To celebrate the launch of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag on Nintendo Switch™ on December 6, we sat down with creative director Jean Guesdon, game director Ashraf Ismail, and lead writer Darby McDevitt to talk about the game, its development, and its impact on the Assassin's Creed community.
WARNING: THIS INTERVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!
Hello guys, and thank you all for taking the time to talk to us! Could you tell us a bit about who you are, your role during the development of the game, and what it consisted of specifically?
Jean Guesdon – Hello everyone, really happy to talk about Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag for this new launch. After being privileged enough to be part of the Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II team and after being the one that was whispering to the ears of creative directors on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed Revelations, and Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag was my first game as creative director. My role was to make sure that the team would manage to mix the Assassin fantasy and the pirate one. In short, it's about making sure all directors were working in the same direction to deliver a coherent, harmonious, and fun experience.
Ashraf Ismail - Wonderful to be here talking about a game near and dear to my heart. Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag was my first game as a director. I was specifically the game director. This means I am setting the vision and direction of the game design, game structure, and gameplay. The player experience is at the heart of what I am looking at, so this also implicates how game design and narrative align.
Darby McDevitt- Darby McDevitt here. I was the lead writer on Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, the second mainline game I wrote after Assassin's Creed Revelations, and my sixth Assassin's Creed title to date, which included a few handheld titles and a short film called Embers. As lead, I planned the full story in conjunction with Jean and the mission director Mustapha Mahrach, and I wrote the main story arc and the present day story, in addition to a bunch of lore tidbits.
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When and why did you choose the Golden Age of Piracy as a setting?
Darby - Before Assassin's Creed Revelations hit the shelves in 2011, the Assassin's Creed III team started asking us if we'd like to further develop the naval combat aspect of Assassin's Creed III and produce a handful of DLCs for their game set during the Golden Age of Piracy, starring Connor's grandfather Edward. That was the extent of the pitch.
In the autumn of 2011, after I had returned from doing press for Assassin's Creed Revelations, I sat down with a few people from the Assassin's Creed team — Jean and Alexandre Amancio among them — and started planning a suite of DLCs that would stretch from the late 1600s into the 1720s. The idea would be to start with Edward as a teenager under Henry Avery, and end somewhere around the days of Bartholomew Roberts. We figured four to six unique missions of about two hours each would tell a pretty comprehensive story.
When we put the entire pitch together, we realized the idea would be far better as a stand-alone game. The prospect of playing as a pirate was too tantalizing. At some point around the 2011–12 holiday, Alex Amancio — creative director for Assassin's Creed Revelations — pitched the idea as a full triple-A game. Then, before our editorial team in Paris agreed to it, Alex surprised us all by leaving Ubisoft to try his hand outside video games. When the game was green-lit, Jean stepped in as creative director and Ashraf came on board as game director ... and then we made the thing.
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Looking back at the game now, six years later, what is the thing you are most proud of?
Jean – I'm very proud of the good balance we managed to find between a "traditional" Assassin's Creed game and a pirate game. This wasn't a given, and I remember that one of the first things I had to face when I took the position of creative director was, "How will we mix Assassin and pirate fantasies?" So I kept repeating to the team, "We're making a PIRATE Assassin's Creed game, the best 3D open world pirate game ever done (so far) but still a true Assassin's Creed game at the same time, one that will please our fans." This is why the seamless transitions between ground and sea were so important. It was the way to UNIFY everything; ground "Assassin" gameplay would benefit sea "Pirate" activities and vice versa. The best example of this is the loop of the sea shanties. Parkour like an Assassin to get the songs on ground, and enjoy them with your pirate crew at sea.
Ashraf - I am most proud of how we realized the life of this selfish pirate from the narration to the gameplay and the progression systems. Our goal was to make the player understand Edward‘s life from living and feeling it. We created a person with flaws, weaknesses, charm, and humor and allowed players to get into his boots and head through narrative and gameplay, while allowing them to live a bombastic pirate fantasy.
Darby - Whenever I look back on any work, I tend to focus on the mistakes I made, the rough edges I still see. But I will always admit to being deeply proud of the chewy dialogue and the well-rounded characters in Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag. I had a lot of fun writing this game. I also have a deep and abiding fondness for the cast. We assembled a fantastic group of actors, something that happens only a handful of times in a person's career.
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Black Flag was the first major opus in the franchise where the main character was not an Assassin for most of the game. How difficult was it to achieve that, and how different from the other entries in the franchise was it to develop both in terms of narrative and gameplay?
