Assassin's Creed's Rome takes 'hours' to cross

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood's one-city setting, Rome is big enough that it'll take you "hours" to cross on foot, Ubisoft Montreal designer, Patrick Plourde told CVG.

Speaking in a recent interview (read part one now), the Brotherhood designer said that Rome was simply "too big" to include in the last game.


"We actually went to Italy two years ago to do a scouting trip to take pictures for references. When we saw the city of Rome we said ok, this place is just too big and we'd rather we have Venice and Florence which are very true to pure renaissance." He added: "We said Rome would have to be brought in later.

"To bring in a twist instead of having a couple of medium size cities, relatively speaking, we said we're going to build this one big playground. It's as large as a Kingdom and the different districts feel like different cities.

"At that time, the original city walls from the classical period were still standing but inside the city walls were fields, crops, and abandoned areas. Then a smaller medieval down-town part and there was of course the Vatican, but it wasn't even built, there wasn't even the huge St. Peters square."

Plourde explained that in order to navigate the "very big" city the developer's introduced inner-city horse travel in Brotherhood.

"It's going to feel very big," he said, "that's why we're bringing the horse and allowing it to be in the city so we can explore. On foot it would take in-game hours."

Ubisoft put out a brand new Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood trailer (and a release date) last week.

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