What Really Happened With Assassin's Creed 3 Development? (Possibly Inaccurate)
http://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/1vrude/so_what_really_happen...
Pretty much what I expected. Huge teams that weren't being properly coordinated, WAY too ambitious in terms of scope, and a new engine that was designed for next-gen/future PC's and was very inefficient on PS3/360.
Darby McDevitt responds: https://twitter.com/DarbyMcDevitt/status/425821365686788096 "Lots of falsehoods in that one. I don't doubt that was his impression of things, but he's getting big facts wrong."
This doesn't mean that it's entirely false, but it's important to remember that it's the perspective of one person who may have not had the context for decisions that were being made by higher-ups. Game dev can go wrong in many ways, It's no surprise that there were apparently even more factors.
How do you really unlock the origami crane mini-game?
From what I've heard, the development teams split after ACII. Half of it went on to complete Brotherhood and Revelations, and the other half went to start ACIII and the AnvilNext engine.
Very common in many sequels for video-games. Pokemon had that issue. After Diamond/Pearl, the team split. Half went to Platinum/HearGold/SoulSilver and the other half went to Black and White.
How do you really unlock the origami crane mini-game?
I think he was talking about the Pivots, which I guess were supposed to look like digital Origami.
Ves, that's what we knew already. The fact that teams split up and developed games in parallel doesn't mean their games are for sure doomed. AC4 for example turned out much better, and it was confirmed that it was being developed in parallel with two other AC projects.
This is more about the specific problems development faced, though they should be taken with a grain of salt.
Darby is going to be appearing on a podcast soon and mentioned that he might discuss the reddit post and clear up some things.
Darby is going to be appearing on a podcast soon and mentioned that he might discuss the reddit post and clear up some things.
I hope he'll just be honest about it and admit that lots of things were wrong with AC3. Just admit that mistakes were made and move on. Everyone makes mistakes. It happens, just learn from them. Please don't try to defend AC3 or Ubisoft at all costs. I can't take him seriously anymore if he does.
Any more info on when/where that podcast will happen?
This explains why a lot of the features were complete crap in the end. However, I hope Darby treats the AC3 team with respect instead of saying, "Yeah that was a flop", because hundreds of people were just doing their jobs and did the best they could with what was being asked of them. Yeah it wasn't a very good AC game, but we should hate the higher ups that make the last-minute decisions and not the programmers and designers.
Well yeah, he shouldn't be a dick about it and talk down to everyone who worked on AC3, I'm just saying it's fine to admit that AC3 went the wrong way.
Well yeah, he shouldn't be a dick about it and talk down to everyone who worked on AC3, I'm just saying it's fine to admit that AC3 went the wrong way.
But it didn't go the wrong way.
Simply put, the company as a whole was too ambitious with the things they added and some parts suffered from poor execution because of the time crunch to get it all in the game.
That doesn't mean the game went the wrong way. That means the higher ups had unrealistic expectations for what could be done with the time crunch they gave the team. Now if the team promised it could be done and didn't bring it up to the higher ups when it was clear things weren't going to be finished, that's different.
tl;dr - AC3 didn't go the wrong way, just tried to do too much with too little.
“Force has no place where there is need of skill." Herodotus
But it didn't go the wrong way.Simply put, the company as a whole was too ambitious with the things they added and some parts suffered from poor execution because of the time crunch to get it all in the game.
That doesn't mean the game went the wrong way. That means the higher ups had unrealistic expectations for what could be done with the time crunch they gave the team. Now if the team promised it could be done and didn't bring it up to the higher ups when it was clear things weren't going to be finished, that's different.
tl;dr - AC3 didn't go the wrong way, just tried to do too much with too little.
Hey Bro, I guess your thoughts seems to be too optimistic, but regret that I can not explain this in English, so I just briefly say a few words.
There are many essential problem in AC3's new engine, it is probably not more time to be able to improve or avoid (for me). Not to mention their design concept it just not conducive to the type of hard-core gamers.
