We’re celebrating 15 years of the Assassin’s Creed franchise this year and it seems that everywhere you look, there’s a developer or two revealing behind the scenes development stories online. Now, former Ubisoft developer Charles Randall has joined in and it turns out that his team is to blame for unceremonious murder.
According to Randall, the original Assassin’s Creed has a serious clipping problem that’d give you access to prohibited areas if you even neared the edge of the map. As you can imagine, this was fairly problematic – even for gravity defying assassins. So, Randall did what any normal developer would do: he opted to kill you in cold blood.
“In AC1, there was a new way of getting your character through the level boundaries, allowing you to access places you shouldn’t go,” he tweets. “I got to fix it by deploying my theoretical ultimate fix: kill the player. So if you ever died near a boundary wall for no reason. All me”
Randall isn’t exactly apologetic, but why would he be? It was, as he said, the “ultimate fix” – even if it did stun players. In fact, it was apparently his whole ethos for bug fixing, so who knows whatever player deaths he might be responsible.
In AC1 there was always a new way of getting your character through the level boundaries, allowing you access to places you shouldn't go.
I got to fix it by deploying my theoretical ultimate fix: Kill the player.
So if you ever died near a boundary wall for no reason? All me.
— Charles Randall (@charlesrandall) June 23, 2022
That’s not the only beans he spilled on the development of the first game, though. Apparently Altaïr’s horse was originally a “twisted fucked up human skeleton” and Malik’s missing arm was created by turning it inside out. You have the budget to thank for that little gem too.
All in all, Randall’s tweets provide a behind the scenes look at game development that’s often hidden from view. And even if his blood thirst did result in some frustration at the time, it’s given us a much needed chuckle today.
Who knows, if the rumours of an Assassin’s Creed remake are true, Ubisoft might finally be able to put an end to the problem.