Unlike Assassin’s Creed Unity, Rogue launched late last year on Xbox 360 and PS3 without a hitch.

Borrowing heavily from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Rogue follows the story of Shay Cormac, an assassin turned Templar. This gives us gives us the opportunity to experience the Assassin’s Creed tale from a new perspective, as Shay hunts down his former allies in order to save the world from destruction.

Aboard his ship, The Morrigan, Shay’s adventures offer players more seafaring hijinks, this time in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The game’s land based action returns us to some familiar locations such as New York and the Davenport homestead from previous games.

Chronologically, for the most part, the story fits in between the events of Black Flag and those of Assassin’s Creed III.

The game wraps up the series’ America-set storyline and as such we come across a few characters that we’ve met before. We find out what happened to former slave, Adewale from the Black Flag standalone DLC, Freedom Cry, and meet up, once more, with Edward Kenway’s son and Conner’s father, Haytham Kenway.

Rogue also serves as a prequel to the events in Assassin’s Creed Unity, the end of Rogue tying onto the beginning of Unity. It’s a very classy handing over of the torch to the new-gen.

Rogue is far from perfect. The main character, Shay’s “orrish” accent is grating. He also completely lacks the charisma of his predecessor, Black Flag’s Edward Kenway. The game mechanics have all been cribbed from Black Flag and the locations are basically a pick ‘n’ mix of those from ACIII and, again, Black Flag.

Fans of Assassin’s Creed’s multiplayer mode will be disappointed by its omission on this outing. Rogue is a single-player affair.

The game’s similarities with Black Flag also work in its favour too, as we get to enjoy some more of those fantastic naval battles. The naval combat has been tweaked a little, providing a more satisfying experience at the expense of bit of realism. The Morrigan is a lot more manoeuvrable than Kenway’s Jackdaw, being able to pretty much turn on a penny.

The new ocean location, the North Atlantic, offers some icy adventures on snow-covered islands, with freezing water that will kill Shay if he swims in it for too long. There’s also icebergs to avoid.

The other watery destination, The River Valley offers up some more temperate locations which, as with the North Atlantic, is packed with side-activates and collectables. As with most of Ubisoft’s games, Rogue features an almost overwhelming amount of things to do from liberating forts to the collection of Viking Sword parts.

The story is good and the setting excellent, especially if you enjoyed Black Flag. Whilst Assassin’s Creed Unity is technically a far superior game, for PC fans Rogue should go a long way towards making up for any issues they may have had with Arno in revolutionary Paris.

The PC version of the game takes the visuals from the PS3 and Xbox360 version and polishes them up, not quite to Unity’s level of fidelity, but certainly on par with some of the recent HD “remasters”.

In any case it was nice to see Rogue running with such crisp and clean graphics.

It’s not just higher-resolution textures, though. There are extra visual effect that were missing from the last-gen versions. The most impressive is the smoke from the cannons during battles. Not only does it look really nice, but it also totally changes naval combat as the thickening smoke obscures the view of your targets.

The game ran on my review rig without fault, as I would expect.

Rogue uses the same assets and configuration of Ubisoft’s Anvil Next engine as the previous last-gen Assassin’s Creed games and as such, doesn’t push the visual envelope in quite the same way as Assassin’s Creed Unity does.

The result is a robust and well-tested game that should run without issue on a fairly decent PC.

As much as I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed Unity, the familiarity offered by Assassin’s Creed Rogue with its sea battles and multiple locations makes it, in its own way a better gaming experience.

With the PC version we finally get to see this unsung hero of the Assassin’s Creed series in its full glory.

Assassin’s Creed Rogue is a must-play game for PC fans of the series, even if Unity left a bad taste in your mouth.

The post Assassin’s Creed Rogue (PC) – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

For the uninitiated, these fictional historic action-adventures tell the tales of a centuries old conflict between the Templar order and the Assassin’s brotherhood.

Viewed in third-person, in each game, players control an assassin who, using exceptional climbing and free-running abilities, can deftly negotiate walls and rooftops. Whilst the favoured weapon of an assassin is a special concealed blade designed for a clean kill, encounters often result in bloody sword fights.

The action is predominantly set in the past, but the actual story in the modern day. Using a device called the Animus, players are experiencing genetic memories, originally from a descendant of the assassins called Desmond Miles and later from harvested DNA.

The over-arching story is somewhat peculiar, involving beings older than mankind and the artifacts that they created. This sci-fi/supernatural element is extended to the assassins themselves who can use an ability called eagle vision to identify persons or objects of interest.

