Despite the massive popularity that was seen behind Assassin’s Creed 3’s naval combat, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag will not be seeing it’s naval combat outside of the single player campaign.
“You have to take into consideration that it took a very big dedicated team in Singapore about two-and-a-half years to do it for the solo [play],” said lead multiplayer game designer, Tim Browne.
“In Black Flag it’s even better, but for solo. We’ve looked at it and we’ve considered it. We seriously considered it. We think it would be cool, but at the same time we tried it, and for technical reasons it’s impossible.”
Director Damien Kieken added: “One of the big added values of the naval battles in single-player is how they simulate the ocean. The ocean is really a toy. You have big waves, waves that stop your cannon balls: you have to play with the ocean. If you want that to be good in multiplayer, it means we have to perfectly replicate the ocean.”
“Over seven other consoles,” Browne said, before Kieken added: “It was one of the big hurdles. We didn’t want to go into that. It definitely wasn’t feasible in the time [we had].”
Browne also said that the idea of multiplayer naval battles is a complete contradiction to the current multiplayer provided by Assassin’s Creed games.
“We looked at the DNA of multiplayer, and we thought that ship battles aren’t really being the cool assassin. With multiplayer it’s all about you working either as a team of four players or in free-for-all, where you want to be the best player. It’s not so much about piloting a ship and using cannons to destroy the opponent’s ship.”
Let us know how this news makes you feel, are you upset about the lack of naval multiplayer battles or are you glad that the multiplayer won’t be switched up too much from previous titles?