Jean – This really came from the need to merge Assassin and Pirate fantasies. Assassins being bounded by the Creed, an expected pirate's behavior (attacking ships) would have felt bad. It was also the opportunity to send the message that you can become an Assassin... or not. Assassins and Templars are two groups that diverge on their beliefs. We're talking about beliefs and philosophies, not hereditary moral values. For these reasons it was making total sense to show the path of somebody that slowly but surely decides to join the Assassins. It's interesting because the "little brother" of Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Assassin's Creed Rogue, also reinforces this idea but from the opposite side, having Shay deciding to leave the Brotherhood.
Ashraf - The difficulty was not in the intentions or ideas, this was fairly smooth. The challenge was selling these ideas to the team and to the upper management that we were doing something different and to have confidence that it would work.
Even if Edward was not an Assassin for most of the game, we saw the narration as a fundamentally Assassin‘s Creed story. We were showing someone's personal journey to becoming an Assassin. And this person happened to be a pirate. In terms of gameplay, we were a brand-new design team coming to the Assassin's Creed brand from myself as a director to my team of designers. We naturally brought with us a new way to look at gameplay compared to what was done before. Not better or worse, but different, and this naturally fit with the new fantasy that Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag was proposing.
Darby - As far as difficulty goes, it wasn't hard to convince ourselves to make a pirate-focused game with pirate-focused activities. That, in many ways, is easier than making a game focused on assassinations — there are so many more variables to play with. But from a narrative perspective, we decided this should be an origin story of one man grappling with the Creed. Before Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, there was this mistaken impression that being an assassin was a hereditary thing — that one was "born" an assassin. But that idea defies the whole conception of developing a Creed based on free will — if you believe in free will and self-determination, you also need to believe that people can freely accept or reject being part of a certain group or hold a set of beliefs. So we set out to make a story in which a man does just that.
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Edward's storyline revolves around redemption and the disillusion of this pirate dream. Was it something that was envisioned early on in production, or did it appear naturally as you were developing the game?
Darby - That was the genesis of the story, in fact. We wanted to show the evolution of someone who initially held no strong beliefs — but who had a strong empathetic core — into someone who recognized the value of friendships, of principles, and of sacrifices. This was the seed from which everything grew. And it was important to see Edward choose the Creed, not be born into it. That made it all the more authentic. People who are born into systems of belief often never question them or test them to make sure they're sound or acceptable.
Jean – It was at the core of the narrative design, yes. Once again, a way to merge the two fantasies was to show how Edward slowly moved from being a pirate to joining the Brotherhood. This is about understanding that a life without any rules (anarchy) can be super appealing and fun (pirates) but that it comes with a bunch of difficulties because it's hard to build anything without a minimum of structure. The Assassins are here to propose another option to Edward, one that would respect his free will but bring him a sense of "family" with some rules. Basically the idea is that being free doesn't mean having no rules at all.
At another level it was also a way for us to respect the expectations of the players by delivering them the "fun pirate's life" with plundering, comradery, and adventure during the first half of the game and then, progressively bring them to understand that being a pirate was dangerous and death at short term was almost guaranteed.
Ashraf - The metaphor used early on was that this person was an immature teenager who was learning about life and needing to "grow up" or mature by taking responsibility for their life and actions. The details came naturally from that.
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Edward's ship is called The Jackdaw, was there any interesting story behind the choice of that name?
Darby - Assassins have always been associated with Eagles, so when it came to filling out Edward's personality the natural idea was to link him to another bird that could serve as a metaphor for pirates. Crows, ravens, and jackdaws were the obvious answer — and I chose jackdaw because it's such a lovely word. It has a weathered, blunt, and creaky sound to it, much like a ship.
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Do you have any funny or interesting historical facts to share that you found while doing your research on that time period?
Jean – I was personally very impressed by the way pirates were branding themselves. They almost invented marketing. The flags were literally the equivalent of our modern day brand logos (easily recognizable), and each pirate had his own specialty. Edward Thatch created his persona of "Black Beard" with fuses fixed to his hat and multiple pistols on his chest in order to infuse maximum terror to have civilians surrender first and not have to fight... how smart is that?
Ashraf - Most of the mainstream "expected" elements of pirates are not accurate at all. Walking the plank, hooks, parrots, buried treasure (ok, we bent on this one), and so on come from Treasure Island, Disney, and other entertainment. We were not able to find a potential source for any of these things and so did not include them (aside from buried treasure; we valued the exploration and gameplay value it brought).
