„They achieved their goal.” Ubisoft pressured Assassin's Creed 3 devs to make the game longer at all costs
The developer of Assassin's Creed 3 revealed why Ubisoft wanted to extend the campaign of the game. The title's director touched on the complete change of direction and genre of the series.
Assassin’s Creed 3 was the first game in the series to really expand the gameplay, adding new mechanics like hunting animals and naval combat. Although the campaign in Assassin’s Creed 3 isn’t very long - taking about 16.5 hours to complete - you can spend dozens of hours completing side quests and other activities. The original developer also shared his thoughts on the game’s length.
Intentional stretching of Assassin's Creed 3
Alex Hutchinson worked at Ubisoft from 2010 to 2017 and was, among other things, the director of Assassin’s Creed 3. The developer recently revealed that his team was asked to stretch out Assassin’s Creed 3's playtime. Ubisoft wanted to delay the resale of the game to intermediaries as much as possible. At the time, this mainly meant GameStop, which was the only store benefiting from so-called "second-hand" sales.
This created a lot of pressure within the company at the time. Hutchinson pointed out that for action-adventure games like the early Assassin’s Creed titles, the simplest way to "stretch" gameplay is by adding RPG-style features, like loot, character levels, or special abilities. This lets the publisher save money, for example, by cutting down on the time and effort needed to develop the story.
Change of genre
Hutchinson thinks Ubisoft took a big risk turning the series into longer RPG-style games (starting with Origins), but it paid off. He says, however, that this wasn’t the reason fans abandoned the series. The shift still feels like a pretty radical and odd move for the developer, especially since he’s personally a fan of more straightforward action games.
I think it's the only franchise I can think of that changed genre and kept its audience, so it was risky but it seems to have worked. [...] I was worried that if you had 200 hours of AC you just played then would you really be in the mood for more a year later? I think luckily the radical change in setting and often protagonist means it feels more fresh than most franchises so they get away with it.
Even though the newer Assassin’s Creed games have plenty of critics, they haven’t killed the franchise - at least not yet. Ubisoft is pleased with the strong sales of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, released in March, and continues to support the game while also working on new projects.
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Author: Zuzanna Domeradzka
An introvert since birth, she has been interested in video games for as long as she can remember. She joined Gamepressure.com in 2022, first writing for the gaming newsroom and later helping with guides. She is an enthusiast of FPS and RPG games and a big fan of the Dragon Age, Five Nights at Freddy's, and Assassin's Creed series. She also enjoys watching movies, most often returning to Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean. She tries to spend her free time actively, riding a bike or skateboard (or platinuming the next installments of the Just Dance series).
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