Assassin's Creed (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  Assassin's Creed, the 2007 action-adventure game from Ubisoft Montreal, almost shipped with only its main assassination missions. About five days before the team was due to send the final version off for mass production, their CEO contacted them. His son had played the game and found it boring. According to lead AI developer Charles Randall, the team spent the next five days rushing in collecting side quests and making sure they were free of bugs. A few noted bugs slipped through, but the deadline held.

  The game that came out of that scramble began as something very different. How did a follow-up to a Persian prince adventure turn into a story about a medieval killer? Why does a tale set in the Holy Land need a machine at all? And how do you build historical cities that players can climb almost anywhere? The answers begin years earlier, with a different game and a different hero.

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• 2. From Prince to Assassin

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  In January 2004, Patrice Désilets began work on the follow-up to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which he had completed near the end of 2003. The plan was a PlayStation 2 game with the same linear approach as its predecessor. By September 2004, news of the next-generation consoles had his team considering something larger. They wondered whether the acrobatic gameplay could stretch into an open world.

  Désilets did not want another prince simply waiting for his reign to start. He wanted a lead who strove to become a king. A university book on secret societies, with early material on the Order of Assassins, showed him the answer. His hero could be the second-highest Assassin, hungry to lead the group. The project took the working title Prince of Persia: Assassin. It drew on the life of Hassan-i Sabbah and leaned heavily on Vladimir Bartol's novel Alamut.

  All-white robes and a red belt were the look that Alamut and other historical works suggested. The team still had to invent the finer details of the outfit. One of the first concept sketches, drawn by animator Khai Nguyen, hinted at a bird of prey, and the idea resonated. The hero became Altaïr, which means bird of prey in Arabic, and eagle imagery spread through the Assassins. The artist gave him a rough edge by borrowing from Storm Shadow, a skilled hero from G.I. Joe. Console hardware could not render long flowing robes. So the team shortened the robe and gave it a feathered look that echoed the eagle.

  Hay piles show how far the team bent reality for fun. Leaps of faith from high vantage points into hay, and hiding from guards in hay, were ideas borrowed from Hollywood films. Désilets noticed that Alamut described the Assassins doing similar things. The parkour was meant to look believable, but realism gave way to gameplay value. Players could pull off maneuvers that would seem impossible in real life.

  From late 2005 to early 2006, after nearly two years of work, the concept still starred a prince. The computer controlled him, and the player guided an Assassin who served as his bodyguard and rescued him from trouble. Ubisoft's management wanted another Prince of Persia game and disliked releasing one where the prince was not the lead. The developers answered that the new console generation made a fresh intellectual property possible.

  Near the 2006 Game Developers Conference, Ubisoft's marketing team suggested the name Assassin's Creed. Désilets saw that it fit the themes already in play, including the Assassins' creed that "nothing is true; everything is permitted". The prince was dropped, and the Assassin became the only playable hero. The finished game would cost $15 million to $20 million and four years of work, with another $10 million set aside for marketing.

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• 3. A Machine for Memories

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  Philippe Morin proposed the object that both the Assassins and the Templars would fight over: the Apple of Eden. The team first found it funny that everyone would battle for an apple. Research changed their minds. Many medieval paintings showed rulers holding a sphere like the globus cruciger, a symbol of power and control. An artifact with that name suited the idea.

  Once the team chose to focus on the Assassins, a bigger problem appeared. The player would visit several cities and might relive assassinations from a thousand years of history, including that of John F. Kennedy. That meant some kind of time travel.

  Désilets had seen a program on DNA and human history, and it gave him an idea. If DNA could store human memories, a machine could read them. That machine, the Animus, could move the player between times and places and explain parts of the interface. He saw a parallel with The Sands of Time, where the whole game is a story told by the Prince. A death there counts as a mistelling, so the player may back up and retry.

