If you've ever spent an unproductive half-hour banging on about how awesome Assassin's Creed would be, given the ability to invade another player's campaign world, you probably won't be all that chuffed to hear that such a feature once existed.
According to Assassin's Creed 3 mission director Philippe Bergeron, the original Assassin's Creed once sported an ambitious co-op mode, which was eventually cut. "Before we knew about the Desmond story and Animus link, we had a huge co-op component in there," he told OXM during our scintillating series retrospective "The History Boys", published in issue 95 (on sale now).
"For us it was really part of the single player experience, to have in-and-out co-op, and in the end we never thought it made sense in the storyline that we had for the Animus," he went on.
"There was no way to reconcile having multiplayer or co-op in an ancestor's memories. Your ancestor lived his life in a certain way, so assuming you had branching storylines, it creates a paradox. It didn't fit."
Assassin's Creed has ventured into multiplayer waters since, of course - Assassin's Creed 2 spin-off Brotherhood gave us a worthwhile cat-and-mouse affair, conducted on distinct, sealed-off maps that are just as conveniently well-populated as the single player variety.
But it's hard not to want more, in light of such feats of companionable stealthing as fellow Ubi release Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Rumours has it that Assassin's Creed 4 could be a fully co-op supported return to revolutionary America. Sounds good to us.
8 comments so far...
Bezza89 on 4 Feb '13 said:
Sounds good? Sounds terrible, if there's one thing rubbish about AC3 it's the setting. There are a lot of other little bits that annoy too but the major one is spending time in a place that is boring with a main character who is annoying to hell (which would probably link to the gta debate in the forum).
It sounds like the watch dogs thing, they couldn't do it in the ac universe, let's put it in watch dogs and have people joining in who might help or hinder. I think it's time to leave AC behind after a game about dealing with the ending just so they can put the resources into a new concept - whilst all the AC games have done something worth playing let's play something new, or a lot less frequent.
SilentDark on 4 Feb '13 said:
"Before we knew about the Desmond story and Animus link, we had a huge co-op component in there,"
So they started development of the game before learning the story and background of the franchise?
Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
Besides isn't the point of a game where you play as an assassin that you work alone?
FishyGinger on 4 Feb '13 said:
Bonnie and Clyde didn't work alone. Thelma and Louise didn't work alone. And they were the best
I agree though, bit strange they just seemed to making 'a game' without knowing what they were doing.
CunningSmile on 4 Feb '13 said:
It was originally started as a Prince of Persia spin off set entirely in the past. Then it became a standalone game set in the crusades and only after all that did they come up with the Animus and Desmond.
Then they sacked the writer and deleted his PC files and no one has a clue what the over all storyline was originally intended to be. All the stuff on the wall at the end of AC1? Your guess is as valid as the writers of AC2 because they were guessing as well.
Bezza89 on 4 Feb '13 said:
That sounds like BS, as if they wouldn't phone him up (or her) and say what was it again? Turns out he's actually Keyser Sochez played by Bruce Willis?
Unless the writer was murdered and they wrote that into it.
Either that or the writer is an egotistical twap. Or UBIsoft, but that's what the people who route for the little guy want, I'm going left-field, under the box, outside the corkscrew - the writer was high when he wrote it. What's it mean, Jim? Oh I can't tell you until you renew my contract! Oh well you're fired and you smell like meth! We're going to wipe your computer for no apparent reason, it's not as if you would keep stuff you'd wrote on something you'd use, we wont check it either. Bye!
True story.
CunningSmile on 5 Feb '13 said:
There was an interview in Xbox World when AC2 was released in which the writer of that game admitted that they had no idea what the AC1 plot threads meant. If it's BS it's BS that Ubi themselves started.
thewrongtrousers on 5 Feb '13 said:
Huh!!! They were the best assassins???
You do know what an assassin is right?
SilentDark on 5 Feb '13 said:
Bonnie and Clyde were psychotic criminals, Thelma and Louise were psychotic lesbian misandrists, Agent 47 is an assassin, and he works alone, although if said assassins were generally snipers then they might have a partner to act as a spotter but in general hired assassins should work alone, because nobody wants to split a paycheck.
Sorry, that did sound suspiciously like I was ranting but I'm just very pedantic.
Back on track you'd think somebody at Ubisoft HQ could have told these guys "So you're work on an assassins creed game 'kay." or that somebody on the development staff could have, I don't know, looked up the series on wikipedia or something.