A veteran of Ubisoft Montreal, beginning as a level designer on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown and later serving as one of a team of designers on the original Assassin's Creed, Plourde oversaw the design of Assassin's Creed II and was instrumental in the decisions to add many of the things which changed the face of the series. In this interview we discuss with Plourde his aims for the game, the changes made from the original, and the challenges he faced working on a project which at one point consumed the efforts of over three hundred developers. Oh, and a little detail about Desmond's less than interactive roots.
What was the aim for Assassin's Creed II?
More adventure. I wanted to create something that not only had a huge scale but that felt like a world filled with lots of good things. And that the world featured a story that would be really the spinal cord of the experience.
Another important thing was to continue making sure that in terms of play, everybody would be able to master the game. That's one thing that I found was a pleasure in the first game. It wasn't an environment where if you couldn't do things, you felt stuck, you were instead free to drive the experience. Of course, you could still be really good at Assassin's Creed, because the better you knew the system the more it offered. That's something I had to work on for the sequel, to maintain that kind of rewarding depth to sustain the fun over twenty or so hours of play, yet is something that is accessible enough that everybody can pick it up and enjoy the same thing as somebody that's really skilled at the game.
I think we nailed it, particularly with the different structure, because we're still giving the player new abilities by about 85 percent of the way through the game, and I think that really helps that backbone of the story, because as Ezio is told he's become a master assassin you yourself should feel like you've become a master assassin.
The original Assassin's Creed was accessible, but it wasn't interesting. You felt very limited in the things you could do.
I think we struggled finding the identity of Assassin's Creed in the first game. There, we wanted to push all the boundaries possible. There was some success and some failure. So for the second one, we took what was successful and the changes were clearly needs stated by players. Our development was more focused. We didn't shoot in the dark; we had a little flashlight that would pinpoint what we needed. I think Assassin's Creed II is really what Assassin's Creed is.
Was it hard to expand on the limited base of the first Assassin's Creed for the sequel?
No. It was actually easier because we redeveloped the game so the missions we could create were based around the core design. In the first one, missions and quests were actually "mini-games" that were developed as little kits; if you'd select a mission the engine would place all of the AI, the special cameras, and so on, which took a lot of work. In fact, we only had three types of mission for the majority of development of the first game, and we just had to squeeze another one in at the last minute. It helped, but it didn't solve a lot of the problems, which were really at the core of the game's structure.
Now, the challenge is more integrated in the world, because we realised that pre-writing these stories in the world is the core of the experience; making sure there were these elements in the world that fit how the player think the world would work. So now if you launch an assassination mission, maybe the engine spawns the target, but otherwise, the challenge — the preventative elements such as the guards — are designed into the game world.
The original's world did feel very static — this time, did you choose to design the world for the game rather than vice versa?
Well, yes. We spent a lot of time on that. In the first one it was more about getting the technology right; with the first one just getting so many NPCs on the screen was impressive. It was maybe a little shallow, but there were a lot of systems running in the background, systems which were just as impressive, but which weren't well communicated. Like the town criers that knew to call out when you were close, but had no point other than to create noise. What we wanted to do was to incorporate them in the design, so we created stores, for example, where the store owners scream like the town criers, but they're not just adding noise, but to attract you to shop there. And when we added shops we needed to add weapons to buy, and an economy... There is this little loop of feedback, reward. The town criers, for example, now there's a notoriety system where if you create chaos they help inform the guards, but you can bribe them so they'll say you're not there.
Do you have to prototype these systems before you can fit them into the larger game systems?
Well, before the project started we did a couple of small prototypes of crowds blending, but as we go forward we prototype everything during our general iteration of the project, and achieve the same things we would at the smaller scale, though prototyping is good for testing ideas at the earliest stages.