Assassin's Creed III once included Philadelphia, scalping, and a harpoon

Ubisoft Montreal floated a number of ideas during Assassin's Creed III's development which didn't make the cut. Pun so intended.

As part of Ubisoft's media blitz, a number of outlets have gone live with details of features dropped from Assassin's Creed III. Joystiq reports Philadelphia once stood alongside New York and Boston as one of Connor's destinations.

"Philly was one of the cities that we wanted to do. In the end, we decided against it. It's an architecturally designed city, so it's on a grid. Which at first we thought would be cool – the first city in AC to be designed on a grid," creative director Alex Hutchinson said.

Unfortunately, the team soon realised that Philadelphia's wide, straight streets don't work very well in an open-world setting - although some events in the game will take place in the city.

Meanwhile, Destructoid was shown an animation of Connor scalping a British soldier. This historical practice was left out after the team decided it was too gruesome. D'toid described it as "incredibly powerful, complete with a stomach-churning sound effect which really hit home." beforenoting the troublesome implications, both culturally and gameplay wise, of including such a system.

Finally, Kotaku has some slim details of a harpoon-like weapon which was later turned into a rope dart, but in its earliest form proved a little too "fantasy" for Hutchison's tastes.

"It started to feel like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat," he said.

That sounds awesome actually, but okay. Assassin's Creed III is expected on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October, as well as on Wii U, you know, whenever that hardware happens.