A former Assassin’s Creed developer has revealed that the original games’ horses are essentially “just a screwed up, twisted human skeleton”, along with other heartbreaking development details.
Game developer Charles Randall explains on Twitter that the team had to improvise when creating the horses for the game due to technical limitations. As such, they mangled the model of a human skeleton to make it look like a horse (thanks, RPS (opens in a new tab)). “Shout out to the amazing animators and editors who made this guy look like a horse,” Randall tweets.
Ubisoft also did not have the budget for a custom skeleton or mesh for a one-armed character named Malik, leading the developers to flip one of his arms around to give the illusion that the appendage was missing. “I guess if you could get the camera to focus on him, you’d see a tiny wrinkled arm inside the bicep,” he adds.
Also, the horse in AC1 was just a screwed up, twisted human skeleton, because our toolchain only worked with bipeds in 3ds max. Shout out to the amazing animators and riggers who made that guy look like a horse!June 23, 2022
My favorite story is how Ubisoft treated players who left the play area of a level. They couldn’t, so the game was programmed to kill your character if he ever managed to escape the level limits. “Up until that point, he always said ‘If all else fails, kill the player,'” says Randal. “I was super happy to finally be able to put it into practice.” Drink.
This isn’t the first time Randall has shared stories about the development of Assassin’s Creed. In 2020, he revealed that Assassin’s Creed has secondary content because Yves Guillemot’s son played it before release and thought he was boring, leading to a five-day struggle to implement the new content.
If you’re looking for other development details, we reported on how a pivotal Fallout 3 DLC moment hinged on an illusory mansion that constantly explodes today.
Where is the original range in the best assassin’s creed games? Click the link to find out.
