Ubiosft relied on feedback for AC:Brotherhood, expects it to do well this holiday season
Assassin's Creed's technical director Mathieu Gagnon has said the AC team in Montreal listens to the feedback on "every game" it releases and "try to improve based on" the feedback.
Brotherhood was no exception.
Speaking with Eurogamer, Gagnon said since the first game in the Assassin's Creed series was widely criticized for being so "repetitive", the team decided with ACII to focus more on bringing in variety and more gameplay, and then take things "up a notch" with Brotherhood.
"With Brotherhood we wanted to kick it up a notch because there were a lot of things left on the table during development of ACI!," he said. "We always have our own ideas, but we do always listen to the feedback to make sure whatever gets criticized, we fix and make better.
"We wanted to have more things that were systemic in our world, meaning the world would live with objectives you don't have to say, 'Okay, I want to do this now.' It just exists. The Borgia Towers we brought in for Brotherhood is a good example of this. You have 12 Borgia captains that exist in the world. Once you've killed the captain, your goal is to capture the Borgia Tower. Once that's done the Assassins can take control over Rome and reduce the influence of the Borgia.
"That was one of the main things – having more of these systemic ingredients, these alive ingredients that exist in the world, these missions, these objectives the player doesn't have to choose but can just do along the way."
Apparently, things went enough for the team, as Brotherhood - which launched today - is getting rave reviews.
Ubisoft even expects the game to hold its own against other high-profile titles this Christmas shopping season.
Speaking with Gamasutra, Ubisoft's SVP of sales Tony Key believes the game will "rival" the sales of ACII and thinks since its a "blockbuster" franchise, it well this season.
"Assassin's Creed has proven two times before and will again this time that we're one of the blockbusters of the holiday," said Key. "We've carved out a space in the holiday launch schedule, we're usually around the same time every year, three of the last four years now, we've had this week in November that we've got to own.
"There's something to be said about the seasonality of the holiday and what it brings to the market. Because we know especially in a recovering economy like ours, that the casual shopper is more apt to spend money at the holiday. But at the same they have more choices. That's why you need to be one of the biggest blockbuster games. You have to be a must-have title. ... We fit into that category that can capture the casual dollar along with the core.
"When you go outside the holiday, you can lose some of those casual people. But you also have less competition. So it can be beneficial to be outside the holiday, and we do release games outside the holiday. We had Splinter Cell ship in April this past year, and we did very well with that".
Game's out in stores now.