Assassin's Creed Q&A - Assassinating the Xbox

Assassin's Creed was Ubisoft's most talked-about game at this year's E3, but it never struck us as the sort of game that ought to be confined to just one platform. Nevertheless, the company has always insisted that this promising action adventure from the creators of the latter-day Prince of Persia games would appear only on the PlayStation 3--until now. Finally, Ubisoft has come clean about development of an Xbox 360 version of Assassin's Creed, which has certainly whetted our achievement-craving appetites. For the first word on the 360 game, we went straight to producer Jade Raymond.

GameSpot: Why did you decide to bring Assassin's Creed to the Xbox 360?

Jade Raymond: Our ambitions with Assassin's Creed are high: We're aiming to deliver a completely new gameplay experience on a brand-new engine. With artificial intelligence, physics, animation, and graphics ambitions like ours, we weren't sure how many consoles we could support. But we always wanted to share our next-gen vision with as many gamers as possible. We have just recently been able to prove to ourselves that we will be able to deliver on both systems without sacrificing the quality or innovation of our original concept.

GS: How long has the game been in development?

JR: A small core team started working on the concept and technology for Assassin's Creed a little over two years ago. Creating an engine from scratch to fully take advantage of the next-gen systems has been interesting and challenging because you have to wait a lot longer to see gameplay materialize and you're never really sure what is good enough. For a while we had to ban the words "next-gen" because people were getting hung up on them. We had to find a sweet spot in innovation that allowed us to make progress and not get caught up in the theory of what a game could be.

GS: Will there be any differences between the 360 and PS3 games in terms of content?

JR: I hate to answer in such a lame way, but I can't say right now...

GS: Will the game have any online features?

JR: Yes, we will have downloadable content, achievements, and all of that other good stuff.

GS: Will the control functionality vary by console, such as the PS3 controller's tilt functionality?

JR: We are prototyping this kind of thing right now, but we are not sure yet if the prototypes will make it into the final game. We don't want to add control features if they are going to end up feeling gimmicky. We want to make sure that everything in the game, including controls, makes sense within the overall experience and adds to it.

GS: What HD resolutions and audio will it support?

JR: 720p and Dolby Digital 5.1.

GS: What can you tell us about the game's achievements?

JR: It's hard to list the achievements in a meaningful way without going through why it's cool to achieve them, but rest assured, they will drive the fiercest competition between you and your Xbox Live friends.

GS: Can we expect a Marketplace demo?

JR: Who am I to stop you from expecting? But I can't confirm anything at this point in time.

GS: Thanks for your time, Jade.