Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: 'It's better than AC2'

By Andy Robinson for computerandvideogames.com

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood stealths its way into the shops this Friday, November 19 - and the first reviews are massive.

In our review we went for a score of 92%, praising Brotherhood's brilliant sandbox and solid Assassin-building gameplay.

Before reviewing the game this month, we travelled to Rome to meet the dev team and play the game in its most natural surroundings - and we took our dictaphone with us.

In the third and final chat in our series of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood interviews, producer Vincent Pontbriand shares his final thoughts on the epic action game.

If you missed them, check out our chats with senior international brand manager Eric Gallant and lead designer Patrick Plourde.

How does it feel to be finished?

Nervous, you never know. We try our best, we put in as much effort as possible and then the game needs to ship. The window of opportunity for these big games is Christmas, so it needs to be out on shelves by a certain date. If you do retro-planning this is it, the end of September early October is it. So we're nervous.

The game feels done. We always have ideas for improvements - we wish we had ten more years - but we have to stop at some point though right?

The post-release DLC for the last game wasn't received well. Is that something that you intend to do better with Brotherhood?

We wish to. I think people felt cheated at the impression that there was stuff that didn't make it into the game. It's frustrating since I can understand that view but it wasn't our intentions at all.

We want to give more of the game so we have plans for post-launch DLC. It's a mix between maintaining shelf life, which is going to be easier with multiplayer I think. It's obvious what you can do with that. It's harder to expand it story wise in terms of single-player because otherwise you never have closure, you have to re-open doors if you know what I mean. It's a calculated risk.

Then on my side people want to go on vacation so I have to manage who gets to go, who gets to stay and work on that.

What's the reception been like for multiplayer - what are fans saying?

Very positive. We're extremely satisfied with early results, it's an ambitious addition and we surprised a lot of people. The reception at E3 reassured us and then gave us a boost to step up and add even more.

Have you made any significant changes as a result of the beta?

Most of it relates to signs and feedback. People get the core gameplay loop, it's just balancing and everything you need to show on screen for feedback. Stuff like score, next target, are you being spotted, are you anonymous - there's a lot of information we need to show without stuffing the HUD. A lot of it revolves around that but then there's smaller details, looking at what we can do to improve that.

Does Brotherhood drop any hints story-wise as to where the series might go next?

We rely a lot on the present day story to do that. You always like to see the place for future games and keep a little bit of mystery. That's one of our specialities, it's a little of both where we plan for the future but keep it mysterious. We have that but with some margin to change our mind.