A Crazy Story Behind The Side Missions In The First AC

It turns out that the first Assassin's Creed part had side missions because "the CEO's kid played it".

Ubisoft fight system AI lead Charles Randall shared a fascinating story on Twitter claiming that there's a reason why the team added flag collecting missions and Templar assassinations. 

Originally, they wanted to ship the game without these side missions, but then, "the CEO's kid played the game and said it was boring and there was nothing to do in the game".

Randall and other developers developed the side missions in the main conference building of Montreal's Peck Building in five days.

There was a bug though because of this sprint: players could never complete all of the Templar assassinations in order to get the full 1000 gamerscore. This last one could fall through the world and despawn if played approached him from the wrong angle. The game then considered him dead, but the players wouldn't get the kill. 

"I know it's a miracle that the game didn't just melt your console or whatever," wrote the developer. Make sure to check out his Twitter for more details.