Interview with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag’s Director, Ashraf Ismail

Normally when I play Assassin’s Creed my favorite thing to do is run around and assassinate people (shocking, I know). But the world is so immersive… in the demo all I wanted to do was go explore and check out the harpooning missions. Speaking of which, as we pointed out earlier the harpooning mission is homage to the Del Lago boss fight from Resident Evil 4. Can we expect to see many more easter eggs like that?

You’re the first to actually pick up on that, it was a reference when talking about harpooning early on because we loved it. We did look at a lot of games, we looked at what worked and what didn’t and what people loved and why they loved it, so we use a lot of references. Other easter eggs? The game has a lot of content, so for sure there are easter eggs, there are a lot of really neat things to find, but I’m not going to ruin any of them. But you don’t have to worry, there is lot of stuff. 

You said in the panel that Edward was Edward, and in that respect you knew who he was as a character, but at the time were you planning him Conner’s grandfather and have a connection to the Kenway family?

Yes. When I say he was with the Kenway family I mean it was Edward, Haythem, Conner. The real definition of who they were and the details of their life wasn’t really that clear, but we had this idea that there was this family, the Kenways , and they did something really important in the feud between the templars and assassins and that were going to tell the story of these three guys. We knew that a good time ago, but you know Edward, what he looks like, what actually happened in his life… we kind of had an idea of when he was going to die, that he was a pirate, but that was about it. So it was just a basic skeleton of his family and that Haythem was a templar, which was something that we called out early. The Native American aspect, I’m not sure where that came from, but it was always those three guys. 

Each character in the Assassin’s Creed series has a distinct trait. Ezio is charmingly cocky, Altair is extremely serious, Conner is really aggressive… how is Edward? Pirates have a completely different attitude than what we have seen before in the series.

So Edward, we always describe him as being brash and selfish. He is charismatic, he has charm… but he doesn’t hide the fact that he is selfish, he doesn’t hide the fact that he is out for himself. To me that makes him a much more human character because you see his faults. I said in the panel that, even in a fight, he does these flourishes and stuff. It shows that he is a teenager in terms of maturity. He is really showoff-y and flamboyant in that manner. What’s great is that when he progresses through the story it’s a real human progression. I will say that I love the ending that we have. I really believe we have the best ending of any AC game because it’s a very human ending. It’s not “he saved the world.” Something simple happens, but for me its breathtaking, it’s truly beautiful. And you know, he is a guy who is trying to figure out who he is in life, so he takes on mentors. Sometimes he takes on the wrong mentors, like Charles Vane, and he ends up not really learning from him but actually being manipulated by him. At some point Edward realizes this is like, “what am I doing with this guy?”  and so he is someone trying to figure out who he is in life. We describe him as being brash and selfish, but it is something that he grows from. 

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is slated for release in North America for Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii-U on October 29^th. It will also be released for PC, Xbox One, and PS4.