Sometimes it’s researching online, finding the people who know the time period well and just contacting them, asking them to help join us or help feed us information. “We had Egyptologists on the team, and we have historians embedded with us on the floor. The backbone of all content in the game is based on research and working with experts in the field. Of course we knew we wanted Cleopatra and Caesar, that was a no-brainer, but then knowing precisely what the events were was a lot more complex.”Īccording to game director, Ashraf Ismail, the uncertainties of the ancient setting have given the development team more opportunity to be creative and to define elements themselves, “but always with a foundation of research and credible history”, he says. “We don’t necessarily know which events and places we want, but we research encyclopaedias, then other books, then we watch movies and TV series to see how the entertainment industry has tackled the subject. “We start with a very general idea for a time period,” explains franchise historian Maxime Durand. How do you construct a 3D space that isn’t just a museum of ancient buildings, but a living sociocultural reconstruction? And how do you even settle on a specific moment in history?

The first concern for Ubisoft Montreal, the 3,000-strong development studio that’s been creating Assassin’s Creed titles since 2007, was how to breathe life into a long dead civilisation.

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