14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft Montreal has confirmed that it's gone to great lengths in order to make the multiplayer mode in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag more accessible and to add a story layer in order to keep players interested in the experience.
Assassin's Creed games may have started out as pure single-player experiences but, ever since Brotherhood, they have featured different multiplayer aspects.
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, this year's installment in the franchise, will also feature an online mode.
Developer Ubisoft Montreal has promised that the experience will be more accessible to new players and that a story layer has been added to keep things interesting.
"We have an improved tutorial, which has this nice story to it so it’s a bit more accessible. It draws you in a bit more than a dry, flat simulation. Then, with Wolfpack we’ve created a deliberate story wrapper around it. It’s sort of a revenge story – but I don’t want to give too much away and spoil it," Ubisoft's Lead Multiplayer Game Designer Tim Browne said on the UbiBlog.
"The story helps introduce all the different sequences and what’s involved in Wolfpack, to make you a better player so you can work with up to three other players cooperatively in this specific mode."
What's more, in order to make it easy for new players to find their way around in the multiplayer mode, the menus and interface have been tweaked and simplified.
"We also made improvements on the menus, and we looked at the ergonomics of things. As a player, where would I expect a menu to go? How should it react? What happens when I press this button? That kind of thing," Browne added.
"We’re always striving to improve that to make it feel comfortable so when I pick up the controller I don’t feel put off. I’m not overwhelmed by information. We gradually introduce different things like abilities. That’s key in our progression system, which we spend a lot of time on."
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag debuts next week on PS3 and Xbox 360 and in November for PC, Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One.