Game news This is going to be a big surprise for fans, the first Assassin’s Creed could have been totally different!
We often make fun of the very busy interface of Assassin’s Creed or even Ubisoft games. And yet, the first plans envisaged quite the opposite!
Ubisoft’s HUD mocked
Developing a large open world game is a real headache for many reasons. For example, how do you maintain the player’s immersion while preventing them from finding themselves lost in the immensity of your world? This is where the management of the HUD (also called heads-up display in good French) becomes essential. Basically, you have to put enough information on the screen (mini-map, indicators, etc.) so that the player can find his way, without overloading him because otherwise it distorts the immersion. And if there is one company that is regularly mocked for its overloaded HUD, it’s Ubisoft. When Elden Ring was released, some smart guys even had fun proposing a visual of the game “if it had been made by Ubisoft.”
So be careful, it should be noted that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a very different proposition at this level. And yet, it is a Ubisoft game. Another point: if the HUD is very busy in Ubisoft games, it is almost always possible to reduce the amount of information displayed on the screen. This is particularly the case in the Assassin’s Creed games, a license that has been particularly singled out on the subject. And it’s quite ironic because the first Assassin’s Creed could have chosen a radically opposite path. We’ll explain it to you.
Assassin’s Creed without HUD?
It all started in 2004, when Patrick Désilets was tasked with developing a “Prince of Persia next gen.” He gets together with the team from the previous game, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and ideas start flowing. Yes, but here they are, they quickly come up against technical constraints, of course, but above all a creative obstacle: the Prince of Persia license itself. Désilets wants to turn towards more realism and towards History with a capital H. For this, he will draw particular inspiration from a book by Vladimir Bartol, Alamut. Little by little, he and his team will shape what will become Assassin’s Creed of the first name. And the goal was clear from the start: allow players to fully immerse themselves in the skin of the character and in the world of this new game.
But as we said above, for immersion to be flawless, it’s better to have as little information as possible on the screen. And Désilets quickly understood that. He therefore made a radical proposal to Ubisoft: make Assassin’s Creed a game without HUD. Basically, the game was initially designed to give players the opportunity to analyze their environment, listen to conversations, observe the behavior of characters, etc. Basically, to investigate in order to deduce for themselves where they should go. And besides, we will find some scraps of this initial idea in different opuses of the license. But for Ubisoft, it’s a definite no. No choice, the team will therefore have to integrate information on the screen, information that they will justify in-game thanks to the Animus. Here is the funny origin of the often mocked HUD of Assassin’s Creed games, which could never have existed.
Note that if you are fond of anecdotes and other information on the development of Ubisoft’s flagship license, there is a book that looks back on the beginnings of Assassin’s Creed. It is also thanks to the latter that we remembered this rather ironic information. Her name ? Secrets of Assassin’s Creed. From 2007 to 2014: Flightand it is signed Thomas Méreur who has long dissected the license on behalf of Gamekult under the pseudonym amaebi. “What about the other Assassin’s Creed games?” Well this is a first volume, so the rest will arrive a little later.