Assassin's Creed 3 director says Ubisoft held back on the ship-sailing stuff until Black Flag because they were worried the tech "wouldn't work," and I have to say that was 100% the right call

A player on a ship looking at a whale tail during Assassin's Creed Black Flag. — (Image credit: Ubisoft)

Commanding a ship in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is a sublime experience to this day – you'd hope so in a game about pirates – but I don't remember the sailing-based missions in Assassin's Creed 3 being nearly so mechanically refined. As it turns out, Ubisoft felt the same way, as Assassin's Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson has revealed the studio wasn't confident enough in the tech to make it a bigger part of the game.

Talking to PC Gamer, Hutchinson said "there was a whole fear that the tech [for the ships] wouldn't work" during the development of Assassin's Creed 3. "So it couldn't be a huge part of the main story, because we weren't certain it was going to work."

"When it was cool, then you're like, 'This is great,'" said Hutchinson, adding that "the old AAA model" meant Ubisoft didn't get an alpha build of the game until two months before its release and that the beta and final builds would arrive shortly thereafter, making it hard to know what the complete game looked like until launch was imminent. Although I could personally do without the naval missions in Assassin's Creed 3 entirely, I'm ultimately profoundly grateful they were added because they were the catalyst for one of my favorite open-world games ever.

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