  Ubisoft's marketing was not keen on the Animus. It feared players would be confused and disappointed that the game was not a truly medieval experience. So the first trailer, shown at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo, leaned heavily on medieval elements. Later marketing materials, closer to release, hinted more directly at the science fiction. On the 28th of September 2006, producer Jade Raymond told IGN that Altaïr is "a medieval hitman with a mysterious past" and not a time traveller.

  In an IGN interview on the 13th of December 2006, actor Kristen Bell described the premise as genetic memory and a corporation hunting for the descendant of an assassin. Bell offered an analogy. She asked, "how does a baby bird know to eat a worm, as opposed to a cockroach, if its parents don't show it?"

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• 4. Building the Holy Land

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  A team of 20 at Ubisoft Montreal started by stretching the systems of Prince of Persia across an open world. A new engine called Scimitar was built to support it, but that took about two years. In the meantime, the team worked on the Sands of Time engine. Scimitar was later renamed AnvilNext, and it powered most of the following Assassin's Creed games and other Ubisoft titles.

  Programmer Richard Dumas and animator Alex Drouin did much of the work smoothing wall-climbing and other animations. They had done the same job on Sands of Time. Level designers and artists recreating historical structures worked together so that nearly every building could be climbed while still looking true to its era. The urge to give players maximum freedom traced back to the success of the Grand Theft Auto series.

  Except for special buildings, the cities were assembled like Lego bricks. A second pass smoothed their shapes to help pathfinding and other parts of the enemy artificial intelligence. Real cities of the period had landmark towers, and the developers placed viewpoint towers in the map as points of interest. Climbing one reveals part of the map. To guide players without removing choice, designers sketched the basics of a mission as simple animations in Adobe Flash, then built levels around them.

  On PlayStation 2 hardware, The Sands of Time could show at most eight characters on screen. The next-generation hardware allowed up to 120 people. Désilets had wanted large crowds since that earlier project, because hardware had limited them then.

  The fundamentals of gameplay were finished within nine to twelve months. Another year went into improving them before the game was presented to Ubisoft's executives in Paris. Jade Raymond joined in late 2004 as producer, helping with the team's growth and direction. After the 2006 E3 presentation and the name change, the team swelled to as many as 150 people. Newcomers included staff who had just finished Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and former employees let go from Gameloft, a publisher owned by Ubisoft co-founder Michel Guillemot.

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• 5. Hiding in Plain Sight

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  Three cities wait beyond the Brotherhood's headquarters at Masyaf: Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Altaïr rides across the Holy Land, known as the Kingdom, to reach each one. In every city a Brotherhood agent offers a safe house and only minimal knowledge about the target. Before any killing, the player must finish reconnaissance, such as eavesdropping, interrogation, pickpocketing, or tasks for informers and fellow Assassins. After each assassination, Altaïr returns to the Brotherhood for a better weapon or upgrade. The player chooses the order of the targets. Side objectives include climbing towers to map a city and rescuing citizens harassed by guards.

  A small Social Status Icon shows how noticeable Altaïr is and how alert the area has become. Actions fall into two profiles. Low-profile actions let him blend into crowds, walk past citizens, and perform other non-threatening tasks that lower suspicion. His retractable hidden blade can also carry out a quiet assassination. High-profile actions, such as running, scaling buildings, and attacking, may raise the local awareness level. At high alert, crowds scatter and guards give chase.

  This is social stealth, the use of crowds and surroundings to hide. To escape, the player breaks the guards' line of sight and finds a haystack or a rooftop garden. Another option is to blend in with citizens sitting on benches or wandering scholars. A player who cannot escape can fight back with counter-based swordplay.

  Désilets came from an acting background. He wanted the hero to feel like a puppet whose parts the player controls, so that he would appear more human. The two profiles partly express the character's emotions, and they let the player keep control during cutscenes.

