just wants to better himself. He just wants to gain wealth and influence as many very poor and destitute people might under a monarchy. He’s the first really ‘working class’ character we’ve had.

We establish very early that he rose up from having nothing and he has these dreams. He’s married, but when the game opens we establish that he’s estranged from his wife – they haven’t seen each other in years. He’s in the West Indies ostensibly because he thinks he can make a lot of money and come back to England the cock of the walk. In the course of his journey he comes in to this assassin/Templar conflict and through them he believes he can see a way that he can achieve this dream, through skilful manipulation of all these people. Of course, this turns out to be terribly wrong, and he embroils himself in this big conflict that he then has to get himself out of. So that’s our story – the plot can have lots of twists and turns and things like that, but the basic story is of a man that wants to better himself and thinks he can do it through piracy and ends up terribly wrong!

Full interview here