Assassins creed design quotes (essay reference materials)

Just a few interesting quotes about the design of Altair from Ubisofts "Assassins Creed" (sourced from the Limited Edition Artbook).  These will be good quotes to reference in my essay as it mentions the conceptual stages of design aswell as Focus group sessions.

“We had different concepts: we had maybe three, four different phrases for the main character. The first one that was maybe more classical: the Sands of Time  team worked on the concept, so maybe it was too close to Sands of Times character design, it was maybe more romantic, more …Arabian Nights? Then it went more and more edgy and stylised, so …the character had first maybe too much fabric, was too round and then it became more edgy, more stylised…I think thinner also. We made parallel with the bird of prey.

So first it was more like a knight, then after, we used a very specific for him, made the parallel between the bird of prey, jumping on his prey. The reference to the eagle and main character is one of the coolest aspects. You have the beak of the eagle, you see it in the hood. In the cape, you can also find, in some animations, the stylization of the wings, and these subtle elements.”

Raphael Lacoste (Art Director)

“We did some focus group testing early on with the character. We knew already that Altair would look the way he does now. I knew assassins at the time wore white, and they had red on them, and they had cloaks and everything, so I gave my direction to the art guys and this was the first draft, and when we put it in 3-D, that’s where we did some iteration, but we went to focus group with that dude, and people already said “Yeah, I want to play that character.” So we knew we had something.

But since we wanted to create the brand we asked, is the 12^th century enough? Is it really a strong idea just to play assassin during the crusade? Maybe it’s better to have a way that we could tell the entire assassins story, or history, multiple different assassins and that’s where the present came in. I’m really into justifying elements of a game. I don’t like video game stuff put on the top of the main action just to say it’s a video game. You need a health bar, and an inventory and stuff like that, I like to justify why. “

Patrice Desilets (Creative Director)