Assassin's Creed 3 dev team "underestimated" naval battles' appeal

Assassin's Creed 3's naval battles could have been spun out into a whole game on their own, creative director Alex Hutchinson has said.

Speaking to Ausgamers, Hutchinson said Ubisoft Montreal liked the idea of something so fresh but was wary of pushing it to the forefront of a standalone game.

"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," he said.

"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.”

The naval battles have drawn plenty of interest at press and consumer events, and Hutchinson said they're not just a novelty but an intrinsic element of the course of history during the period covered by 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," he said.

"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."

Assassin's Creed 3 is due in late October on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with a PC release in late November and a Wii U launch undated.