Ubisoft Says That Gaming/Film Convergence Benefited Assassin's Creed II

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Posted July 23, 2009 - By Jake Gaskill

Ubisoft Says That Gaming And Film Convergence Made Assassin's Creed II A Better Game During Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II Comic-Con 09 panel, Ubisoft Montreal president Yannis Mallat talked at length about the company’s devotion to establishing a more intimate relationship between film and video games. The clearest example of this convergence lies in the three, 10-15 minute, live-action films that Ubisoft produced, entitled Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, that are scheduled to be released in November.

The three films serve as a prologue to ACII, telling the back-story of Giovanni Auditore da Firenze, the father of ACII’s main character, Ezio. To tell such a crucial part of the AC story, Ubisoft realized it needed to keep its development in-house, to ensure the maximum amount of cross- pollination between the game developers and the films’ creative team. Mallat explains:

"We could have asked another company and outsourced that stuff. But the true convergence I'm talking about, that will make you understand things about the IP, that kind of stuff could not have happened without putting creative people in the same circle…I can tell you that when you play the game and see the film, you will understand, because there's a deeper quality because creative people collaborated at the same table."

Mallat went on to say that one of the long-term benefits of this collaboration is that it has taught Ubisoft developers “how to make better games.” As for the production itself, Mallat said, “This is the biggest undertaking we've invested in the medium. It's the same amount of investment as if we'd shot a feature film.”

Based on everything that has been shown of the game up to this point, I’d say the results of Ubisoft’s commitment to fusing gaming and film in such a substantial way are quite clear. Now we’ll just have to wait and see if it can all come together as harmoniously as Ubisoft believes it will.

Tags: Comic-Con '09, Movies, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Videogames, Xbox 360

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bigboi21

Sounds good on "e-paper", i jus hope Ubisoft can pull it off, and if it works out, hopefully other companies will do the same for other games with great storylines

Posted: July 24, 2009 10:07 AM
WillingSpade

I think the films should be CG. If they are going to be that short, why make them live action?

Posted: July 24, 2009 10:05 AM
Razorblad110

this, hopefully, seems like a good start for that mostly horrible connection between games and movies

Posted: July 23, 2009 9:38 PM
farid304

Wonderful.
Ubisoft always makes a Masterpiece.
Farid

Posted: July 23, 2009 6:17 PM