Assassin's Creed 3 director: ship tech wasn't ready until Black Flag

Commanding a ship in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag remains a sublime experience, fitting for a game about pirates. By contrast, the sailing missions in Assassin's Creed 3 were not nearly as mechanically refined.

Assassin's Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson said Ubisoft feared the ship technology "wouldn't work" during AC3's development. "There was a whole fear that the tech [for the ships] wouldn't work," he said, and "so it couldn't be a huge part of the main story, because we weren't certain it was going to work."

That caution helps explain why sailing became a central, more polished feature in Black Flag rather than a larger element of Assassin's Creed 3.

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