Assassin's Creed dev cut a "huge" co-op mode
"It just became too hard to do."
Assassin's Creed developer Ubisoft has revealed it binned a "huge" co-op mode that was originally planned for Assassin's Creed 1.
The game was to feature drop-in co-op during the game's Crusades-era missions, Assassin's Creed 3 mission director Philippe Bergeron told OXM. But the introduction of present hero Desmond ended all that.
"Before we knew about the Desmond story and Animus link, we had a huge co-op component in there," Bergeron explained. "But it just became too hard to do: the engine couldn't support it, and then the metaphor we had above it didn't support it.
"For us it was really part of the single-player experience, to have in-and-out co-op, and in the end we never thought it made sense in the storyline that we had for the Animus."
It would take until the third Assassin's Creed game - Brotherhood - before the series finally ventured beyond single-player. Brotherhood's multiplayer has matured and improved with each subsequent entry.
"There was no way to reconcile having multiplayer or co-op in an ancestor's memories," Bergeron concluded. "Your ancestor lived his life in a certain way, so assuming you had branching storylines, it creates a paradox. It didn't fit."
Recent Assassin's Creed multiplayer modes live within the series' internal continuity, but are part of a separate Templar training storyline.