Unfortunately, time constraints meant they weren't possible

Feb 27, 2015 15:31 GMT  ·  By

Assassin's Creed franchise veteran Darby McDevitt confirms that the most recent installment in the series, Unity, was initially set to have bigger modern-day sections, but due to the many new mechanics already in place, there wasn't enough time to fit them all in.

Assassin's Creed Unity was supposed to herald the start of a new age for the action-adventure series made by Ubisoft, but unfortunately for fans, it ended up falling short of its lofty goal due to many glitches, framerate issues, and a general poor quality.

Franchise veterans were also a bit disappointed to see that the rather intriguing modern-day sections were drastically cut short or replaced with some moments from other time periods, like the Belle Epoque or World War 2.

Unity was set to have more environments

While talking in a recent live stream, via Eurogamer, Ubisoft's Darby McDevitt, who worked on Assassin's Creed 4 and some previous titles, explained that, initially, Unity was set to have more modern-day sections.

Unfortunately, the fact that the title used all-new mechanics and technologies meant that there wasn't enough time to develop new sections for players to explore or enjoy, in the same vein as the main Paris environment that's available in the main story.

"We always plan to have more modern day but we have to be really smart about how we do it. There was a plan for a little more modern day in Unity - a plan, nothing that was actually cut. The thing with Unity was that it was a completely fresh game on a completely fresh generation. So creating any kind of modern day is a pretty huge ask. To create a city, for instance, or even part of a city, would require six months of work by many, many artists, designers, modelers. And then you'd need gameplay systems that didn't feel like you were just fencing."

As such, McDevitt is confident that future installments will benefit from the work already done with Unity and will be able to fit in more modern segments without taking a toll on the development time.

Unfortunately, he stopped short of confirming anything relating to this year's big installment in the series, the possible Assassin's Creed Victory.

Assassin's Creed Unity screenshots (6 Images)

The World War 2 section in Unity
The Belle Epoque section in UnityUnity had big missions
+3more