Assassin's Creed

PAX 2007 Preview

The Penny Arcade Expo has a lot of elements. Not only do attendees get to play some of the latest release, courtesy of participating exhibitors, or engage in LAN parties or tabletop events, or even attend late-night concerts or movies, but they can also sit in on various panel discussions.

Ubisoft held a panel that shed a little more light on its upcoming multi-platform title, Assassin’s Creed. Creative director Patrice Desilets was the host of the panel, held in the main theater of the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle the Expo.

The theater was filled to standing-room only with the participants cheering, seemingly, every other sentence Patrice uttered … and he truly played to the crowd. The general topic was how the team brought the initial concepts of the game to life, leading up to the holiday release of what has to be one of the more anticipated next-gen console titles (slated to hit store shelves in November).

The path to PAX 2007 began four years ago with a core of 10 developers that had worked on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time took up the mantle and began the work on Assassin’s Creed. Now 300 people are working on the title, which sports more than 10,000 animations and around 20 hours of gameplay.

As part of the presentation, Patrice had movies played that showed the early ideas in motion. It is important to note that no cinematics are used in the game – this is a living, breathing world with non-playable characters that can be pushed out of the way.

“The development team wanted freedom and for gamers to experience their own action sequences,” Patrice stated.

They wanted both the gameplay and the world to be interactive, giving players the ability and freedom to move throughout the Middle Eastern cities.

Nothing too new was shown at the event, and what the panel did was fuel the fires of anticipation with the crowd.