This year sees the series take the leap into the new-gen with the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC release of Assassin’s Creed: Unity. Rather than just abandon their Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 fans, on the same day as they launched Unity, Ubisoft also released Assassins Creed: Rogue for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

I’ve just completed the Assassin’s Creed: Rogue campaign story. With no deadline pressures, I took it at my own pace, I got side-tracked, explored, did a bit of piracy and liberated a few settlements.

Finishing the game took me the best part of thirty hours and I’m still only at 53% complete. Despite what you may have read, Rogue is a huge game and, apart from the lack of a multiplayer mode, it’s certainly a major release for the franchise.

Players take on the role of the assassin-come-Templar, Shay Patrick Cormac. The titular rogue, controlling Shay is a departure for the series, as he switches sides following the accidental destruction of Lisbon by the assassins in 1755.

Released only on the “old” consoles, Rogue borrows heavily from the last couple of Assassin’s Creed games. The use of a ship to get around, the naval and land combat, as well as the use of an ocean map of islands dotted with settlements will all be very familiar to fans.

Fans will recognise some of the locations, like the Homestead and New York City from Black Flag. And this makes perfect sense as Rogue is set between the events of Edward Kenway’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flack and those of the chronologically later Assassin’s Creed III with Conner Kenway.

At a higher level, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue closes out the franchise’s North American saga and, at it’s close, introduces us to the next chapter of the series, Assassin’s Creed: Unity.

Whilst I was hoping to see more of an ideological balance introduced into the series, with a Templar protagonist in Shay Cormac, I still felt that the Templars were being portrayed as the bad guys. This was a bit of a missed opportunity and a chance to really blur the edges of the over-arching Assassin’s Creed story.

Instead it seems that Shay is continuously being manipulated by the still very Machiavellian Templars. I would have like them to have been be portrayed in a better light than they are in the game, whilst having the assassin brotherhood shown to be a little darker (they ARE assassin’s for cripes sake).

Still, we are given a treat of a tale, with Shay coming across plenty of familiar characters, both from history and from the Assassin’s Creed saga; answering many questions left unanswered in the previous instalments.

As usual, the story involves a race to find some precursor technology, this but this time it’s the Templars trying to stop the assassin’s from unwittingly destroying the world. This is a tale of betrayal and broken allegiances as Shay hunts down his former allies, who in turn are out to kill him.

It’s a solid plot, and one that seemed slightly more coherent to the usual interesting, but esoteric, mess that we get in the Assassin’s Creed games.

The present-day parts of the game, set in Abstergo’s Monteal HQ, were not too grating either. Similar to Black Flag, these section put players in the role of an Abstergo employee.

This time, following a virus attack, players are tasked with unlocking corrupted memories featuring- you guessed it, Shay Cormac. Basically this means running between servers and the animus console following the instruction of your boss, the head of Abstergo’s entertainment division, Melanie Lemay.

Unlocking the servers and computers is carried out via an interesting spherical puzzle system. Unlocking computers is option, but reveals more background information on the characters and situations occurring in and around the main story.

Whilst I consider Rogue to be, very much, a fully-fledged Assassin’s Creed game and not simply a distraction like Adewale’s Freedom Cry or Averline’s Liberation, the developers have recycled a lot of previously constructed game assets and activities. It would be easy at this point for me to latch onto this lack of originality (as many have done) and use it as a stick to beat the game down.

But, come on, this is an Assassin’s Creed game, if you want to be cynical about it, I could easy argue that Ubisoft have been selling the same game to punters for the last decade. I could say the same thing about the similarly derivative Far Cry games and even Watchdogs for the matter. I have no idea why climbing towers seems so appealing to Ubisoft developers, but I wish that they’d just let it go.

So, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue rather shamelessly borrows from its predecessors. This means that we get to visit New York again, albeit before the great fire of 1776, engage in naval battles and liberate forts.

Yes, once again sailing plays a huge part in the proceedings, which isn’t a bad thing. Shay’s ship, The Morrigan, is a lot more maneuverable than Edward Kenway’s Jackdaw from Black Flag. It can turn on a penny, which probably throws both historic accuracy and the laws of fluid dynamics out the window but it makes naval combat so much more enjoyable. More on that in a moment.

No, this is where I’m going to deviate from other reviews.

