There’s some muttering in the audience as Tommy Francois, IP development director at Ubisoft leads us through a sixty minute history of Assassin’s Creed III’s development. From concept work in 2010 to animation tests to proof of concept videos to details on the historical research, we’re being shown everything except the game itself. For a game this size and in this age of wham, bam, now preorder ma’am promotion, this sort of gently passionate round the houses development discussion is highly irregular. ‘Just show us the trailer lol,’ I am entirely prepared to bet at least one of the hundreds of journalists in this crowd has written in their notes.

Much as getting to see how the game evolved from its original concept – ‘social stealth’ set during the American War of Independence – and just how closely it’s stuck to it across nearly three years of development is personally fascinating, there is a part of me that does just want to be shown the trailer lol. Then I get it.(more…)