Darby - Pirates and sailors in general used to leave small messages for one another all over the Caribbean, on hidden beaches, etched into lead or on driftwood. I always wished we could have turned that fact into a feature of some kind.
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What's your favorite memory from working on the game?
Jean – My favorite moment of the production was the launch party of the game. Everybody was happy, the release of the game was a success (both critical and commercial), and this was the end of an intense but very smooth production. I will always remember sharing a beer with my dear friend producer Martin Schelling while people of the project were coming to us to thank us for having directed the development the way we had. Feeling that not only had we shipped an excellent game that would please gamers but that we had done it in a very human and respectful way was incredibly humbling and gratifying.
Ashraf - Near the end of the project I went in to work on a Saturday. We were not asked to come in and we were in very good shape overall, but I had a few things I wanted to finish before the start of the next work week. I was expecting to find the office empty, but it was not. The whole naval gameplay team was in the office working, which was very unexpected as they were at 0 bugs (an incredibly rare occurrence in production!). I went to the game designer Seb and asked him what's going on. He said that they all decided to come in to help some of the other gameplay teams reach 0 bugs.
This team was so proud and excited for this game we were making that they took it upon themselves to help the rest of production when they did not have to. There was a feeling of joy in the office that day. Aside from being deeply proud, it cemented the feeling that we were making something special, that the team morale was healthy and strong and that no matter what the reception of the game was, we as a team gave it our best and were able to hold our heads up high.
Darby - My favorite times on Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag were the days where I simply wrote for hours and hours on end. Half the game I wrote at our Ubisoft offices, directly into our scriptwriting software. The other half I wrote in pen in a lined notebook, either at my kitchen table or at a bar called Else's just down the street from my apartment, with a beer at my elbow. All these wonderful characters were born in these quiet moments. It's a weird kind of magic when it all comes together. Apart from that, I deeply enjoyed working with our cast, rehearsing our scenes, and watching the characters come to life. I don't know if I'll ever experience something that consistently creatively satisfying again.
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The game ends on a very emotional note with the "Parting Glass" moment, can you tell us where the idea for that scene came from?
Ashraf - One thing we wanted to achieve in Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag was that Edward and the player are as aligned as possible in motivation, emotion, and so on. In terms of the journey, we had this notion of saying goodbye to the characters that took this journey with Edward. Knowing Edward's arc, saying goodbye to these characters and this journey was very important – for Edward and for the player.
Darby was the person who brought the song of "The Parting Glass," which was incredibly perfect.
Jean – All credits for that sequence go to Darby, who found the song. This is an extremely moving moment and every time I watch it I feel emotional.
Darby – "The Parting Glass" is a song I have loved since college, and when I first started thinking about this game, the story, and Edward's journey, I realized that the lyrics of "The Parting Glass" hewed very closely to the emotional themes of our game. So I wrote a draft of the final scene very early in development and made absolutely certain that we would use the song. The idea of Anne Bonney singing it came shortly after. We knew she would survive the story, and as an Irishwoman, she'd know it by heart. And, lo and behold, when it came time for the Irish actress Sarah Greene to record the song in the studio, she didn't even need to look at the lyrics or practice the song – she already knew it by heart.
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Sea shanties were really appreciated by the community and they still are to this date! Do you have any favorites?
Jean – I'm bad at titles, sorry. "Lowlands," maybe.
Ashraf – "Captain Kidd," "Drunken Sailor," "Lowlands" – I'm all about the melodies.
Darby - Probably "Whiskey Johnny." But it's hard to choose, they're all so perfect in their own way.
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Any last words for our community?
Ashraf - This project was a joy and a work of passion, so to see the community react so positively to Edward, the story, the pirate fantasy, the gameplay, the world, is incredibly gratifying and makes us want to deliver even stronger experiences.
Thank you to the community for all the love, passion, and feedback for Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag.
Darby - Thank you for your kind attention over the last half decade! The continued success and the affection people continue to show for a six-year-old game is humbling beyond words. I'm grateful to have been a part of something that means so much to so many.
Jean – After more than 11 years working on Assassin's Creed, I professionally left the Brotherhood after Assassin's Creed Origins and its Discovery Tour, but I will always cherish my time working on such a beautiful franchise. And from all the projects I had the chance to work on, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag will remain the highlight. It was my first experience as a creative director, the production was a blast, and the reception of the game was incredibly gratifying. Thank you all, whoever you are, wherever you are. You are the Brotherhood. Long live the Creed.
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Thank you all for your time!
Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag and Assassin's Creed Rogue will both be available on Nintendo Switch with Assassins Creed: The Rebel Collection on December 6.
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