Whilst I was very keen to move onto Arno’s adventures in Assassin’s Creed: Unity, I didn’t have an editor breathing down my neck, so I could take things a little easier. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue, can be powered through, completing just enough to get to the end, but that’s not how the game was designed to be played.

It’s a bit like just eating the cheese of the top of a pizza, it may be tasty, but you are missing out.

Like previous games, Rogue has an absolutely overwhelming amount of optional side activities and collectables, most of which are identical to those in Black Flag.

And most of them are bloody repetitive, too. Would it really have taken that much effort to add a bit of variety in some of the animations; like when you pick a fight to open up the bar in a settlement?

But, if you want to upgrade your ship and Shay’s equipment, you need to at least dabble in some of these side activities.

Completionists are going to need to find every treasure chest and Animus fragment, but there are a ton of more useful and more interesting activities to do. I’m going to concentrate on the activates that I found useful and/or fun. I’ll leave you to discover the rest.

The scattered treasure maps hold the location of Templar keys, which in turn can be used to unlock the Templar armour. There’s also a load of Viking swords to find that unlock the location of the Viking armour. OK, being just cosmetic upgrades, they are probably more effort than they are worth.

The most useful activity in the game is also the most fun to do, the naval combat. First introduced in Assassin’s Creed III, the ship-to-ship battles came into their own in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, adding the random encounters that made that game such a joy to play.

The Assassin’s Creed games are heady adventures, thick in plot, politics and esoteric weirdness. There’s a lot to take in and it can make you very weary.

If all double-crossing and political intrigue gets a bit too much there’s nothing better than taking to the high sea to blow other ships up.

I found it extremely difficult to sail past a French ship without taking pot shots at it, often drawing the attention of other enemy ships. With a bit of pillaging out of my system I found myself able to pick up the story missions and continue, rather refreshed.

Of course, naval combat plays an integral part of the main story as well. At certain times in the game, when starting missions, I was told that I should upgrade my ship before I proceeded. Most of the time I didn’t and got away with it. It was only when I finally got outgunned I decided to get The Morrigan all tooled up.

The Morrigan is already a formidable vessel. It’s got cannons on both sides that reload like lightening, long-range mortar cannons, front firing explosive shot, flaming oil from the back and a rapid-firing Puckle gun to hit exposed weak-spots on damaged enemy ship.

Whilst at first those battles will be hard-won, carefully planned ship upgrades will slowly turn your ship into a formidable vessel. The power to disable an enemy ship from afar is much more important this time, as enemy captains won’t think twice about boarding your ship, if you get too close.

Victory results from either sinking the enemy or by disabling them.

Disabled ships can be boarded. Once the required about of crew members have been dispatched (either using the Puckle gun, pistol or up close in melee combat), as before, players are presented with three choices: use the ship to repair The Morrigan, salvage the ship for cash, or add the ship to Cormac’s fleet for use in the Naval Campaign mini-game (more on that later).

With two huge areas to sail, the lush river valley and the freezing waters of the North Atlantic, there’s loads of ocean-based mischief to be had. Not only are there plenty of French ships to attack, there’s also treasure ships to plunder and slave ships to liberate.

Too much plundering and piracy will send the bounty hunters after you. Initially a formidable opponent, are a few upgrades some will placed shot will have them dead in the water.

An odd game mechanic that’s totally unrealistic, but useful when dealing with multiple enemies, is the ability to board a disabled ship in the middle of a battle. It’s like the other enemy ships wait for you to run through their allies before recommencing the fight.

This exploit, is very handy when taking on one of the legendary ship battles. Recommended only for players that have completely upgraded The Morrigan, these elite opponents still proved to be too tough for me to beat.

As well as other ships, there are also some land targets that can be attacked whilst at sea.

Like in Black Flag, there are a handful of enemy forts to capture in both the River Valley and the North Atlantic areas. To defeat the forts, first the defensive towers need to be taken out by The Morrigan’s cannons and mortar rounds, whilst avoiding return mortar fire from land.

With the towers down the land assault can begin, fighting through the enemy to kill the commander. As fun as they are to ransack, if you’ve captured one fort you’ve see all the game offers as the experience is pretty much the same for each.

The same can be said of the gang headquarters and liberation of French settlements; you go in, kill the targets, free the prisoner and cut down the flag. Completing these side activities does unlock building restorations and other opportunities in the area, which all help you in your quest for cash and upgrades.

