Game studios have gotten in the habit of releasing developer diaries and commentary for years now; that’s really nothing new. What I’ve found, though, is that most of them are simply full of fluff. They’re full of catch phrases and buzz words like expansive, and revolutionary, and that’s about it. I actually felt the same way about the AC3 developer diaries until recently; for some reason, this one is a lot more interesting.
In the “making of Assassin’s Creed 3” video you’re about to watch, we’re lead by the usual cast of game developers like Alex Hutchinson, but in a slightly different direction. We’ve got a bit of the same cliched dialogue that fills most of their videos, but this time we also get to see numerous clips from AC3’s early Target Gameplay Footage.
Assassin’s Creed 3 – The Early Days
I found this interesting for a number of reasons, but primarily for the early footage. What surprised me was just how similar it looked to what is now a nearly final product. There were minor differences, like Connor looking a whole lot slimmer, and the animations looking substantially clunkier, but the rest of it looks pretty close to what we see now. The fighting, the forests… Connor’s abilities… all of these elements seem to have translated pretty well into a full fledged game. We obviously weren’t shown all the features that didn’t make it, but it seems most of the core stuff from the target gameplay footage made the transition, and if it’s lasted this long, clearly someone thinks it’s worth unleashing upon the world.
Target Gameplay Screens
Now, Assassin’s Creed 3 isn’t this shimmer mirage in the distance anymore. No, it’s actually quite close to release. On October 30th, 2012, we’ll finally have a chance to see what Ubisoft has been grinding away at for all these years.
