Historic hits

>> Ubisoft Montreal’s blockbuster video game Assassin’s Creed enters the future of
gaming by travelling to the past

DEATH TO CRUSADERS! Altair in action

“THE FLYING ONE”: Altair on the move

by ERIK LEIJON

On Sept. 27, Microsoft’s Halo 3 celebrated the highest grossing opening day in the history of entertainment, earning $170-million in North America (and a total of $300-million in the first week). Ubisoft Montreal’s most ambitious project ever, the M-rated Assassin’s Creed, finally hits stores on Nov. 15 in Canada, and although it’s unlikely the game will hit those gaudy numbers, history may consider Ubisoft Montreal’s epic historical action game, starring a mysterious assassin during the Third Crusade, as the true moment when video games leapt into the next generation.

In 2006, total revenue for the Canadian video game industry exceeded $1-billion for the first time, and the annual re-writing of the history books owes a great deal to Ubisoft Montreal. Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond and creative director Patrice Desilets were given a mandate four years ago to redefine the action game for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 consoles (which were still prototypes back then). Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six, two of their best known franchises, were based on Tom Clancy novels, and Ubi’s Prince of Persia was based on the Jordan Mechner original from 1989, so the team were in the unique position of building something from scratch—for technologically advanced gaming systems they hadn’t seen before.

Old rules crumble

“What is the promise of next-gen (gaming systems)?” asks Raymond, a Montreal native who came to Ubisoft Montreal from Electronic Arts after producing the Sims Online with famed game creator Will Wright. “We wanted to get rid of old game rules that didn’t make any sense.”

Adds Desilets, “We wanted to change the way games are controlled. Players are used to one way of playing, so here they have to unlearn what they know.”

To Desilets, also from Montreal and one of the studio’s first employees, game rules meant limitations in interactivity that gamers had grown used to simply because the technology wasn’t good enough. While demonstrating the game, he says he wanted Assassin’s Creed players to get by on common sense rather than memorizing moves. As he tries to enter the gated city of Damascus circa 1191, he’s exploring his options to get past the guards. “I could blend in with those monks over there, I could climb over the wall, or I could distract the guards,” he says as he discreetly stabs a peasant in the back. Sure enough, the four guards walk over to see what had happened, while Altair (meaning “The Flying One”) slowly slips past them and into the city.

Naturally, new game systems mean advanced graphics and lifelike animation. The very nimble Altair can climb up the side of every building, and as he does, each of his fingers move independently as he grips the ledges. Restricting where gamers could go was another old game rule the development team—which started at around 25 in the concept phase and eventually grew to 158—wanted to eliminate. “We didn’t like how you could climb a certain spot because it’s coloured green and an identical looking spot that’s a different colour couldn’t be climbed,” says Raymond.

Desilets says making every area of the cities accessible will likely change the way gamers think in the future. “Basically (in the past) we expected gamers to specifically look for what the designers put in, but here, we’re giving you the tools and you become the co-creator of the experience, because there’s no path whatsoever to follow.”

The road to Damascus

In Assassin’s Creed, there are really two main characters: Altair the assassin, and the architecture. When Ubisoft Montreal was working on the shooting game Rainbow Six: Vegas, they had an opportunity to visit Sin City and take photos. For Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus during the Third Crusade, they worked with consultants Dr. David Nicolle from Oxford University and Dr. Paul Cobb, who consulted on the 2005 Ridley Scott movie Kingdom of Heaven. The team collected present day and historical pictures, and brushed up on their Crusades history as to recreate the cities as accurately as possible—literally placing the buildings where they were in 1191.

“We had to change a couple of details,” Raymond says. “The game’s Damascus has a similar layout to the real city, except for this one boulevard that cuts across the middle, and for gameplay reasons, that wasn’t interesting for us because we wanted to have more chases through winding corners.”

Learning about that epoch also proved useful in building the artificial intelligence for the non-player characters (NPC), meaning non-human controlled characters. The next generation of video game consoles allow for hundreds of individual NPCs, and how Altair deals with them is pivotal to succeeding in his missions. For instance, pushing strangers as he runs through a busy market will only attract unwanted attention. Altair has the ability to blend in with the crowd too, making himself virtually invisible.

Similar to how the prince from Prince of Persia was based on a puma, Desilets looked to another predator for the design of Altair. “We had this idea of having a bird of prey character. Someone who’s very quiet. But suddenly he swoops in and kills his man, and quickly he exits,” he says. Altair’s signature move is to dive from a rooftop into a haystack below, escaping unharmed. Birds on the roof ledges clue him in as to where to jump.

Sci-fi goes medieval

Part of the freedom of running around also means completing the missions, including the nine main assassinations of non-fictional characters, in any order you please. And just as noticeable as the ancient buildings will be the science-fiction menu bars and strange computer typeface that surround the characters. Desilets and Raymond have kept the game’s sci-fi leanings under wraps, but say all will be revealed within the first five minutes of playing.

On Nov. 15, Desilets and Raymond will both be eagerly reading the reviews from the world’s most influential gaming Web sites. It may seem weird for them to be so interested in what others think, but in the young gaming industry, a high aggregate ranking from Metacritic or Gamerankings.com means a chance to make a sequel, branch off into other media and catch the eyes of stingy gamers.

“Most people can only afford a few games a year,” Desilets says. “For them, they decide what they’re going to play based on good reviews. It’s not like a CD that’s $10—they’re paying $65 for a game. We were in charge of making an AAA title and that means a 90 per cent average [critics’] score.”