Assassin’s Creed III′s lead writer Matt Turner says, “Similarities between Assassin’s Creed III and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption are down to a convergence of minds”.

Speaking to journalists at a London reveal event last week, Ubisoft said that when Red Dead released mid-way through ACIII’s development, we were surprised to see Rockstar had included wild animal hunting and a giant frontier to explore – features both planned for its own sequel.

Turner continued, Ubisoft is now looking at Red Dead’s success and trying to take the formula in “new directions”.

“I think it’s a convergence of minds. When people are thinking about the same topic at the same time, they’re bound to have some ideas come around at about the same moment,” he explained.

“We’d been working on the animal and the frontier stuff and then [Red Dead Redemtpion] came out. We saw it, played it cover to cover, and it was less of an ‘oh shit’ and more of a ‘aha! How can we do better than that?’

“Because that’s something that Rockstar does – it always strives to be the best. They always try to push things in new directions and I think we need to do the same thing.”

He added: “As a team we saw how good [Red Dead] was and how they had tonnes of success and we were like, ‘OK, let’s look at their success and see how we can take it in new directions.’ That’s what I think we’ve tried to do.”

Also number of ideas during Assassin’s Creed III’s development which didn’t make the cut. Joystiq reports Philadelphia once stood alongside New York and Boston as one of Connor’s destinations.

“Philly was one of the cities that we wanted to do. In the end, we decided against it. It’s an architecturally designed city, so it’s on a grid. Which at first we thought would be cool – the first city in AC to be designed on a grid, Which at first we thought would be cool – the first city in AC to be designed on a grid – and then you realize straight streets don’t work very well in an open-world setting – although some events in the game will take place in the city.” creative director Alex Hutchinson said.

Wild, dangerous animals, tree traversal and nature are all new focuses for this year’s Assassin’s Creed installment and represent just a few of the new features that will help differentiate Connor’s adventure from the four previous installments.

Assassin’s Creed III will release on October 30 for PC, PS3, Xbox360 and Wii U.

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Thanks, Joystiq