  Health is called synchronization, the match between Desmond and Altaïr's memories. An injury counts as a deviation from what actually happened rather than bodily harm. If synchronization is lost, the memory restarts at the last checkpoint. When the bar is full, Eagle Vision highlights allies in blue, foes in red, neutral people in white, and the assassination target in gold. Because a computer renders the memories, glitches can appear. They may help identify targets or, if the player reacts fast, change the viewpoint during scripted scenes. At certain moments the story pulls the player out of the Animus to control Desmond, but only inside a small laboratory.

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• 6. Nine Targets

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  In 2012, bartender Desmond Miles, voiced by Nolan North, is kidnapped by agents of Abstergo Industries and taken to its headquarters in Rome. Abstergo is described as the world's largest pharmaceutical conglomerate. Dr. Warren Vidic, voiced by Philip Proctor, and his assistant Lucy Stillman, played by Kristen Bell, force Desmond into the Animus. The machine turns his ancestors' genetic memories into a simulated reality. Vidic sends him to the early years of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad. Actor Philip Shahbaz voices Altaïr, whose face is modelled on Francisco Randez, a Montréal model.

  In 1191, during the Third Crusade, Altaïr and two fellow Assassins ride to Solomon's Temple. They are the brothers Malik and Kadar Al-Sayf, and their task is to take the Apple of Eden from the Templars. Blinded by arrogance, Altaïr botches the mission, and Kadar dies. Malik escapes with the Apple. Altaïr partly redeems himself by fighting off a Templar attack on Masyaf, but his mentor Al Mualim demotes him anyway.

  Al Mualim, voiced by Peter Renaday, is roughly based on Rashid ad-Din Sinan. In 1191, Sinan led the Syrian branch of the Hashshashin in the Nizari Ismaili state. His nickname was "The Old Man of the Mountain". Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles later calls the character Sinan.

  To win back his rank, Altaïr must kill nine people. Tamir is an arms merchant in Damascus who sells weapons to both Crusaders and Saracens. Garnier de Nablus leads the Knights Hospitalier and experiments on patients at his hospital in Acre. Talal runs a gang of slavers in Jerusalem. Majd Addin, based on Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, rules Jerusalem through fear and public executions. Jubair al Hakim is a scholar who seizes and destroys written knowledge in Damascus. Robert de Sablé is Grand Master of the Templars. Abu'l Nuquod, William V, Marquess of Montferrat, and Master Sibrand complete the nine.

  As Altaïr works down the list, he learns that all nine are Templars who conspired to retrieve the Apple. The Apple is a relic of a long-forgotten civilization said to hold god-like powers. The Templars hoped to use it to conquer the Holy Land in the name of peace, with each member preparing the population in a specific way. Altaïr grows humbler and wiser, questions Al Mualim's orders, and makes amends with Malik.

  During his attempt on Robert, Altaïr meets a decoy, a Templar named Maria Thorpe, voiced by Eleanor Noble. She reveals that Robert expected an Assassin attack and has gone to negotiate an alliance between Crusaders and Saracens against the Assassins. Altaïr spares her and confronts Robert in the camp of King Richard I. Unsure whom to believe, Richard proposes a duel, remarking that God will decide the victor. Altaïr mortally wounds Robert, who names Al Mualim as the final conspirator. Al Mualim had betrayed Assassins and Templars alike to get the Apple.

  Back at Masyaf, Al Mualim has used the Apple to enthrall the population. His plan is to end the Crusade and all conflict by imposing order. With Malik and several Assassins brought as backup, Altaïr storms the citadel. In the gardens he resists the Apple's powers and kills his mentor. He tries to destroy the artifact, but instead it reveals a map showing the locations of countless other Pieces of Eden around the world.

  In the present, modern-day Assassins attack the Abstergo facility to rescue Desmond, and most of them are killed. Vidic then reveals that Abstergo is a front for the modern-day Templars, who are hunting the remaining Pieces of Eden. His superiors order Desmond killed, but Lucy, who is implied to be an Assassin mole, persuades them to keep him alive for more testing. Alone in his room, Desmond finds strange drawings in blood that describe an upcoming catastrophic event.

