How Ubisoft Montreal made a masterpiece

I don't know if it came up in reviews or consumer feedback, but having the ability to replay any mission, any time, to me is huge.

You had in ACII the Flying Machine mission, which was different and out of context. But you could only do it once. Now we've come back with these types of missions that are out of context as well – this time around they're called the Leonardo Inventions, the Flying Machine was one of Leonardo Da Vinci's inventions. But we've pushed it further. We've added more of those.

Not only do you get to have these new experiences, but you can, once you've completed them, go back to the DNA and select that mission again and do it over. To give incentive for the players to replay those missions, we've added optional objectives during the course of your mission you can complete. For example, 'Do not get detected during this mission.' If you do get detected, we show it up on screen, saying, 'Secondary Objective failed.'

This means at the end of the mission you'll only have a 60 per cent synch total. You're trying to get full synch between Desmond and Ezio, so having 60 per cent synch total makes you think, 'Oh, I'll go back, play that mission again and try to get the 100 per cent synch this time around.'

I don't know if that was part of the criticism that came up in the reviews, but me as a developer, that's one of the features I'm so proud we got in Brotherhood.

Co-op for the campaign is quite tricky because we've been a single-player franchise from the beginning.

It's not something we haven't thought about, but for a one-year endeavour of pulling out a game as huge as Brotherhood is, it wasn't on top of the priority list. I wouldn't go as far as to say we didn't look into it, but it quickly became obvious that we'd never have time with the resources we had to actually make this happen in a triple-A manner. That's why it was left on the table.

Will it come for other games? Your guess is as good as mine.

For any game, anything is technically possible provided you have the resources and the right programmers, artists, level designers and game designers to make it happen. It's all a question of time and resources.

What's beautiful about this industry is we always have to adjust. I don't think anything in this business can be planned out five years ahead. It's really difficult because you never know what's going to happen.

Is there a new console coming out? Is there a new peripheral coming out you want to exploit? The same goes for the story. We have really good writers that I'm sure have a long term vision for the franchise, but I don't think there are five scripts written for the five next games.

We make enough effort and they have enough work for the current game they're working on that that long-term hard evidence doesn't really exist.

As developers, we're passionate about it. Especially the AC team – when we're at work we just talk about this game all the time. Obviously there are discussions about what's coming next. Like I said, we have talented writers who have already had this brainstorming part, of where is the franchise going? Of that, I am certain.

Vacations! That's what's next. As far as further than that, we'll see what our managers have in store for us.