A former Ubisoft employee revealed that there were some last-minute additions to the first entry in the long-running Assassin’s Creed series right before it launched in 2007 due to a comment by a child.
The interesting look into the development of the first Assassin’s Creed was shared in a series of tweets by Charles Randall, who held the positions of team lead in A.I. fight systems and senior gameplay programmer during his years at Ubisoft.
In Assassin’s Creed, players are tasked with planning out assassinations, accompanied by other objectives. However, there are also “additional memories” that do not push forward the plot, made up of side missions that include hunting Templars and collecting flags.
Some of the side missions, apparently, were never meant to be in the game. However, a child said that the game was “boring,” and that “there was nothing to do in the game.” Randall initially said that it was the child of Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, but as Kotaku reported, he later said that he was not sure. All he knew was that it was feedback that they needed to quickly act upon.
Randall said that his team decided to add more side missions, but they had to build them from scratch within just five days, and the additional content should not contain bugs as their work will be “burned directly to disc and released to retail.”
Those five days, according to Randall, were “a blur,” but the team of several people was able to complete the task almost without any bugs. Almost, because one slipped through the cracks.
In Assassin’s Creed, there is a bug that prevents the completion of all Templar assassinations, stopping players from acquiring the full 1,000 gamer points. Randall explained that this was due to a Templar that would despawn if approached from the wrong direction. The Templar will no longer spawn, but players will not get credit for the kill.
Randall, however, clarified that the polarizing tailing missions, in which players had to follow a target without being spotted, was not part of the last-minute additions.
Assassin’s Creed franchise
Assassin’s Creed went on to spawn a popular franchise, with its latest entry, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, set to take players into the Viking era, particularly during the Viking invasions of England that started near the end of the 8th century. The game immediately drew comparisons with 2018’s God of War, but narrative director Darby McDevitt is not worried as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will lean into the historical aspect of the period.