The building restorations are another “classic” Assassin’s Creed activity and require materials gained from a bit of piracy. Renovated building bring in a regular income. These funds are accessible from the ship’s cabin and must be regularly withdrawn as, for reasons unknown, the bank only has limited space.

The biggest fault of the side activities is just how repetitive they become. It’s a problem that the series has had since the very first game.

The developers never force players to carry out the side tasks, but they really need to be done in tandem with the main story, or else you are left with hours and hours of comparatively dull content to plough through. I believe they are there to give players a break from the main missions, a quick distraction as it were.

But, because Rogue’s gameplay is so similar to that of last year’s Black Flag’s the repetitive nature of the side activities is even more apparent this time.

There are, however, some new activities that acknowledge the protagonist’s role as a Templar. In a nod to the Assassin’s Creed multiplayer (omitted from this iteration), members of the brotherhood, lay in wait, often in plain sight, to attack Shay. Their presence is shown by a red border around the screen and the sound of whispers.

Using eagle vision they can be detected and killed before they attack. Stumble past them and they will leap at you causing plenty of damage.

Another activity that is a reversal of the norm are the pigeon intercepts. In my head, I assume these are the same pigeons that we’ve previously used to send our assassin brothers on missions in previous games.

This time, if you catch the pigeon, you have the opportunity to save the assassin’s target.

First you need to find the target to defend (using your eagle vision) and then locate and kill the team of assassins. There’s a timer until the assassins attack, so they really need to be dispatched before it runs out, else you will be madly fending them off as they descend on the target.

The Navel Campaign mini-game from Black Flag returns once more. Again, it is a good source of extra funds, even if it does get a bit boring after a while.

The mini-game involves securing trade routes and sending your fleet (of ships captured during naval battles in the main game) on trade missions. Routes are secured by selecting a group of ships to battle with the enemy ships.

The mini-game is 2D, based around a route map and a battle screen depicting the warring ships in a stylised fashion.

Basically it’s a numbers game with the more powerful ships winning battles and succeeding in mission. A success percentage is given in each case. After a while you end up just clicking buttons. There’s little fun or strategy in the mini-game, just a financial reward that can be used to upgrade The Morrigan and Shay’s equipment.

A couple of other activities that I enjoyed in Black Flag are also present in Rogue: whaling and hunting. This time out, I didn’t really need to do either, instead I bought the material needed to upgrade my equipment, instead.

Using skins obtained by hunting animals allows you to craft upgrades for Shay. You can spend hours stalking the required animals for their skins, or simply earn yourself enough money to pick them up in a shop.

There’s hours and hours of gameplay in Assassin’s Creed: Rogue. The story is great, perfectly filling in the blanks from the last two games whilst setting up the next. The main missions are good and the absence of those awful tailing missions from Black Flag are, for me, very welcome.

As is usually the case with Assassin’s Creed games Rogue is still bloated with many very mediocre side activities with a few little gems among them. Whilst I enjoyed most of them, I found myself undertaking many of the tasks because I felt I needed to rather than because I had to.

Nevertheless, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue surprised me.

Whilst Shay isn’t the cheeky chappie that Edward Kenway was, he’s a step up from Conner. Plot and gameplay-wise it felt like a proper Assassin’s Creed game and not the Liberation-style spin-off that I thought it was going to be.

I really enjoyed my time with Shay Cormac and the crew of The Morrigan. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue is a worthy send-off for the last-generation of consoles. It’s an absolutely essential purchase for fans of the series and shouldn’t be overlooked in favour of Assassin’s Creed: Unity.

The post Assassin’s Creed: Rogue – Review (Second Opinion) appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

But it was – and while the verdict is drifting in on Unity, it seems as though not enough attention has been given to Rogue – which in my opinion, is a shame. Rogue offers a robust new storyline, some tried and true mechanics and an overall tight package that is well worth playing.

Unlike many of the past Assassin’s Creed games, the journey of Rogue begins with our hero, Shay McCormac, already well entrenched in the Assassin brotherhood.

Shay’s an Irishman living in rural New York state, under the tutelage of Achilles (a younger man than he appears in AC3) and living amongst a thriving colony of Assassins in the newly formed American colonies. A lot of locales from Assassin’s Creed 3 make an appearance because of this original setting – a fraction of the America Connor called home – but it never feels like needless recycling of content, given how necessary it is fit the plot of the game.

All is well in the world of Shay, but from the get-go, there’s something a little out of place with his interactions and place among the Assassins.

