Ubisoft pledges that Assassin’s Creed Syndicate has taken great pains to recreate Victorian London, at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution.
As a brief history lesson, the Industrial Revolution was a turning point in human history, when the development of new manufacturing processes caused it to overtake traditional handmade methods. Advances in producing iron, using water and steam power, the switch from wood to coal, and the coming dominance of textiles.
This change would go on to raise the standard of living of the world at large, and Victorian Britain was at the forefront of it all. However, this change did not come without much hardship, and it was this aspect that Ubisoft sought to recreate.
Ubisoft thought of the world depicted in Charles Dickens’ novels, with villains like Fagin, Scrooge, and Bill Sikes. They were also cognizant that this era created Jack The Ripper, but were also attentive to sensitivities the setting could create.
Ubisoft say they researched Sikhs, for example, perhaps noting the first Sikh settlements arrived in Britain after Dalip Singh, the last Maharajah of the Sikh empire, settled in Britain around this time. Ubisoft also took great pains studying London’s architecture, in many ways like how they researched Paris for the previous game, Assassin’s Creed Unity.
Like Paris in Assassin’s Creed Unity, much of London will be modified to fit the parkour and other game elements of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. In the end, creative director Marc-Alexis Cote wanted to share this takeaway:
We work with world class historians and linguists to help us get things just right.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will be released on October 23, 2015 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and Q4 2015 for Microsoft Windows.
