I told him how to access the archives to study documents and original paintings from the time period, but the task was so foreign to him that they decided to arrange a meeting for me with the project manager. That was in February of 2008. He asked me how he could familiarize himself with things like weapons, costumes, etc so that he could design them. One of them, Vincent Gaigneux, was the Art Designer who was in charge of designing the main character ( Editor's note: Gaigneux is currently the Senior Art Designer at Ubisoft and has worked on all the important Assassin's Creed titles). They became part of my group of friends, the people who made up my social life outside of university. MEN: When I was living in Montreal I met, completely by chance, some French friends who worked at Ubisoft. MS: How did you first come into contact with Ubisoft Montreal? I have seen it being played a lot, since I was alongside the designers while they played so that they could explain to me the parts they were working on. As a matter of fact, I personally have never even played Assassin's Creed, it's too difficult for me to get used to the controls. María Elisa Navarro (MEN): I had barely played Atari games, I've never been a video game fan. ![]() Manuel Saga (MS): What was your experience with video games before working at Ubisoft? ![]() Save this picture! Welcome (sic) to Venecia. It is a sandbox style game, with an open world environment, where we're able to move around as we please through cities like Florence, Venice or San Gimignano. In Assassin's Creed II we assume the role of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a Florentine assassin during the Italian Renaissance, whose story takes place under the reign of Pope Alexander VI, and takes numerous elements that are typical of the Renaissance in order to create a storyline where we interact with characters like Machiavelli or Leonardo da Vinci. We'll talk more about them later when we discuss their game Child of Light and the development of the Ubiart Framework Engine, but today we're going to focus on one of their most successful titles: Assassin's Creed II. During those 15 years, she continued her education with a Masters and a PhD from McGill University in Montreal, where she was able to personally work with the architect Alberto Pérez-Gomez, as well as with other important people in the field.īut that's a story for another time, today, María Elisa is going to talk to us about her experience at Ubisoft Montreal, one of the most important developing studios in the world of video games. María Elisa Navarro is an architect, a graduate of the Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño de la Universidad de Los Andes class of 1999, where she later returned to work as a professor in January of 2014. Read the full interview with Navarro after the break. For example, I remember a balcony with a wrought iron railing that couldn't have existed in that time period. I was responsible for detecting those issues," Navarro noted in her conversation with MetaSpace. ![]() "Sometimes, for gameplay purposes, they needed to have walls with a lot of texture so that Ezio could climb them, but when the time came to lay those parts out, there were some inaccuracies. She worked on the project in complete secrecy with "a small team of 20 people and then later more than 400 in a huge basement in Montreal." Navarro worked on everything from late 15th century wardrobes to the correction of architectural errors in the recreated cities, going over the look and ornamental details of the buildings. While getting her PhD at McGill, María Elisa Navarro was a consultant for the entire development process of the game as part of a research project between the university and Ubisoft Montreal. In the following article, originally published in Spanish on MetaSpace as " Assassin's Creed 2 - Arquitectos que hacen videojuegos"(Architects Who Make Video Games), Spanish architect Manuel Saga interviews María Elisa Navarro, a Professor of Architectural History and Theory, who worked with Ubisoft Montreal as a historical consultant on the design team for the video game Assassin's Creed II, from the first rough drafts up to its launch in November of 2009.
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