The game constantly comes back to themes of fragmentation, shattering and dislocation, and Shay never seems to feel comfortable in his skin until a few hours into the game.

Unfortunately, Shay isn’t really to blame for what happens next – bad Assassin’s Intel results in him mucking around with Precursor technology and setting off an earthquake which kills thousands of people. Feeling betrayed by the order that sent him to this, Shay flees with the manuscript, nearly dying in the process, in order to make sure that the Assassins don’t seek out further technology and cost more innocent lives.

Shay in recovered from a near icy grave by kindly General Munroe, who seems to be preaching the values that Shay is looking for – namely the safety of innocents and the stopping of the Assassins goals. It soon transpires that Munroe is a Templar, working under the guidance of one Haytham Kenway, and despite the the fact that Shay has been battling with Templars for his entire adult life, they welcome him into their fold, with the shared goal of eliminating those that wronged Shay and saving the world.

Or so it would seem.

Moral grey areas abound Shay throughout his journey through North America, he remains constantly unsure about the validity of the path that he’s on.

This doesn’t stop him from carrying out Templar orders, mind you, but there’s a constant reluctance throughout the game that makes Shay a tortured protagonist, that’s unlike any we’ve seen in the series before. Cameo appearances by other characters from the series add weight to this emotional rollercoaster.

When it comes to gameplay, Rogue is a bit of a combination of elements from the last two in the series.

Settings and visuals are very much pulled from AC3 – snowy landscapes, beautiful North American vistas – but the engine the game runs on is clearly Black Flag – with a slightly improved sailing mechanic, and a new ship to upgrade like you did the Jackdaw.

These segments are always great fun, and keep the world Shay inhabits vast and interesting. Not everything is recycled, mind you.

Playing against Assassins rather than as one offers up a wealth of new gameplay challenges, especially interesting is the addition of ‘stalkers’, hidden assassins that hide in all the places that you’d traditionally use to stalk your prey (ledges, bushes, hay bails) looking jump out and attack you mid-mission.

The greatest strength that Rogue has, having just finished it, is as a piece of superb world-building.

We get given closure on characters we’ve met before, and Rogue ties nicely into it’s partnership with Unity in the closing chapters (would recommend playing this before Unity if you have both).

As things outside the Animus get more and more confusing (I won’t even touch on this here), it’s nice to see storylines and links with the Assassin’s and Templars get a bit more sensible and clear along the timelines of the world.

If you’re a fan of the series, AC: Rogue offers a great look into the world you’ve already become invested in, and offers a new take on the story that might shift your perception of the conflict between the two warring factions you’ve become one-sided on over the course of half a dozen games.

While it’s not as long as Black Flag, there’s enough additional content and heart to make this one well worth investing in, especially if it boils down to this or Unity.

The post Assassin’s Creed: Rogue – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Both games are out on the same day so fans with both new and last-gen consoles have some tough decisions ahead!

With Unity upping the ante with some stellar visuals, and take it from me- they are stellar, it would be easy to overlook Assassin’s Creed Rogue on 360 and PS3.

But it would be foolish to do so.

For the last seven years, and across seven games, we have followed members of the Assassin’s brotherhood as they have battled against the Templars. In Assassin’s Creed Rogue, for the first time, we get to witness the centuries-old conflict through the eyes of a Templar as he hunts Assassins.

At last weekend’s PAX AUS event in Melbourne I caught up with Michael Hampden, senior designer on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and now the lead game designer on Assassin’s Creed Rogue, for a chat about the game ahead of its 13th November release.

Darren: Back in Australia again.

Michael: Yes.

Darren: With another nautical-themed Assassin’s Creed.

Michael: Absolutely.

Darren: So this time we are swapping sides and playing as a Templar. Now, how will Assassin’s Creed Rogue affect the series’ dynamic, what with the Templars traditionally being portrayed as the series’ bad guys?

Michael: Well, I think that’s the thing that makes it really interesting. It’s kind of a grey area, isn’t it? You’ve been seeing the franchise so far from the Assassin’s point-of-view and maybe it made it seem like the Templars are the bad guys. But this time you are going to see things from the Templar’s point-of-view and you may have some questions in the end. You are going to have to decide for yourself who you think the good guys and the bad guys are.

Darren: That is going to be interesting. How is Rogue going to feel to play? Is it going to feel like a new Assassin’s Creed or is it going to be an extension with a similar sort of experience that we had in Black Flag?

