The CEO's kid played it https://twitter.com/medburnbook/status/1263677983199461376

this is a TRUE horror story and it led to the craziest 5 days of my life

ok ok so if you've ever played the original assassin's creed, you'd know that there were the missions with the targets, and there were also a bunch of side activities

what if I told you those side activities didn't exist in the first submission

so we're all ready to ship the game, first submission goes pretty well, and then

The News

The CEO's kid played the game and said it was boring and there was nothing to do in the game

so my lead comes to me and he says "so, we have to add a bunch of side activities into the game. we have a plan from patrice, but I'm not going to say yes unless you are in."

I tell him to give me some time to think about it, and I go crank my music and have a nap at my desk

oh yeah I forgot the key part. he says "we have to put all these side missions into the game in five days, and they have to be bug free, because the build is going to be burned directly to disc and released to retail."

So anyway about an album later I lift my head and see him sitting there staring at me, just waiting for me to give him an answer.

I say "Yes. But I have conditions."

He says: "Anything"

So that's how myself and... 4? or 5? other people ended up in the main conference building of montreal's peck building, which is normally only accessible with a special door card. and it was only us who had access. no one else was allowed in. We had all our computers moved there.

Anyway, the rest of it is a blur, but I know that it went super well, because we did it. We managed to implement all of it in 5 days.

And it was bug free... almost

If any of you poor folks ever tried to get the full 1000 gamer points on Assassin's Creed, you'd know there was one bug where sometimes you could never complete all the templar assassinations, and you'd have to restart your game to try again.

I will now explain that bug.

So it turns out one of the templar were parented to the wrong sector. If you approached the templar from the wrong direction, he fell through the world and was despawned. Which didn't give you credit for the kill, but stored him into the savegame as dead. No more spawning.

So yeah, if you had to play AC multiple times to get your max gamerscore or whatever, sorry. But I literally don't remember what happened in that period of five days.

But I know it's a miracle that the game didn't just melt your console or whatever.

(oh yeah and the double assassin spawning bug if you had two controllers plugged in was probably my fault. You're welcome.)

(addendum, I really don't remember a god damn thing about being in that room. for all I know I died in there and this is hell. or purgatory. I don't remember entering it or leaving it. I know I was in it)

in retrospect I should have just asked for lots of money instead of a temporary sealed room that I may not have actually escaped