Assassin's Creed 3's Marathon Opening Tried to Fix a Classic Story Problem — the Team Realized in the Last Two Months It Overstayed Its Welcome
Forget conquering the villain; audiences don’t care. The real stakes—and the new playbook—are about what it costs the hero, and creators are rewriting the rules to prove it.
Assassin's Creed 3 turned 10 a while ago, but its opening is still a sore spot for a lot of players. Creative director Alex Hutchinson now says, yeah, the prologue ran long. But in his words and context, it did have a purpose: set up a real surprise and make the main villain actually matter.
Quick spoiler warning
If you somehow missed AC3 and want to go in clean, bail now. Still here? Cool.
The bait-and-switch that defined the first act
Marketing sold Assassin's Creed 3 as the debut of a Native American hero named Connor. The game itself starts you as a suave British gent, Haytham Kenway. You spend hours with Haytham before the mask drops: he is a Templar, he is Connor's father, and he ultimately becomes the antagonist as you finally take control of the actual protagonist.
- You begin the game as Haytham, not Connor.
- After an extended intro, the reveal hits: Haytham is a Templar and Connor's dad.
- From there, you switch over and play as Connor, with Haytham positioned as the villain.
Why the prologue ballooned
Hutchinson told FRVR the team was fighting a very specific franchise problem: once the marketing cycle spins up, genuine surprises get harder. One solution was to hide the lead, let players bond with Haytham, then pull the rug. The other goal was to fix a common story issue in games: you are told to hate a villain you barely know. By living with Haytham for that long, the eventual face-off would land with more weight.
"I think it is too long."
He also explained how production realities stretched the runtime. Late in development, as features came online, that opening turned into the all-in-one tutorial for core systems. The pacing got padded while the team waited for different pieces to lock, and no one really saw the full length until the last couple months.
The reception at launch
Lore fans tended to vibe with the slow-burn setup. Players who wanted to roam the frontier right away... not so much. The mandatory trips into the modern-day storyline with Desmond did not help those pacing pains either.
What he would change now
Hutchinson says that if they were building AC3 today, they would trim the start. Less runway, same twist.
The wider context
Hutchinson went on to direct Far Cry 4, then left to run an independent studio that shipped two Savage Planet games. He has been open about the behind-the-scenes zigzags on projects he worked on, including the original plan for Assassin's Creed as a trilogy that would wrap with AC3 before Ubisoft realized there was room (and revenue) for more spin-offs and sequels.
Where AC3 sits now
These days, AC3 usually lands in the lower tier of best-of Assassin's Creed rankings. The opening remains a fascinating case study: a risky narrative swing that got tangled up with tutorial duties and production timing, and still sparks debate years later.