The Assassin’s Creed franchise is known for many things like sneaking, jumping into bales of hay, freerunning, and stabbing. Assassin’s Creed has had a massive influence on modern game design as a whole, from Infamous to Metal Gear Solid V to Horizon: Zero Dawn, the open-world action game where one must clear encampments of enemies and climb towers to unlock more of the map was proliferated by Assassin’s Creed. Another signature element of the franchise and of this genre of games is large quantities of side quests. But the origin of Assassin’s Creed’s side quests is a bit stranger than one might think.
The original Assassin’s Creed was generally well-received, with an 81% on Metacritic, but one of the worst parts of Assassin's Creed was its terribly repetitive side quests. The side quests basically boiled down to collecting flags or assassinating Templars, and not much more.
On Twitter, Ubisoft’s fight system AI lead on Assassin’s Creed, Charles Randall, explained that the only reason these tacked on at the last-minute-feeling side quests were in the game was because they were, in fact, tacked on at the last minute. According to Randall the game was, “ready to ship,” but then found out “The CEO's kid played the game and said it was boring and there was nothing to do in the game.” The real kicker, however, came when they were given the time frame: five days. And there could be no QA or bug testing either, as the game was going to be pressed to disc and then released immediately afterward.
The emergency implementation of the side quests went over relatively smoothly given the circumstances, save for one fatal flaw. During one of side quests where the player must assassinate a Templar, the target could fall through the floor and die, but not be counted as an assassination, which would prevent it from being completed altogether. This, in turn, could stop players from having a complete gamerscore on Xbox, to which Randall apologized, “if you had to play AC multiple times to get your max gamerscore or whatever, sorry. But I literally don't remember what happened in that period of five days. But I know it's a miracle that the game didn't just melt your console or whatever.”
And thus, the precedent for side quests in the Assassin’s Creed franchise to keep the CEO’s kid and players everywhere happy was set. Now it is expected for an open-world game to be so full of side-quests that the map can barely be seen underneath all the icons at times. The next entry in the popular franchise, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, will surely feature a litany of side quests, but maybe not quite as many as its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla releases holiday 2020 on PC, PS4, PS5 Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: Eurogamer