Alexandre-Amancio
Latest
Assassin's Creed: Revelations creative director Alexandre Amancio leaves Ubisoft
Alexandre Amancio has left Ubisoft in order to serve as Chief Creative Officer for Cossette, a marketing company located in Quebec City, Canada. Amancio leaves the developer seven years after joining in 2005. He was most recently credited as the creative director for Assassin's Creed: Revelations and also served as art director for Far Cry 2. This marks the second time in as many years that the Assassin's Creed series' Creative Director has left Ubisoft Montreal, following Patrice Désilets' resignation in 2010. "Video games and advertising have many common elements," Amancio said in a press release issued by Cossette. "In both industries, we are always looking for new ways to engage the consumer to the brand." Sounds to us like Amancio will be right at home in the warm bosom of a marketing agency. We give it two years before Ezio is slammin' back 5-Hour Energy shots between trips to Wells-Fargo and 24-Hour Fitness.
Current Assassin's Creed arc seeking resolution by 2012's end
Though Ubisoft's accounting and marketing departments probably have a greater say in the practice of annualizing Assassin's Creed (y'all keep buying it every year!), the people in charge of the franchise's elaborate fiction have their own impetus in the form of a ticking clock. With Assassin's Creed: Revelations concluding Ezio's extended quest (and the "Embers" animated short providing a dignified epilogue), the plot's modern component -- starring feeble hoodie-hermit Desmond -- is set to run its course by the end of 2012, just in time for next year's AC outing. Creative lead Alexandre Amancio explains it to Eurogamer: "In Assassin's Creed we set up a timeline with this whole end of the world plot of December 2012. That's fast approaching, and the story we have to tell, we obviously need to do it before we arrive at that point." Desmond's tale is far from being the final one in Assassin's Creed, but Amancio believes that having the current protagonist's dilemma linger after calendar 2013 would be "stupid," given the authors' efforts to run parallel to reality. "It would be stupid of us to be centring [sic] a game on a semi-reality and then have that conclusion happen after that date in real life," he says. That's assuming we all survive beyond 2012 anyway.
Ubisoft: Assassin's Creed: Revelations will be, well, revealing
In an interview with the Guardian, Assassin's Creed creative director Alexandre Amancio explains Ubisoft's mindset when creating Revelations and the caution his team is taking with Altair, Ezio, Desmond and their combined Body Mass Index. "Well, Assassin's Creed has been going since 2007 -- the narrative is very rich and complex, so to avoid collapsing under the weight of our own mythology we needed to wrap up a few mysteries and set things up for what is to come. That's what this game is about: we're giving players some answers from Assassin's 2 and Brotherhood, we're completing the destiny of Altair, and we're tying it in to what's coming in 2012. And obviously, our over-arching storyline has to do with the end of the world in 2012 – we need to set up everything for the conclusion of that narrative. In this game, you'll get to understand why Ezio is so important and how his destiny his aligned to Altair's and to Desmond's." It appears Amancio is focused on completing the first arc of the Assassin's Creed series with an emphasis on character development and clarifying the franchise's future, which can't be very vast considering he's counting on the world to end next year.
