5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Middle Eastern character and environment galore, July 7, 2009
This review is from: Assassin's Creed Limited Edition Art Book: Prima Official Game Guide (N/a) (Prima Official Game Guides) (Hardcover)
Length:: 0:14 Mins
Assassin's Creed Limited Edition Art Book is a making-of art book, the not-too-technical kind.
There are over hundreds over beautiful pieces of art included, complete with great insights on how the game was designed artistically. We have the producer, art directors and artists, AI programmers describing how the game was made. They talk about game rules, for example the real world climbing, design concepts for characters and environment, their research process, and other stuff. There's a bit of everything but none too technical.
There are plenty of character design in the book. For Altair, many iterations of costumes are included, with the different belts, embroidery. This also means you get to see a lot of discarded ideas. Other characters include the assassins, citizens, military, Saracens, scientists and of course the different assassination targets. They actually had to put in more colours and accessories because 100% historical accuracy would mean citizens wearing rather similar (boring) clothes.
Concept paintings for the cities, towns and sets are included. These are really gorgeously painted with lots of details. The different sets include Masyaf, Arsuf, the lab, Damascus, Assassin's Bureau, Acre, Jerusalem and a few discarded concepts. The middle eastern mood is so perfectly created that a professor at Oxford couldn't tell that the development team didn't travel for their research. They hired a historian to help with research. Research images provided (not in this book) are not even available on the Internet.
Unfortunately individual paintings are not credited although there's a list of artist included at the back.
For a supposedly limited edition art book that's this good, I'm surprised it's not in limited availability yet. So grab yours while it's still in stock.
(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Good..., February 11, 2008
This review is from: Assassin's Creed Limited Edition Art Book: Prima Official Game Guide (N/a) (Prima Official Game Guides) (Hardcover)
I haven't played Assassin's Creed, nor do I have a platform that supports it - I just wanted to mention that up front. I'm a fan and collector of conceptual art books, and after having seen the trailers and commercials for this game, I decided to go ahead and get this book. It's a nice book, certainly, chock-full of illustrations that helped in the conceptualization of the game, everything from the minutiae of the main character's costume, to various images of knights, peasants, etc. It's nicely produced, printed of good paper, and has a sturdy hardcover binding. I suppose why this book gets 3 stars is because there's nothing here that is especially eye-popping or earth-shattering here: while the art is well done, it's fairly ordinary and I wish there were more interesting designs, etc. Additionally, the commentary text seems to have been hurriedly edited, as I noted some typos, etc. I'd recommend this book for conceptual art collectors and, probably, diehard fans of the game.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Great hardcover Assasins Creed book!, April 3, 2011
This review is from: Assassin's Creed Limited Edition Art Book: Prima Official Game Guide (N/a) (Prima Official Game Guides) (Hardcover)
Gave this book to my son who collects Assassins Creed games and toys, and wanted to give him an encyclopedia of the game. It is hardcover and beautifully made. It has everything you could ever want to know about Assassins Creed, he loves this book so much that he reads it every day so he could be well informed about the game! keeps it in pristine condition, it was well worth the money I paid! Highly recommend this book!
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