14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Ubisoft is ramping up the effort to create hype for its upcoming Assassin’s Creed III and has been offering details on the content that was initially considered for the game but has been dropped before the title went into full development.
It seems that Philadelphia was originally set to be one of the cities that the main character would be able to explore, alongside New York and Boston.
Alex Hutchinson, who is the creative director working on Assassin’s Creed III, told Joystiq that, “Philly was one of the cities that we wanted to do. In the end, we decided against it. It’s an architecturally designed city, so it’s on a grid. Which at first we thought would be cool – the first city in AC to be designed on a grid.”
The problem was that Philadelphia has streets that were too wide and they were not suited to the open world exploration, mixed with stealth that the Assassin’s Creed series is known for.
The third game in the series features a protagonist that is part Native American and the first prototype of the game has a scalping mechanics, complete with sound effects and animations, but the development team decided to eliminate it because it could be offensive to some players.
Assassin’s Creed III also included a harpoon-like weapon which was dropped because creative director Hutchinson says, “It started to feel like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat.”
The third game in the Ubisoft series promises to answer all the questions that were introduced so far and will also allow gamers to explore the world of the American Civil War from a fresh perspective.
Assassin’s Creed III is slated for an October launch on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, PlayStation 3 from Sony and the PC.
A version for the Wii U from Nintendo is also being developed, but it lacks a release date.