While it might initially appear very similar, we couldn’t help but be surprised and intrigued by the new direction that the underlying gameplay in Assassin’s Creed Origins is taking. Transforming into an action RPG might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it leads to a world that feels more diverse, more actively engaging and interesting to explore. Also, you can pet the cats.
We sat down to speak to Jean Guesdon, Creative Director, about the series’ 10th anniversary, finding a new direction for the series and why you can’t pet more animals in the game.
TSA: It’s an important milestone year for Assassin’s Creed. Not only are you coming back from a hiatus, but it’s also the 10th anniversary, which I somehow managed to forget! What does that mean to you and the team?
Jean Guesdon: I think it’s really important, because I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the franchise for eleven years now and so when we look back to the path we took, the number of games and the size of the community, the importance of the franchise in the gaming industry, and more than that now with the movie, the comics and novels, it’s really important for us to nail it with this game.
Having this extra year also helped us reach this level of quality and ambition. We really wanted to send that signal that ten years after Assassin’s Creed, not only is it still alive, but it’s full of innovation, it’s very modern and fully refreshed.
TSA: One of the things that I think people might gloss over quite easily is that while it still looks and feels like Assassin’s Creed, behind the scenes there’s been a lot of changes so it’s more RPG like. Where did this decision come from to head down this path?
Jean: It might look similar when you watch someone playing, but when you play yourself, it feels different because of the new combat and this new RPG direction, including the narrative structure and the quests. Basically, the core idea behind that was that we wanted to bring more freedom to the players. We felt that Assassin’s Creed was a bit too rigid and a bit too static and we were doing too much handholding.
So we really put in a lot of effort and work to make sure that people will be the real owner of their experience. We’re freeing them on the narrative side with multiple quests that they can manage, the fighting is much more reactive and dynamic, so they can express themselves and decide what kind of players they are, and at every single level we pushed so that players are responsible for their own experience.
TSA: Assassin’s Creed pioneered what ended up being the kind of stereotypical Ubisoft open world game, but you’ve moved on as a company and you can see that in this game as well, where you no longer need to climb towers to unlock the world. Do you still see Assassin’s Creed as being at the forefront of Ubisoft’s open world games? Or is it seen as more of an effort across the whole company to evolve this form?
Jean: You know, we always look what others are doing, but I think every team is focussed on what’s best for their game. So with Assassin’s Creed Origins, we really believed in creating an entire country and making it alive like never before. This is why, for example, we totally reworked the AI framework to make the AI persistent, so the world is really living far away from the player.
As soon as you take your eagle you realise this is true. There’s no limits, so you can go and fly across the entire world…
TSA: Really? I haven’t been able to test this theory yet…
Jean: I promise you! [laughs] You can fly to the opposite side of the world and find, I don’t know, a lion let’s say, tag it and switch back to Bayek, and you’ll have this character marked. This is something that we pushed because we think it’s something that will bring us more opportunities in the future and more potential. We’re only scratching the surface today of what the systems can bring to the experience.
TSA: On the topic of having this living open world, there’s one line of thought that the consoles that we have currently just didn’t have the CPU power to handle this kind of generational leap in Assassin’s Creed Unity, which tried to really push what the open world could do with crowds and a living city. Have you found a new way and a new direction to go for Origins?
Jean: Yes, actually. What we did mostly was that the life in previous AC games were what we called ‘crowd stations’, so when you see musicians in the street, sellers, etc. they were actually little cinematics bubbles that were hand placed. So whatever time of day you’d come, they’d perform the exact same thing, and if you happened to break their position, then they would just be released into the crowd.
This time, when we say that all NPCs are real AI, we mean that all living beings are AI! So animals, civilians, etc. It means that a street musician will go to sleep at night and then in the morning will come back to play. You can feel this difference because they don’t forget who they are; if you break their situation again, he will remember that he’s a musician and will go back to play music.
It sounds like theory when explained like that, but when you play it, you feel it.
TSA: The Discovery Tour By Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt – which is a hell of a title – I think that’s a really fascinating direction to take. What was it that made you think you want to do an educational addendum to Origins?
Jean: You know, that’s something we were playing with for a long time really. We felt like, coming back to the 10th anniversary, this was the perfect moment to send a message to the world that the work we’re doing when creating these lost and forgotten worlds is valid and has a real value, but also that video games and interactive 3D open world might be a good entry point to real academic knownledge.
The idea here is that the quality of the work we’re putting in to recreate these worlds is worth sharing. Sharing is at the core of it, so that young kids can access it, some people that might not be gamers deserve the opportunity to learn more and be in this world.
TSA: And finally, why can’t I pet more of the animals in this game? I want to be able to pet the cows, I want to actively go and pet this cat…
Jean: You know, the cats you can.
TSA: Ah, but it’s a kind of idle animation I’m told – I haven’t tried it just yet – but I can’t pet the dogs, and I want to know why!
Jean: We have to make choices. It would have been our pleasure, but in the end you see the amount of work we’ve done to create this game. If you think of that, we had to redo all the horses and navigation, we increased the human navigation on cliffs and under water; we’ve pushed so many techs, at some point you have to stop.
TSA: Well, I mean you already have the animal petting technology from Far Cry Primal, for example. Couldn’t you have borrowed that?
Jean: [laughs] Well, you can pet Senu and you can give her something to eat.
Thanks to Jean for sitting down to chat about Assassin’s Creed Origins, and the manner in which he answered our tough closing questions. Catch our preview of Origins here and pop the kettle on and get a cup of tea to sit down and watch a good 10 minutes of cat petting, eagle stroking and flaming hippos – none of these are euphemisms.
