Assassin's Creed: Unity's world tailor-built for co-op

While talking to mission director Bruno St-Andre about the expansion of the Assassins on new-gen (fun fact: now one in four buildings in Paris have accessible, playable interiors), he explained of adapting the core pillars of the series, and how all the focus ultimately interconnected to make the world work for four players at a time.

"Early on we decided it'd be the shared experience. Every development part of Unity was made to favour the cooperation between players, to favour the systems of working together in cooperation and combination of players, different types of player, who have different types of skills and want to exploit them more within the progression system also."

While the game is still Arno's story, the world is fully explorable when playing as group - just some missions will be single player only.

"It's a separate mode," St-Andre confirms when we ask him whether MP and SP feed into each other. "Every mission is about the story of Arno. Some are Brotherhood missions you can take on with your friends, and some are limited to Arno. But the entirety of the game, playing Paris, exploring, collecting stuff, you can do it with your friends four player. Just that some missions are for single player, some are for one to four."

Even combat was overhauled with the intention of making it flow better when fighting alongside friends, with the progression system tailored for players who favour different play styles: "For [combat], we give you more control on the fight moves, and left space for tactical choices when playing co-op and against the enemy. They're going to strategise better against you, be more co-ordinated in strikes."

But in-between there are also tweaks to make the solo adventurer more nimble around the world, which includes, thankfully, a proper stealth mode and dedicated button.

"The player's used to our control scheme, but we had place for improvement. We went deeper in our main pillars. For navigation, we wanted more precision. We've got something called controlled descent, so when going down - RT and B - and when going up - RT and A. So we put more precision on that, more control for the player.... we also dedicated a stealth button, so now you enter stealth mode, so you can take cover on objects."

You can catch the full interview below.