04-08-13 Artist Talk - Assassin's Creed III - The American Revolution

04-08-13 Assassin's Creed III - The American Revolution

Corey May

Professor Ken Cohen hosted this lecture and Assassin's Creed III screen writer, Corey May.  Corey May is co-owner of Sekretagent Productions.  He graduated for Harvard in 1999.  Professor Cohen ldiscussed the guidelines for the lecture and interview.  The topic was on the representation of the American Revolution, accuracy of art as well as the broader meaning.  We watched clips from the game and discussed point of view and accuracy of the game.

Corey  was interviewed by the class on Skype during the second half of the lecture.  A few of the questions related to why he choose the Revolutionary period.  Corey said it was the narrative or theme and technology regarding the weapons and setting.  The unexpected consequence is that the topic relates to a large audience.  He said the marketing people loved the idea of the large audience for the game.

May said that they picked the particular events by the public knowledge of the events.  Some events were not chosen for many reasons and he was not able to comment on the reasons why they did not choose a certain event.  The team strives to be accurate although they use some artistic licence.  Technically the scenes were as accurate as possible from clothing and locations.  Experts were advising the team on the correct information.   Dates and locations were accurate, architecture and language as much as they could document.  Their goal was to be accurate and fun.  

Corey noted a special emphasis to first person documentation and sources on as many of the characters as possible.  May described the choice of the large amount of ethnic characters reflected what was happening at the time.  This variety of characters made a richer script.   One interesting note was that Professor Cohen noted that Corey May did his research.  Cohen knew this fact because of the terminology and words May related during his question and answer session.  Many of these game development ideas are crucial to make an intresting video game.