Ubisoft made quite a splash during Sony’s E3 press conference when they debuted naval warfare for Assassin’s Creed 3. While ship battles won’t necessarily serve as the fundamental backbone of Connor’s adventure, that doesn’t mean these sequences won’t be pivotal in the overall game experience.
Speaking with OPM, AC3 creative director Alex Hutchinson emphasized the importance of naval battles not only within the context of the game, but also the overarching period of the American Revolution.
We thought, ‘What is it about this period that makes it special?’, and it just came up again and again in the history that the navy was such a big part of it.
It’s how you got to America. It’s how imported goods got to America. It was a key factor in dictating the outcome of the Revolution itself. All of these things kept telling us that this was a big deal, and you couldn’t do the Revolution justice without the sea.
Hutchinson went on to explain how this also adds a new layer of gameplay never before seen in a third-person action game.
No one had really done a third-person action-adventure sailing game before. You’re controlling navigation and combat at the same time. You can walk around your boat, but once you take the wheel you’re steering the boat almost the same as you would in any vehicle in the game.
At the same time, you’re ordering your crew to fire different weapons, whether it’s round shot to sink the boats or chain shot to take out masts. The fun of it is juggling those things.
Look for Assassin’s Creed 3 when it hits store shelves October 30th.
