Assassin's Creed to "focus on the core, make it awesome"

We talked to senior producer Francois Pelland during E3 about the work that's going into Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, from the new rope launcher, to the twin lead characters, through to how they're planning to make up for previous mistakes made in the franchise.

One of the most notable additions, and something that could have a profound impact on the way players approach traversal and verticality in Assassin's Creed, is the rope launcher coming in Syndicate.

"Really quickly in play-tests people loved it," Pelland explained. "People loved the fluidity, how fast they can bring the player up and across the streets, so it's really a tool for the player to use to create his own... I'm sure when you played the stronghold, I'm sure that the way you played it with the rope launcher was very different from any other one that played it, because there's a lot of possibilities."

Of course the headline feature in the new game, beyond the London setting, is the new sibling leads, Evie and Jacob. While we had a chance to play as Jacob during E3, we were interested to hear more about Evie and what she'll bring to the table:

"So the player first is going to be able to play the entirety of the open world either within Jacob or within Evie, so that's for him to choose. Within the main sequence, or the main storyline, we'll drive him towards Evie or Jacob depending on how we want to tell the story. So each of them have a shared skill tree, but it's true that on both sides we have, for Jacob for example, we have very specific combat skills, and for Evie very specific stealth skills," Pelland said, before later adding that "they share the same weapon sets."

Syndicate is a big game for the franchise, especially after the issues experienced by many players following the launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity. With the studio staying away from distractions like multiplayer, Ubisoft are hoping to deliver something more polished this time.

"One thing that we do as a company and as a studio is that, I like to say that it's a learning machine. So we make a lot of good things, we make sometimes mistakes, and this year we decided to really focus on the investment that we've done over the past few years. So when we think of navigation, stealth, fight; we wanted to polish those experiences and make sure that, like I said, it's the core of Assassin's Creed, it's what players like, it's what players feel comfortable doing, so that's what we wanted to do, focus on the core, make it awesome and create a great game."

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate is due to land on PC, PS4 and Xbox One later this year. You can read our hands-on impressions of the game right here.