Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

Jean-Francois Boivin talks Ezio's second stab

Assassin's Creed has been crafting its gradually unfolding story of Desmond Miles and his journey from Abstergo's lab rat, forced into testing the Animus - Assassin's Creed's gateway into the past - to burgeoning assassin, blessed with the skills of both Altair and Ezio in his repertoire.

The story continues with Ezio once again for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, which promises to be much more than a simple stop-gap between Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed III, which is reportedly slated for arrival in 2012. Effectively telling a story from two sides, the new single-player campaign picks up with Desmond's story, while multiplayer plays its own role in the overall narrative, revealing that Abstergo is training an army of Templar assassins using those Animi (apparently the plural for Animus) you might remember racing past at the beginning of ACII.

We caught up with the game's Associate Producer, Jean-Francois Boivin to talk primarily about the single-player campaign, to find out about crafting 16th century Rome, what's new in the game, whether the game is more than just Assassin's Creed 2.5 and how to make things more robust by applying 'baby oil'.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood focuses on ACII's Ezio once more, so where do we find him at the beginning of the new game, and what's his story arc, his journey this time around?

It starts exactly where ACII left off. At the end of ACII - spoiler alert - Ezio beats up the Pope, but decides to spare him because killing him won't bring his family back and he's above all that now. He basically leaves and goes back to his villa in Monteriggioni and in the demo that we're showing, it turns out to be a huge tactical mistake because the Borgia return in full force, attack the villa and destroy it. That forces him to go to Rome, at the centre of power and influence and finish what he started. There's a new nemesis called Cesare Borgia, who is the General of the Papal army and he's the main nemesis of Ezio this time around. So he'll basically be going to Rome and rebuilding the assassin order from scratch.

With Ezio's Monteriggioni villa destroyed then, does he have a new hub to call home, or will we get to once again restore the villa like in Assassin's Creed II?

You will be rebuilding Rome in its entirety. You have to remember that in the early 1500's - where the game is set - Rome in real life was decrepit. The Borgia influence was so strong, it was corrupt, people were starving, they were afraid, they were bullied by guards all the time and so Ezio walks in there and sees this, and just his true nature cannot accept something like this happening. So, he'll recruit people by saving them in certain situations and teach them how to become assassins, teach them about the creed itself and send them out on missions through which they'll eventually gain experience points that you can spend on skills and weapons and whatnot. And at the same time as this, he'll gain money and he'll help rebuild Rome, because like I said, Rome was totally decrepit. He'll renovate stores and build shops and whatnot, and that will shift the balance of influence between the Borgia's very hard influence and a more liberated influence. In turn, that will have an impact upon the meta-NPC AI, where you'll see a lot less burglars or beggars. You'll see a lot less thieves, and you'll see a lot more people sort of, passing the broom, planting flowers, building shops, renovating their own things, singing and things like that. So you'll see a very different attitude towards life in general once Ezio has imposed his influence on the streets there.

Rome was really only a very small part of Assassin's Creed II, so was effectively creating it from scratch enjoyable and how much research did you have to do to ensure it was historically accurate?

We always want to be as historically accurate as we can. That said we do have technical restraints and gameplay constraints - we still want to make it a playable game, so - and this is true of every single Assassin's Creed game you have seen or ever will see - is... We have this Wikipedia thirty-second rule, which is, if you can find - and this is in the story and in the people that you meet and so on - if you can find an answer in thirty-seconds or less in Wikipedia, then we have to respect it. If you really have to research deep down, then that gives us a bit of room to play around with it.

And what recognisable Roman landmarks have you made sure are in there? Obviously you have the Colosseum...

Yeah, we have the Colosseum, we have the Pantheon, you obviously have the Vatican, Circus Maximus. We followed that thirty-second Wikipedia rule. If it was there at the time, then we had to do it. Castel Sant'Angelo...yeah, they're all there.