Divine execution

This is how Vincent Pontebriand, the Associate Producer of the hit game Assassin’s Creed, explains the background of his protagonist. Assassin’s Creed was released worldwide in November of 2007 and became an instant hit among third-person gaming fans. Ubisoft Entertainment – the French game developers behind hits Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia – has announced that the game has sold more than 3.46 million copies. The PC version will be released on April 8th, 2008. 
Vincent Ponterbriand, who coordinated the creative process, spoke to us at length about putting together an authentic Medieval, Middle Eastern game – and tried to clear out our confusion of how can a game featuring a Muslim superhero killing Christians could become so popular.

 

Vincent Ponterbriand: We contacted a historian early in the conception phase of development to help us build a foundation of research. We used the internet, documentaries, old medieval encyclopedias, paintings and novels. The historian helped us with some harder-to-find information such as original city plans of Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre that date back to the third crusade. There is one book called The Third Crusade 1191: Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and the battle for Jerusalem that has been especially helpful because it covers the year in which our game takes place. We discovered that during the Crusades, Jerusalem changed hands many times and that is what makes this city so diversified in terms of architecture and design. In 1191, there were many structures which were used primarily for defence and others which were downright destroyed from the frequent assaults. We’ve added a cold blue filter to give this city a more modern look and its own unique personality – a post war atmosphere. Each city in the game will have its own filter so players will be able to tell them apart in a glimpse of an eye.

 

VP: Assassin’s Creed is a speculative fiction. By grounding a story in reality, you increase its credibility. Suspension of disbelief becomes easier because it’s happening in our world. You’re exploring cities that still exist today, encountering individuals whose names everyone knows and witnessing battles that really occurred. At the same time, because our setting is far removed in time – this is nearly 1,000 years ago – there’s plenty of freedom to tweak people’s personalities and motivations. It’s fun to explore the idea that something else was happening beneath the information gleaned from historical textbooks. 

VP: In Assassin’s Creed, players accept missions in which they will eliminate people on all sides of the conflict who are pushing to extend the war – there are several groups of people who have vested self-interests in the Crusade. It’s also important to note that historically the Assassins were only nominally Islamic. – quite different from that of the Crusaders or the Saracens and did not ally themselves with either side. Since they were a sort of mystic secret society almost nothing about their actions or cause can be confirmed. This historic ambiguity has allowed us to portray the Assassins as a forward thinking group with the single objective to stop the war.

 

NOX: How many people were involved in developing the rather distinctive storyline? 


VP: I would say that only two people worked on the story – the creative director and the scriptwriter. One of the truly amazing things, to me, about Ubisoft is that the executives have a lot of confidence in their teams and are willing to take creative risks. Assassin’s Creed is one of the biggest projects at Ubisoft and yet the creative direction was not driven by video games trends, it came from creative director Patrice Diselets and the creative team. Ubisoft Executives did challenge us on the potential and relevance of the concept several times but they always remained open to our input and ideas. In my opinion it’s this balance between creative freedom and market considerations that create the best products.



 

VP: We took the extra time to add some investigation missions in the game to increase the variety. In the console version, we had five different investigation types and we now have nine in total. We added the rooftop race challenge where the player needs to go meet an informer within a specific amount of time, the archer stealth assassination where you need to kill some archers to help your fellow assassins, the merchant stand destruction requires the player the break some merchant stands because those merchants have ties to Altair’s target, and finally, an escort challenge, where the player needs to securely escort a fellow assassin.

 

VP: Ah rumours, we heard so many in the past. Some were true, some weren’t. Only time will tell.

 

for the full version of this article, see NOX21