In Assassin's Creed Syndicate the Thames is "its own borough"

Assassin's Creed Syndicate is all about the vehicles of Victorian London. While the carriages have been stealing the headlines until now, Ubi Quebec have gone and thrown boats into the mix too. Neither Jacob nor Evie can rival sea dog Edward Kenway but the River Thames is, nonetheless, key to Syndicate. In an interview in the new issue of Official Xbox Magazine, senior producer Francois Pelland explains how the Thames adds almost an extra district to the seven distinct areas of Syndicate's London.

"We treat the Thames almost as its own borough in a way, because it really does have its own story, it has its own way of functioning," he says. "Without getting into too much detail too far in advance, we knew we needed to be true to what the purpose of the river Thames was back then. London was controlling a quarter of the population of the entire world. It was the centre of the industrial production of the world. So it was a key port, with boats shipping production in and out. We’ll be going into more detail about this later."

Creative director Marc-Alexis Cote revealed to us earlier in the year that hay boats were a real thing that floated down the river to feed the thousands of horses and livestock in the city. I wonder what we'll be doing in them...

For more Assassin intel, see the full preview in the new bumper 140 page issue of Official Xbox Magazine out tomorrow. You can find it on shelves, downloaddigitallyorsubscribeto future issues.