It’s perhaps fitting that a game with the tagline “nothing is true; everything is permitted” emerged from creative director Patrice Désilets bending the rules. Assassin’s Creed began life as a Prince of Persia game, expanded and reimagined for a new generation of consoles. You might say it even ended up feeling like one, though Désilets’ creative interpretation of Ubisoft’s mandate layered on many additional challenges for the team at Ubisoft Montreal. Today, Assassin’s is one of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but back then Assassin’s Creed was something new. Its labyrinthine fiction twisted the modern day with the past, offering a science fiction tale of genetic memory and end-of-the-world conspiracies intertwined with another story of a master assassin coming to realize his own ignorance. Its world was made for unprecedented freedom — your character being able to run, jump and climb anywhere — and filled with bustling crowds and 12th century street vendors. And unlike the GTA games that preceded it, it aimed to recreate the cities it was set in — Acre, Jerusalem and Damascus — rather than parody them. It was a game like nothing before it, and oddly — given its far-reaching influence — also like nothing since, with a simplicity of design that almost seems quaint today, in a world where open world games are filled to the brim with missions and side quests and secrets and collectibles and all sorts of stuff that you can mark off… [Read full story]