Ubisoft Had Five Days to Add Side Quests to Assassin’s Creed After CEO’s Son Called the Game Boring

The FPS Review may receive a commission if you purchase something after clicking a link in this article.

Image: Ubisoft

Here’s a funny story for fans (or haters) of the original Assassin’s Creed and how things can go horribly, frustratingly wrong during game development. According to former Ubisoft employee Charles Randall, he and a small team of other programmers were persuaded to seal themselves into a room for five nightmarish days after CEO Yves Guillemot’s son deemed the game boring just days before it was supposed to go gold. Incredibly, Randall and his team not only managed to extend Assassin’s Creed playtime by generating numerous side quests in just a few days, but they did it without introducing any serious bugs.

“So we’re all ready to ship the game, first submission goes pretty well, and then the CEO’s kid played the game and said it was boring, and there was nothing to do in the game,” explained Randall. “So my lead comes to me and he says, ‘so, we have to add a bunch of side activities into the game.'”

“He says, ‘We have to put all these side missions into the game in five days, and they have to be bug free because the build is going to be burned directly to disc and released to retail,'” Randall continued. “So that’s how myself and… 4? or 5? other people ended up in the main conference building of Montreal’s Peck Building, which is normally only accessible with a special door card, and it was only us who had access.”

Randall said that the entire experience was “a blur,” but it went really well aside from one minor hiccup that prevented some players from getting a 100-percent completion rate. “…there was one bug where sometimes you could never complete all the Templar assassinations, and you’d have to restart your game to try again,” admitted Randall.

“So it turns out one of the Templars were parented to the wrong sector. If you approached the Templar from the wrong director, he fell through the world and was despawned, which didn’t give you credit for the kill but stored him into the save game as dead. No more spawning.”

Thanks, DSOGaming.

Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

Recent News