A former Assassin’s Creed developer has revealed in an interesting thread on Twitter that the original 2007 release didn’t have any of the smaller side activities until the CEO’s kid played the game and found it boring. Charles Randall, who was an AI Team Lead at the time, didn’t say any names but it’s safe to assume that he’s referring to Yves Guillemot’s child.
“If you’ve ever played the original Assassin’s Creed, you’d know that there were the missions with the targets, and there were also a bunch of side activities. What if I told you those side activities didn’t exist in the first submission?” he tweeted.
The game was ready to ship when the following unfolded:
The CEO’s kid played the game and said it was boring and there was nothing to do in the game. So my lead comes to me and he says, ‘So, we have to add a bunch of side activities into the game. We have a plan from Patrice [Désilets], but I’m not going to say yes unless you are in.’ I tell him to give me some time to think about it, and I go crank my music and have a nap at my desk. He says, ‘We have to put all these side missions into the game in five days, and they have to be bug free, because the build is going to be burned directly to disc and released to retail.’
About an album later I lift my head and see him sitting there staring at me, just waiting for me to give him an answer. I say, ‘Yes. But I have conditions.’ He says, ‘Anything.’
So that’s how myself and 4 or 5 other people ended up in the main conference building of Montreal’s Peck building, which is normally only accessible with a special door card. And it was only us who had access. No one else was allowed in. We had all our computers moved there. The rest of it is a blur, but I know that it went super well, because we did it. We managed to implement all of it in five days.
Randall added that the activities were “mostly” bug free. There was one bug that prevented Xbox users from achieving full 1,000 gamer score (PlayStation trophies didn’t launch until 2008), which Randall detailed in the thread so head over to the link below for more on that.
[Source: Charles Randall]
