1666: Amsterdam interview – Assassin’s Creed creator on why he avoids the series

GameCentral speaks with the creative director behind the original Assassin’s Creed about the origins of 1666: Amsterdam, using generative AI, and the decision to do early access. 

Patrice Désilets is best known for being the creative director on the first two Assassin’s Creed titles and Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, but for his latest game, he’s debuting an IP he’s been trying to get off the ground for 16 years. 

1666: Amsterdam began life at THQ Montreal in 2010, but development was suspended after Ubisoft bought the studio and unceremoniously fired Désilets. This led to a lawsuit over the rights to the IP, which was eventually settled in 2016. 

Désilets won the rights, but it’s still been a long road to making 1666: Amsterdam a reality – with its development prolonged by the pandemic. It now represents the second title from his studio, Panache Digital Games, after the 2019 survival game Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. 

Although it’s not an easy game to describe, 1666: Amsterdam definitely has the bones of Désilets’ previous work – where you volley between stealth and action in a sandbox environment. This time, however, it comes with roguelike elements, witches, and playable cats.

Ahead of the game’s early access launch on August 25, we sat down with Désilets to talk about his relationship with the Assassin’s Creed franchise today, why he keeps coming back to multiple timelines, and the cancelled Prince Of Persia remake. 

GC: 1666: Amsterdam has existed in some form since 2010. How different is the game we see today versus what you started at THQ? 

PD: Oh it’s totally different. The only thing between the two that remains is 1999 and 1666, and Amsterdam. But it wasn’t a witch. It was [originally] my game after Assassin’s Creed. Now it’s my game after Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. 

GC: So when did the witch element come into it? 

PD: When I went back to it in 2020. After I shipped Ancestors, I went back and said, ‘OK now is the time to do it’. [The game] is about the devil but I didn’t want to *be* the devil. But what would represent a cool character in the devil universe? Ah, the witches. Quickly [I said], ‘let’s do to the witches what I did to the assassins’; to have a witch as a main character that’s badass in the style of games that I make. So it started in January 2020 with the witches. 

GC: This project has existed for a long time and has been caught between legal battles – what has been your driving motivator to get this over the finish line? Is there a sense of unfinished business? 

PD: I guess so. Maybe it’s because when it all went down at the beginning, I said I’m going to fight to get it back. And then I did get it back, so I was like, ‘OK so, I guess now I need to do it.’ As soon as I finished Ancestors and I had a team, I kinda [thought], OK my team can do open world, let’s do it. Let’s have fun with it. Let’s work on this and make it a success, I hope. But I guess… I committed myself. 

I got the rights to a game that people know about. Even though it’s not that big yet, people knew about the game. So I have the rights to a thing people know about, that’s big in our day and age. The proof is when I went on stage at Summer Game Fest and I said, ‘It’s there!’ And people were like, ‘Holy cow he’s doing it! He’s crazy!’ But this is also why… I’ve got a business to run at the end of the day. So I have an IP, and having an IP creates a jumpstart. So I had to do it. 

GC: You’re juggling multiple timelines here, just like Assassin’s Creed, is there a reason you keep coming back to that motif? Is it just a fun storytelling device? 

PD: It’s everything you said, yes. I feel it’s a fun narrative device. I feel [time] is also something that as humans we cannot control yet. It’s the only thing we don’t control and it drives us crazy. Time moves forward, and the rest we control as much as we can. So playing with it in a game – even though it’s linear and it’s not like you’re controlling time in the game – this idea of going to the past and the future, it’s a fantasy for humans. I like that. 

There’s only one game in my career that time is not part of the structure, the Donald Duck game [2000’s Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers] that I did. The first game [involving time] was 1999’s Hype: The Time Quest. There were four time periods and the main quest of the character; he was thrown back into the past and he had to find a way to come back to his own time. 

GC: I’m only familiar with your work from Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time onwards, so I didn’t realise it went back that far. That’s crazy. Is that just a coincidence? 

