Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: Did the team cheat when making Rome?

By PSM3 Staff for PSM3 Magazine Subscribe now!

Hello, and welcome to day three of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood week on psm3mag.com. With only two days to go until Brotherhood UK's release (lucky US gamers have already been playing the game for a day now), the global reviews are out. The verdict? The average score is 91%, just a single percentile lower than our score of 92%, which we awarded the game in our exclusive PS3 review - in the new issue, currently on sale...

During yesterday's blog we spoke to the ACB devs about how they went about developing the characters of both Ezio and Desmond in the new game. Today, the team talks about how they built Rome - the biggest Assassin's Creed world to date. You'll find their revealing Q and A below.

As ever, if you want more Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, snap up the new issue from all good supermarkets and newsagents. If you like what you see, we've got a killer subscription offer on right now - see it here. If you're an Assassin's Creed fan (duh, you're reading this) you won't find better access to your favourite series anywhere else. Print not your thing? Listen to the team chatting about the game in the latest Podcast.

Download from iTunes here. Or grab the whole archive via the web here. Thanks for listening.

The setting

PSM3: Why did you opt for Rome in Brotherhood, as opposed to the other major cities in Europe?

Mohamed Gambouz, Art Director: When we went location scouting in Italy three years ago, we already knew that we wanted to set the game in the Italian renaissance, so Florence, Venice and other Tuscan cities were a must. When we went to Rome we instantly knew that this city, the sheer size of it could support an entire game in itself.

Genevieve Dufour, Production Manager World: With Assassin's Creed, we always strive to be the historically accurate in the representation of the cities and the events that are in the game. Research is the foundation on which our work is based on, so long as it provides players a unique and entertaining experience.

At the beginning of the production of Assassin's Creed 2, we did a lot of research on the Italian Renaissance and the XVth century in general. We studied the period through various medium such as books, TV series and movies. Yet, I think we were most surprised how the Internet was a wonderful source of information as we found a lot of pictures, paintings, drawings and maps that helped us understand and capture the feel and the history of the period. Also a few members of the team went to Italy to scout the cities such as Venice, Florence and of course, Rome.

As soon as Asssassin's Creed 2 was finished and released, our first step was to bring out all the material we had, especially the elements about the city of Rome, and chose what was relevant and useable for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Most of the details used in the production of Brotherhood come from pictures taken by the team during their initial trip in Italy. Yet again, drawings of the period found on the Internet helped us develop an idea how to represent the landmarks during this period has some iconic monuments have changed over the years. For example, Bufalini's map of Rome (dated of 1551) was chosen as our document of reference when designing the city's layout. We actually went to the minutia of importing the map into our engine and then scaling it until the size felt right.