Ubisoft said that the developer team “underestimated” the appeal of the naval battles.
The naval battles, which were introduced at E3 this year could have been a whole game, according to creative director Alex Hutchinson from Ubisoft Montreal.
“When we looked into it we realised too that no one had done third-person action-adventure sailing, you know in this period. So we’re like, great, it’s brand new; it’s probably too risky to do as it’s own game. Although now I think it’s been successful enough that we probably underestimated it. But it felt like an appropriate and exciting risk to take.”
Hutchinson said that the naval battles are an element of the course of history during the period in which you can play Assassin’s Creed 3. “When we looked at the history of this period of America we realised that sailing ships were so important. It’s how you arrived there if you were foreign, it’s how all imported goods arrived there.”
“The French fleet at Yorktown basically blockaded the port; stopped the import. Stopped the British resupplying their soldiers, which leads directly to the surrender of the British in the American Revolution. So it was part of the history of the time and the history of the Revolution. And once we got that we thought, well it’s really something we should do.”
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