Assassin’s Creed IV features ship combat and a new pirate character to go with it (interview)

GamesBeat: How does your crew affect the health of your ship?

McDevit: There are two health meters. One is the integrity of your hull, and then the crew meter is a separate meter. If that meter is down too far, your boarding actions will take longer. You might not be able to man as many cannon. There are lots of little details they’re still tweaking as far as how much the crew’s health affects the functioning of your ship. It’s not a reading of morale. It’s the actual, physical number of guys you have.

If that gets down, you’ll have to go back to town and recruit more. Boarding ships can net you about a dozen crew members per assault that you can bring back to your ship, so that makes boarding very valuable. Not only do you get cargo that you can sell, but you can recruit lots of crew by pressing them into service. You also get smaller amounts of crew by, like you saw in the demo, saving other pirates.

GamesBeat: There seemed to be a bigger accent on stealth in this version, compared to the last one. There were obviously the mechanics of hiding in the foliage, but you could also whistle to attract people.

McDevit: That was in ACIII, but yeah, there you could only whistle to draw people around corners. Here we’ve updated that so you can whistle to attract people from anywhere. Now, in the stalking zones, it’ll bring them closer to the bushes and you can use the new stealth kills to pull them into the brush.

GamesBeat: Each Assassin’s Creed has had a different combat system in a lot of ways. Can you describe what Black Flag’s is like?

McDevit: This one’s a modified version of ACIII. We’re tweaking it a little bit so it’s more challenging. We want guards to attack you a lot more frequently. The enemy archetypes are also quite brutal.

GamesBeat: I didn’t see a whole lot of counters. It looks very aggressive.

McDevit: Yeah. There are counters, but yeah, we want a good balance there. You don’t want to have the kind of combat where you’re always hanging back and waiting for someone else to attack. It’s fairly heavily modeled after ACIII, though.

GamesBeat: Is it the same engine, or are there some tweaks to the engine?

McDevit: Lots of tweaks. The base is the AnvilNext, but with a huge amount of tweaks because of the seamlessness. That wasn’t possible before. That was our main goal when we started making this two years ago.

GamesBeat: And it’s on the next-gen platforms, too?

McDevit: Yes, all available gens.

GamesBeat: But is it going to be different in some way?

McDevit: No, the same gameplay experience. The next generation will definitely have upgraded graphics and effects. We showed the smoke and the fog and the branches and leaves on the trees moving dynamically. We focused on art upgrades that enhance the experience and the immersion. They don’t just look pretty. They actually function in a way that makes it more involving, more chaotic.

GamesBeat: You’ll be on the Nintendo Wii U as well? Are you going to anything to integrate the Wii U GamePad?

McDevit: I believe you handle menus through it, but I’m not sure of the specifics. We’ll go more into the specifics at the show.

GamesBeat: Is there any Kinect function for the Xbox One?

McDevit: That’s another good question. Most of those details will come out from our tech guys at E3.

GamesBeat: So you’re not really describing exactly what could be different yet.

McDevit: Well, the goal is to make the experience the same. The game is the same. We don’t want to rob any core features from the current generation. The main focus is on upgrading the graphics and effects and immersion.

GamesBeat: Was this harder to get out this year, because you have to do almost a separate set of SKUs for the new consoles?

McDevit: That’s another question for the tech guys. We develop one game, and then we have teams that branch off specifically to handle those different platforms. We develop knowing that we’re going to be making it for all generations. It wasn’t as if we decided to make it for the next generation and then, as an afterthought, downgraded that for the existing consoles. We were always thinking that we had to make this for all generations at once, so we could focus our energy on the things that can be cross-platform as much as possible, and then add to the next generation where we can.