Assassin's Creed 3 developer talks animals and AI

Assassin's Creed 3's creative director and Aussie ex-pat Alex Hutchinson has spoken to ausgamers.com about the new features we can expect from the upcoming American Revolution sneak-and-slaughter title.

"To us, animals are the 'crowd' of the wilderness," Hutchinson says. "Players can obviously hunt the animals, but we really want people to immerse themselves in the tracking and trapping elements of interacting with animals. In a sense, we want players to assassinate animals more than just shoot them: this will result in different quality skins and other objects which can be sold but also used to satisfy side-quests in the game."

Aw! Hutchinson goes on to say that if you mercilessly slaughter enough animals you'll be invited to join the merciless animal slaughter animal club. "If the player hunts a lot, then the game will notice and send a character to meet them, who will basically say, 'You seem like a good shot with that bow, have you thought of joining the hunting club?'"

Animals aren't the only residents of Assassin's Creed 3 to received the developer's love - Hutchinson says that the people will now act more convincingly. "The biggest additions have been to allow crowd member to be attracted to areas or interactions, and then to leave those and begin another action in sequence. No longer will you be able to watch people stay in a conversation for hours. Eventually they'll go on their way."

There's another big feature that's been added to the crowd behaviour dynamics, but Hutchinson isn't able to talk about it. Maybe there's a mini-game where the whole crowd suddenly becomes completely suicidal, and you have to direct their actions ala Lemmings.

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