Assassin’s Creed 2 has “Batman-like” bits

Game director discloses 5-7 hours of linear “secret maps”.

By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, October 18, 2009

Speaking to VideoGamesDaily at a recent preview event, Assassin’s Creed 2 game director Benoit Lambert has revealed that Ubisoft’s 15th century action-adventure will contain 5-7 hours of “Batman-like” gameplay.

Lambert criticised Rocksteady Studio’s warmly received Batman: Arkham Asylum for want of originality – “it’s a game with mechanics you know about, that you’ve already experienced in other games” – but admitted that there were similarities between the projects.

“The team in Singapore, thanks to its expertise, brought us all the linear – what we call “secret locations”, linear maps. So when you talk about linearity we do have linear maps, we have five hours of Batman-like settings, where everything is more “set up”.”

These more prescriptive elements were introduced, Lambert explained, to break up the flow of the game.

Death from above.

“Not everything is about killing and stuff, because we want to make sure you get a bit of breath air, changing the pace. It adds a lot to the game experience, for sure. Around 5-7 hours of gameplay.”

Be sure to check out the full interview. The game’s out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 20th November in Europe and 17th November in North America, with a PC version following early next year.