There are many essential problem in AC3's new engine, it is probably not more time to be able to improve or avoid (for me). Not to mention their design concept it just not conducive to the type of hard-core gamers.
There was a lot more reason and opportunity to be stealthy in AC3 than in ACR.
There was a better story in AC3 than in ACR or ACB.
There was actual conflict between templar/assassin where the player wasn't sure who was right and who was wrong (it wasn't "LOL! Borgia bad. Ezio be a tank and kill everyone seamlessly and just take healing potion when hurt.")
To me, AC3 was a better game than both its predecessors from a gameplay standpoint and from a story standpoint.
They tried to open up a lot more than they had time to do (crafting, homestead, etc poorly executed), but implemented some stellar things, to me, in the gameplay: assassin recruit abilities, one button free running = freely movable camera on consoles to see what the hell you're doing, better weapon select menu with more tool variety for combat and stealth (they just weren't introduced well).
EDIT: There was a LOT of poorly executed things in the game that detract from all the well executed things for most people; it's a case of not seeing the forest because of the tres. But the global ideas of what they were doing, to me, was not the "wrong direction" as stated by someone above.
“Force has no place where there is need of skill." Herodotus
I know the problem was being to ambitious and having too much stuff for just so much time. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the attempts at introducing new stuff that they did in AC3, and some of those I genuinely liked, but a lot of them weren't executed well until AC4 in my opinion.
By saying AC3 went the wrong way I just mean that wrong decisions were made by the big guys in the top and they should have given the game more time. Maybe I should have stated it differently.
I know the problem was being to ambitious and having too much stuff for just so much time. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the attempts at introducing new stuff that they did in AC3, and some of those I genuinely liked, but a lot of them weren't executed well until AC4 in my opinion.
By saying AC3 went the wrong way I just mean that wrong decisions were made by the big guys in the top and they should have given the game more time. Maybe I should have stated it differently.
AHHH... okay.
I thought you meant that the game direction and changes went the wrong way. Like you said, many were better executed in BF, but I see what you were saying now.
“Force has no place where there is need of skill." Herodotus
Just saw this, I know this is old but I thought I'd throw this in here:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=43927063&postcount=97
Which goes along with some of this:
http://tcrf.net/Assassin%27s_Creed_III
MAGLX wrote:
There are many essential problem in AC3's new engine, it is probably not more time to be able to improve or avoid (for me). Not to mention their design concept it just not conducive to the type of hard-core gamers.There was a lot more reason and opportunity to be stealthy in AC3 than in ACR.
There was a better story in AC3 than in ACR or ACB.
There was actual conflict between templar/assassin where the player wasn't sure who was right and who was wrong (it wasn't "LOL! Borgia bad. Ezio be a tank and kill everyone seamlessly and just take healing potion when hurt.")To me, AC3 was a better game than both its predecessors from a gameplay standpoint and from a story standpoint.
Strangely enough, despite the fact that I found the story of ACIII to be riveting (as far as the over-arching Assassins v. Templars conflict), I really didn't find myself enjoying the game as much. I don't think it was Connor (who was rather dull, but whose naivety played very well into the "Which side is really good?" debate). I think some of it had to do with the plethora of scripted missions/assassinations, perhaps the overall size of the maps (let's be honest, as much as we like huge areas to explore, there was a LOT of time spent riding around from city to city) did it for me. ACIV's inclusion of fast travel points was probably the best addition to the game, bar none.
I think the important thing to note is that since we're here as fans of the series, the two games the majority of us seem to like the least from a strict game play standpoint (Revelations and ACIII), actually gave us the most background on the characters we play as or the debate as a whole (in the past). ACIV followed that up with amazing information into the present-day push to develop the technology allowing us to look into the past. All in all, Ubisoft's team of writers has provided interesting stories, if not always coupled with the best playing experience.
I'm excited for AC: Unity (I'm bringing that colon into play, screw it) to see what comes next. The next gen technology SHOULD allow for incredibly smooth game play and hopefully it's coupled with a continued story that makes us happy and keeps us thinking.