Sometimes, things that developers work on won’t make the cut and will be thrown out before the game launches. Granted, we don’t usually hear about these things until after the fact: developers usually try to only talk about things that they know for a fact they can deliver. Else people feel mislead and might get upset because their expectations weren't met.
Alex Hutchinson, Assasin’s Creed III creative director, revealed today that naval warfare almost didn’t make it to the full game. “That was not a set in stone feature,” he explains. The main issue was determining whether a third person game could put you on a boat, and misusing the team's time and resources.
The doubt was so strong that the producers on the game tried to push for dropping the feature from the game, but they kept it anyway. Now, the developers claim that naval warfare is a crucial aspect of the game.
Playing a demo of the naval warfare earlier this year, it seemed to capture the spirit of the time well, but also seemed kind of tough to navigate. I wasn’t sure if it was that I was just a shoddy sea captain, or if the game didn’t pull naval warfare well enough. A segment where I had to destroy a couple of ships and board another one seemed to take a lot longer than it should have. Eventually the game devolved into me circling around the other ships endlessly trying to get a shot in. Meanwhile, the enemy ships shot me enough times to sink a small army of boats.
Still, it’ll be interesting to see how the full game tackles naval warfare…and who knows what else didn’t make the cut that we don’t know about yet!
Assasin's Creed III is set to release in late October and November, depending on the platform.
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