Assassin’s Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson believes Batman: Arkham Asylum‘s combat “raised the bar” in the industry, with the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed installment consequently having its fighting style altered.
In speaking with CVG, Hutchinson said that the former’s combat inspired the fighting in Assassin’s Creed 3:
Assassin’s Creed’s combat was always beautiful, but I wasn’t sure whether it was very tactical. I think it got away with it because it looked so good. But then games like Batman come along and raise the bar. I’ve tried to get our team to look at that system and think about why it works.
Hutchinson revealed that he was so inspired by Batman: Arkham Asylum that he instructed the development team to cut some of the unnecessary components of Assassin’s Creed 3‘s combat mechanics:
[Arham Asylum] was one of the only fighting games that keeps things simple. No one admits it, but most people don’t understand nor attempt absolutely all the combination moves in a game like Devil May Cry. But in Arkham Asylum, because it was so simple, everyone could do all manner of things in combat. For once you could do all moves, and it showed that clarity and simplicity is powerful.
So I told the team, if you need to cut half the moves in Assassin’s Creed 3 then do it. And I wanted to get rid of the pointless things, like, why are we locking onto targets during combat?
Assassin’s Creed 3 launches in North America come October 30th and a day later in Europe.
