While Ubisoft releases new Assassin's Creed games every year, they've often been working on them for quite some time and one of this year's two titles, Unity, has had an extra year of development time thanks to the surprising success of Assassin's Creed 3's naval battles.
Speaking to Total Xbox at gamescom last week, Unity senior producer Vincent Pontbriand said that when development of Assassin's Creed 3 got under way they realised that there was scope for an entire game based around naval battles, a game that would become Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag, and that meant the Unity team had even longer to make their game.
"Starting with Brotherhood, we realised that this brand had tremendous potential, so we branched off the core team – some of the core members started working on AC3, and then other guys went onto work on Revelations. The only surprise was Black Flag – that was partly planning and partly opportunistic, when we realised with internal testing that the naval battles were very fun, with AC3 we said they should just do an entire game about that.
"And because we followed up and used that opportunity, and it gave us an extra year to work on Unity. And our mandate was clear, our technology was starting to work, our ambitions were big, so we said 'okay, one more year will be just right to make it happen'."
While Assassin's Creed 3 is generally seen as being one of the series' lesser games, most people enjoyed the naval battles which will return again Assassin's Creed Rogue but will be absent from Unity. There's even been talk of Ubisoft releasing a non-Assassin's Creed pirate themed game.
Pontbriand also said that "we're very flexible. We're willing to take risks" but there are some risks even Ubisoft won't take – like releasing Rogue or Unity on Wii U.
Assassin's Creed Unity launches on October 28th for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
