Significant Improvements in Assassin’s Creed 3 Made Possible by Annual Releases

Those familiar with the Assassin’s Creed franchise will likely agree that the past couple of games haven’t really aided in evolving the franchise all that much. As such, both Brotherhood and Revelations have been blamed for stretching Ezio’s story and the classic AC mechanics far too thin. While Ubi’s creative director Alex Hutchinson doesn’t deny this reality, he does make a case for why they were necessary, claiming that annual installments have helped provide the studio with the resources required to make AC3 the stellar game that it is.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Hutchinson explained the reasoning behind Ubisoft’s approach, saying:

The core team on this one has been working at it for almost three years, which is something you can almost never get in the industry these days – it’s too expensive, too risky.

So we need the other projects to support that kind of development – these big jumps.

When asked whether or not we’ll see another couple of annualized spin-offs tied to Connor following the release of Assassin’s Creed 3, Hutchinson added:

We also know players love new characters and radical changes so we’re still figuring a few things out. I don’t know. I think it would be kind of neat at some point to say ‘Connor is a character, he lived in this big epic game, that’s his story’, instead of trying to drag it out too much.

But then again, it took up 18 months in terms of casting actors, building 20 or 30 versions of the outfit… just working on all these things to get it right, so it’s not something you can do quickly.

Assassin’s Creed 3 is set to launch on October 30th for the PS3 and Xbox 360.