The latest iteration of Assassin’s Creed (entitled ‘ Unity ) looks to change things up a bit with both next-gen visual enhancements and the introduction of a co-op mode. Now, one exec explains why they’ve not tackled such an obvious addition until just recently.
Vincent Pontbriand (senior producer on the project) states that splitting a single player campaign into a coherent four-part harmony is “very complicated to do. Assassin’s Creed was always a single-player game to begin with. It took us three games to introduce PvP…That’s when we decided that co-op should be the next main focus but in order to do that we had to rebuild all of our systems to allow them to be replicated over a network and working online. So it took years of development to reproduce and redraft all of our sandbox features for a shared online experience.”
While Ubisoft’s reasons seem legit, some would call them more in a long line of excuses. Recently, the company was criticized for not delivering on their promise to include a female Assassin in ‘ Unity . After blaming the lack of resources and man-power to re-render key in-game elements to accommodate the new gender models, one former employee took to Twitter and called the claim complete BS.
The game will certainly be more technically advanced this go ‘round, as only the next-gen systems will be getting a release (no ports for the 360 or PS3 are currently planned). The game drops in October.