We recently had a chance to catch up with Ubisoft Montreal's Philippe Bergeron, who serves as mission director on Assassin's Creed III (and is also someone who worked on the original Assassin's Creed), to have a mammoth discussion about their forthcoming official third entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise.
We cover everything from the potential for the game's naval combat to be its own game in the future (outlook: Good, apparently), to tactful storytelling when dealing with the Native American plight and slavery. This interview is a lengthy one, but if you have any interest in Assassin's Creed III this year, it's a must-watch (or read).
"From the very beginning of AC as a brand, it’s always been something that’s very dear to our hearts, is we want to treat this with as much respect as humanly possible," Philippe told us in response to a question about the nature of storytelling with respect to the darker past they're dealing with.
"So each and every time we come to a more, like, powder keg topic, we usually get consultants. Consultants is always the way to go, because you have your own perception of how things are, but these people are experts, theoretically, in that field.
"So for instance, the whole Native American plight, for the Mohawk tribe, we have Kahnawake that’s really close to Montreal, so we’d actually go down there, and we had a Native American consultant that we’d constantly bounce ideas off, and see “Are we allowed to do this? Are we allowed to do that? What’s the actual... what are the tribal customs of your culture”, and things like that, just to see that we’re actually dealing with it in a more realistic way, than the metaphoric or stereotypical way that you would see in movies for instance. So we always try and take tact, as much as possible."
Click here for the full video interview (and transcript) feature.