Michael: Well, I think in a lot of ways it’s going to be similar to Black Flag. There’s a lot of features developed for Black Flag that we are kind of taking to the next evolutionary level in Rogue. Things like the naval combat- we’ve made it more dynamic. We’ve basically made it better to play and more fun.

One example of the new navel combat features is the Puckle gun, where you can have an automatic machine gun on your ship, you free aim with the right stick and can use it to destroy weak points on the enemy ships. You’ve also got burning oil that you can leave behind you in a line. It sets the enemy ships on fire, giving you more strategic options in combat. And it’s just a lot more fun.

Darren: I played Rogue at the EB show in Sydney last month and the naval combat did feel a lot more fluid. I don’t know whether that was just because it’s been a long time since I played Black Flag, but certainly I was straight in there, getting results and that was pretty cool. Why is this game not coming out on new-gen consoles? It just seems a shame, you know?

Michael: Well, you know we developed two games this year. First let me talk about Assassin’s Creed Unity. Assassin’s Creed Unity has been developed from the ground up for next-generation consoles. We couldn’t have developed Assassin’s Creed Unity to that level of quality we wanted and continue to have it on last-gen. However, we know we have a ton of fans that are still on last-gen and they really want an Assassin’s Creed game this year. So we developed Rogue to fill that need.

There’s a couple of other reasons, as well. It was the right time for us to tell the Templar story. Also we had a really good opportunity on last-gen consoles to fill in the gap between what happened between Assassin’s Creed IV and Assassin’s Creed III. In Assassin’s Creed IV you leave the brotherhood in a great state in looks like the North American brotherhood is going to thrive and when you play Assassin’s Creed III the brotherhood is shattered and our fans are wondering what happened, well Assassin’s Creed Rogue tells you what happened.

Darren: So it’s more of an offshoot, or an epilogue to what we’ve seen before?

Michael: Assassin’s Creed Rogue finishes the trilogy in North America, so it really closes the story between Conner Kenway, Haytham Kenway and Edward Kenway

Darren: That sounds good. I assume that having two Assassin’s Creed games in one year is just a special thing for this year or is this going to be the norm? Are Ubisoft going to try and outdo Activision?

Michael: Honestly, all I can say is that I can’t really speculate on the future of the franchise. I think that this was the right thing for us to do this year, but I can’t speculate any further.

Darren: I’ve got to get some sleep, you know. So does anything in Rogue tie-in with Unity?

Michael: Absolutely, there is a mystery in Unity that you will only know the answer to if you play Assassin’s Creed Rogue.

Darren: It’s nothing to do with that WWII trailer from yesterday morning?

Michael: I can’t give you any information other than to say if you complete Assassin’s Creed Rogue you will find an answer to one of the mysteries.

Darren: Very cool. Does Rogue advance the modern-day story at all?

Michael: Yep, absolutely, there’s a present-day sequence and, like you did in Black Flag, you are going to learn a lot of interesting things about Abstergo and other things about the Assassin’s Creed universe. You’ll maybe learn things about other characters from previous Assassin’s Creed games. So for our fans, especially our hardcore fans, there’s a lot of really interesting stuff to find in the present day.

Darren: Finally, now, what part of Assassin’s Creed Rogue are you most proud of?

Michael: Well, if I can say two things. I am Lead Game Designer and I was leading the team on the North Atlantic world. The North Atlantic is an amazing place with all these ice ingredients, like icebergs that you can destroy. When you destroy an iceberg it creates a ripple wave that can actually take out enemy ships like schooners and gunboats. It’s got ice sheets, so you can use an ice-breaker ram to break through these ice sheets and explore long lost areas. There’s also ice walls, blizzards, snow tornadoes and all kinds of crazy weather and stuff. I’m very proud of that.

I’m also very proud of the new ship that we have, it’s called The Morrigan; it’s a sloop-of-war and it’s got those new weapons that we talked about earlier. And it’s so much fun to sail. So the naval combat and the North Atlantic world are two things that I’m most proud of.

Darren: Excellent. Well I’m certainly looking forward to playing it. I just loved the naval combat in Black Flag and I’m keen to get back on the ocean for another go at it. Thanks ever so much for taking the time out to talk to me and best of luck with the game.

Michael: Thank you, I appreciate it.

Assassin’s Creed Rogue is out on November 13th for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Assassin’s Creed Unity is also out on November 13th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC.

The post Developer Interview: Michael Hampden – Assassin’s Creed Rogue – Feature appeared first on Shane the Gamer.