Commanding a ship in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is a sublime experience to this day – you'd hope so in a game about pirates – but I don't remember the sailing-based missions in Assassin's Creed 3 being nearly so mechanically refined. As it turns out, Ubisoft felt the same way, as Assassin's Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson has revealed the studio wasn't confident enough in the tech to make it a bigger part of the game.
Talking to PC Gamer, Hutchinson said "there was a whole fear that the tech [for the ships] wouldn't work" during the development of Assassin's Creed 3. "So it couldn't be a huge part of the main story, because we weren't certain it was going to work."