PD: [laughs] I guess so! I was 23 at the time and now I’m f***ing 52 and I’m still doing games with multiple time periods, and characters with brooms, or knights, jumping around, using magic. I’ve been doing the same game for 30 years now. That’s crazy. 

GC: [laughs] there are some differences… 

PD: Some differences! Somebody will eventually have analysed everything and [they’ll say], ‘The dude is not original whatsoever’ [laughs]. 

GC: I wanted to ask about the early access aspect. Why did you want to take that approach? You don’t often see it with single-player games. 

PD: You generally don’t see what we’re proposing. Some people say, ‘Oh you shouldn’t do it’. [But if] you’re telling me not to do it, then I’m going to do it [laughs]. It’s different. It’s a narrative driven game in early access but there is a toy component of it where you can have fun – you can put the story aside if you want to and discover using your abilities. But the narrative will be pretty much on us. And eventually we’ll come up with big updates of the narrative, new missions. But then on the toy level of things – the mechanics, the systems – we’re going to finish our game together. 

For me, it’s always been the vision of Panache. I’m an old monkey. I come from a time in the video game industry where we would give you a disc and there was nothing we could do. That was it. And now it’s not this time anymore. We can update the game. And on PC I can do early access, and it’s the best. 

Ancestors was supposed to be done like that. For multiple reasons, we finished something and we gave it to you but that’s why it’s called volume one. We’ve got a volume two ready, done and designed, and a volume three – and that was the idea. Eventually we’ll go back to Ancestors. 

GC: Do you know how long it’s going to be in early access? 

PD: We looked around and we noticed that the average time in early access is one year. So it’d probably be at least one year. 

GC: There’s been some generative AI controversy around this game in relation to assets in the prologue demo, which you’ve since removed. What’s your view on using generative AI in development? 

PD: I’ve got to be careful with what I say… we use it in development and in the final product we’ll make sure everything that’s in the game has been retouched by a human. 

GC: It’s a sensitive issue but from our perspective, it’s understanding what it is actually useful for, especially in the context of smaller teams. 

PD: It’s the iteration that the AI can do. The variation and the speed. But even [among] the big teams. I’m curious eventually down the road…

GC: We are seeing it among the big teams already, like Call Of Duty. 

PD: And I know why, it’s f***ing fast. But I get the ethical aspect of it also, that’s why I asked my team, ‘OK that’s it’. [When] we’re all by ourselves because we need to see stuff quickly, [it’s] OK-ish. But now, no, we stop. I kinda went like, ‘No more prompts’. 

GC: I wanted to ask about your thoughts on Assassin’s Creed as well. Do you feel separated from it now? 

PD: Oh yeah. 

GC: Do you play the new games? 

PD: No, I don’t. Actually I played Assassin’s Creed 3 when it came out in 2012. I played for two hours and I stopped because I was working more than having fun. Not because it wasn’t fun, but [because] it’s my baby; I understand [it], and then I see the matrix. So I said ‘enough’, and after that, I didn’t want to.

So I don’t want to answer your question. I’m protecting myself from it, because somehow if I say it’s good or not, that’ll change the perception of the people on the game. Some people will say, ‘What? The father of Assassin’s Creed said it is ABC…’ and I don’t want to go there. It’s not for me to judge really. And it would be bad for the people who actually put their heart and soul into those games making them. 

I know it’s tough to make an Assassin’s Creed game, and you cannot please everyone. That’s the toughest part I would say in what we do. We feel like we need to please everyone and it’s not possible. It’s OK if you don’t like 1666: Amsterdam by the way, it’s OK, and some people [are like], ‘What?’ The beauty of being independent and smaller is that my budget is not as big as it used to be, so I don’t need to sell as many copies. 

GC: It’s refreshing to hear that, especially when it feels everyone’s striving for bigger budgets.

