He believes the first is strong because of ”a bunch of stories” you can tell from inside your own head. The player defined the adventure, where the sequel dictated it to us by comparison.
It allowed many emergent moments in the game world on which sandbox style action games like Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto thrive. The first gave ‘more freedom’.
”I like the first Assassin’s Creed because it’s the purest one,” Patrice Désilets told Edge. ”There’s a bunch of stories that you can have, but it’s all in your head. You have to create your own adventures. Whereas in Assassin’s Creed II, we created the adventures for you and you’re following them.” The reins were taken from us.
”For me, the first one is an amazing toy. The second one is the real game with rules and missions and it’s really precise. But personally I like the poetry of the first one. It’s pure.”
Instalments after the original started restricting player movement in the world by keeping us ‘caged’ to one city at a time for story reasons, which choked emergent creativity. In fact many would never discover some of Assassin’s Creed’s little gems out in the world because of the freedoms afforded the player.
”Out in the kingdom, with your horse, there are so many places with little setups with Crusaders where you can tell a story,” he continued. ”When you get close to Damascus, there’s a guy on a stage and he has 35 soldiers in front of him. If you kill him, they all chase you. I played that and it became my little story.”
”With Assassin’s Creed, our problem was we never actually asked anyone to do it. Most of the players just pass by those setups. But in Assassin’s Creed II, we had a mission for all of them.”
These remarks from Patrice Desilets, now working at THQ, flies in the face of the general consensus from critics which tended to underline the very repetitive nature of the original. Whereas Assassin’s Creed II was generally hailed as a huge leap forward giving a more concise narrative and far greater variety in gameplay.
Assassin’s Creed III releases on Xbox 360 and PS3 October 30th in the US, 31st in EU and on PC later.
