Assassins Creed Syndicates producer talks twins, Thames and trains

Much like every other game this year, Assassin's Creed Syndicate will be pounding the cobbled streets of Victorian London. The decision to modernise the latest entry has brought with it both challenges and new avenues of freedom (hello, rope launcher), but that hasn't stopped Ubisoft Quebec from including the series' first dual protagonists, each with their own play style. In a previous issue of Official Xbox Magazine, senior producer François Pelland discusses what it takes to drag Assassin's Creed into the 19th century…

You have characters, and also two play styles. What’s the reasoning behind this split?
I remember two years ago we started to think about how we could tell a modern story in a modern era, and we decided at that point to tell the story of a pair of twins with very different personalities. Jacob is an extremely charismatic, very confident personality. He’s a leader. On the other side, you have Evie who tends to be more cautious, she’s more on the strategic side, she has stealth-specific skills that are specific to her. It’s that duality between the two within the story that really makes those characters stand out. I guess that it was a creative direction, it was a story and narrative direction right from the start.

Can you jump on trains in free-roam, if you time it right?
Oh yeah, absolutely. At Victoria station, for example, you can climb on top of a train. You can unhinge wagons, you can stay on the main carriage, and you can go all across the city, you know, by staying on there. It’s a cool fast travel tool if you want to explore the city.

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