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• 7. Score and Release

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  Jesper Kyd composed the musical score in 2007. Producer Jade Raymond explained that "we wanted the score to capture the gruesome atmosphere of medieval warfare but also be edgy and contemporary." Six tracks were offered online to buyers of the game, who entered a password on the Ubisoft website. The released tracks feature an archaic Latin chorus and dark orchestral music. One of them, "Meditation Begins", is a kind of Saltarello with an ominous ambient feel and men whispering in Latin.

  On the 10th of July 2007, Microsoft's E3 press conference showed a demo set in Jerusalem. It demonstrated improved crowd mechanics, a chase system for pursuing a fleeing target, and deeper parkour. It was the first time Altaïr was heard speaking. A longer video followed on the 11th of July 2007, including Altaïr trying to escape after assassinating Talal.

  The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions reached North America on the 13th of November 2007. Europe followed on the 16th of November, and Australia and New Zealand on the 21st of November. In April 2008, it became public that the game would be sold digitally through Valve's Steam. The PC version arrived in North America on the 8th of April 2008 as the Director's Cut Edition. It added four mission types missing from the console versions: archer assassination, a rooftop race challenge, a merchant stand destruction challenge, and an escort challenge.

  A pirated copy had circulated since late February 2008. Ubisoft had deliberately placed a bug in the pre-release version to crash the game unpredictably and block completion. Players found extra files online to get around it. The pirated version was among the most popular titles for piracy in the first week of March 2008. Ubisoft believed this caused "irreparable harm" and low retail sales.

  The numbers behind that claim were stark. NPD Group reported 40,000 copies of the PC version sold in the United States in July, while Ubisoft said more than 700,000 copies were illegally downloaded. In July 2008, Ubisoft sued the disc manufacturer Optical Experts Manufacturing. It suspected the company was the source of the leak, citing poor security that let an employee leave with a copy. A copy-protection-free version was later made by GOG.com, a store owned by CD Projekt.

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• 8. Reception and Sequels

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  Metacritic recorded "generally favorable" reviews for Assassin's Creed. Famitsu scored the Xbox 360 version 36 out of 40, with four nines, and the PlayStation 3 version 37, with scores of 10, 8, 9, and 10. It praised the story, presentation, and acrobatics, but criticized the one-button combat, map layout, and camera problems. Game Informer gave the game 9.5 out of 10 for its control scheme, replay value, and story, though it found the information-gathering missions repetitive. GamesRadar and PlayStation: The Official Magazine each awarded a 10 out of 10.

  Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot gave it 9 out of 10, writing that "the greatest joy comes from the smallest details". Others were cooler. Hilary Goldstein of IGN gave it 7.5 out of 10, blaming a bad story, repetitive gameplay, and poor AI. Even so, he admired the combat animations, the climbing, and how closely Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus matched their real counterparts. Eurogamer said the gameplay never evolves and becomes quite amazingly repetitive.

  At the 2006 E3, Game Critics named it Best Action/Adventure Game, and IGN gave it several awards, including PS3 Game of the Show. GameSpot, GameSpy, GameTrailers, and 1UP.com also honored it there. At the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, it won for animation. Game Informer later placed it at number 143 on its list of the top 200 games of all time.

  Ubisoft said sales "greatly outstripped" its expectations. In the United Kingdom, the game debuted at number one, knocking Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare from the top. The Xbox 360 claimed 67% of the game's total sales there. Each console version earned a platinum award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, which marks at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. On the 16th of April 2009, Ubisoft revealed that the game had sold 8 million copies.

  Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles, a prequel developed by Gameloft, reached the Nintendo DS on the 5th of February 2008. A port followed on the 23rd of April 2009 for the iPhone, the iPod Touch, Java ME, and the Palm Pre. Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines came in 2009. Both spin-offs drop the modern-day story and follow only Altaïr.

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