Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed 3 director gets green light for personal project

Ubisoft has granted Alex Hutchinson resources to pursue a smaller development project, similar to Far Cry: Blood Dragon, Valiant Hearts and Child of Light.

The Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed 3 creative director told CVG that Ubisoft has given him a green light.

"I've got clearance along with a bunch of people from AC3 and AC4 to go off and do something new after [Far Cry 4]," he said.

"The challenge then is to keep costs down and make something that competes at a high level, without saying 'we need a thousand people for a new IP.'"

The project may not necessarily make it to market, though.

"There's different pressures on these sorts of projects, but at least at the moment we've got the OK from the studio to try something new," Hutchinson said.

"Hopefully you're back in a year and I can show you. It won't be finished in a year, but the aim is [to show it]."

Although we probably don't hear about let alone see the end results of most of these projects, Hutchinson's mysterious new endeavour is only the latest product of Ubisoft's push to give developers breathers between big franchises, so they can take ownership of smaller, creative, personal games.

Since the three games we've seen so far out of this scheme of Ubi's have all been pretty terrific, I'm excited to see what Hutchinson and his smaller team cooks up.