PD: Oh no, because after that you’ve got to recoup. And it’s the recoup phase that is tough. This is where you get, ‘Oh we sold five million copies but we need to close the studio because it’s not enough.’ Are you crazy? If I sold five million copies of this game [1666: Amsterdam], we’re good. We’re good for a long time. 

GC: We’re seeing a lot of people like yourself break out of the triple-A space and set up their own studio – do you think that’s a more comfortable place to exist in these days? 

PD: It’s so different. Because in a big, big studio – because I’ve been there – it becomes more politics than game creation, which is totally normal. It’s a big organisation. It’s not even who does what, but how do you manoeuvre and become this organic… in a smaller team, I know everyone on my team. I know everyone. I know their girlfriend, boyfriend, their kids, their dogs. It’s not a family, we’re a professional team together. [But] in a big organisation, there’s too many bosses, and you have to answer to your boss. So the craft of just having fun and making games, it’s a different thing. It’s about working in an office. 

And at the end of the day, we’re not working in an office. We’re making a game in an office. Not everyone, there’s a lot of people at home, but at Panache I try to… I’m in the office everyday. The PTSD of Covid… you have no clue. I have no pleasure working from home anymore. But then I’m lucky, my studio is five minutes walking distance from where I live. My life is f***ing designed [laughs]. So I know I’m lucky. 

The thing in creativity is this; what I’m just doing to you – I’m looking you in the eyes and my soul is talking to your soul. Do you understand what I want? Do you understand what we can make? On a screen, it’s gone. And me, I need that connection when I’m asking crazy s*** to people [laughs]. 

We were in full conception [on 1666: Amsterdam] in Covid. We were two months in. We started in January and boom, in March, everybody home. That was so tough because we were having a nice discussion and then boom, zoo closed. Everybody’s home. It was so tough. For a full year. That’s why it took us six [years], it could have been made in five.

GC: I wanted to bring up Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time too. It’s one of my favourite games, so thank you for that. 

PD: It was a good game. 

GC: [laughs] A bloody good game. Obviously there was that cancelled remake recently, were you ever consulted on that? 

PD: No, no. Ubisoft don’t talk to me. 

GC: I thought that might’ve been the case, but wondered if someone might have reached out in private. 

PD: Nobody, not even close. 

GC: Were you surprised by that? 

PD: No. We got into a fight, Ubisoft and I, so no. Nobody’s asking me anything about Assassin’s Creed at Ubisoft either. Never. But it’s OK. I don’t wake up at night thinking about them. I don’t care anymore. But I understand why they didn’t ask me. 

We did [Prince Of Persia] in maybe 28 months with 60 people. Panache is just about trying to recreate the fun and the team size I had on The Sands Of Time man, where the skies were the limit and nothing could stop us.

GC: To round off, a throughline with a lot of your games is engaging with history, how much of that was a conscious decision and will it be a staple of your games to come? 

PD: It was fully conscious. Maybe one day I’ll do a science fiction game with a space marine. I don’t know, you never know. 

GC: 2066 or something. 

PD: Maybe [laughs]. There’s nothing coming along [like that]. But why I like history is that it’s a fantasy world for us. If you start digging and understanding how it works. I was thinking about my grandmother the other day, she was 96 when she died. And she died like five years ago. Could you imagine what she went through in 100 years? At first there was no f***ing phones. She comes from a little town in Quebec and there were maybe two cars. And at the end, she was writing to me on Facebook. 

And then you go 200 years. Then you go 300 years. It’s just f***ing Final Fantasy man. This is as weird and wild as the future we can imagine. A totally different world. That’s why I like history. It’s so far away from us even though we come from there.

Even though my 1666: Amsterdam is a fantasy land, you’ll go back [to Amsterdam] and go, ‘I see it a bit differently’. You can imagine all of those people walking around, going inside those houses now because you’ve seen it a little bit. So that’s why I like history. It’s as strange to us as a totally invented world. 

GC: And that’s a great note to end on. Thank you very much! 

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.