Ubisoft “Stripped out a lot of Mechanics and Systems” for AC3, but “Still Pushing the Maximum Possible Scope”

The outspoken creative director for Assassin’s Creed 3, Alex Hutchinson, recently shared a few additional details about Ubisoft’s upcoming action game, shedding light on the game’s length and overall scope.

Hutchinson told VG247 that AC3 is quite massive, and in order to keep the game from getting too convoluted from a gameplay perspective, they decided to remove a number of elements that were introduced in prior games of the series.

The game is huge, both in physical size, play time and in the amount of new gameplay we packed in. We stripped out a lot of mechanics and systems from previous games but I think we are still pushing the maximum possible scope.

There is only so much you can juggle in your mind simultaneously, and only so much variety you can add before it starts to feel random and not cohesive.

The motivation behind making this such a “huge” yet “cohesive” experience stems from the team’s desire to keep the player completion rate as high as possible. As such, the studio didn’t want to overdo it in length. “Also, we have a very high completion rate on the franchise, and if you make it too long you start to lose that, which would be a disaster for a game like ours where we really value the consistency and continuity of the universe,” he explained.

If you’re a bit worried that the game may not be long enough, don’t fret, as Hutchinson reinforced the fact that this game’s scope is nothing to scoff at, with the entire game world of Assassin’s Creed 3 being 1.5 times larger than the city of Rome in Brotherhood.

Assassin’s Creed 3 launches the last week of October for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

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