Ubisoft feels the future of next-gen gaming offers the ability to share open-world games with other players, and according to Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag’s lead game designer Jean-Sebastien Decant, Watch Dogs is “showing the way.”
Speaking with GameReactor, Decant sharing an open world gaming experience could apply to both the social and multiplayer aspects.
“I think we’re going toward a gaming place where the open world will be shared with other players. More and more,” he said. “Socially speaking, but also maybe multiplayer stuff. And we will have to consider the open world much more like a platform that we could sustain for years.
“Watch Dogs is kind of showing us the path for the future. Absolutely. But we have to create a… We have to respect our brands. So if we have to go that way with Assassin’s Creed we have to think about how it could fit into Assassin’s Creed.”
Decant also said there are quite a few things the team wants to “refine on the combat side” with Assassin’s Creed 5, but the “core pillars” such as social stealth, blending into the crowd, reaching your target without being seen will stay the same.
“There is this idea of having the parkour – you can jump around – and then the notion of freedom that combines everything,” he said. “These are the roots of Assassin’s Creed. We will try and work and build upon them. We cannot tell you that we’re happy and this is how we want the game to be and we’re going to do ten more games with exactly that same gameplay.
“No, we are unhappy. We want to do more. There are lots of things we want to refine on the combat side, on the parkour, on the stealth. Of course.
“We managed I think to bring back the stealth in Assassin’s Creed, which was something that was a bit put on the side in the previous episodes. So on that we’re very happy and I also think we kind of totally exploded the limits of the game by bringing the naval and the ship customization and the ship battles.
“So we made progress, thanks actually to the thematics that we chose. Next time we will have to find thematics that will help us also to expand the game once again.”
Assassin’s Creed 4 is now available on current-gen systems, PS4 and Xbox One which releases this Friday.