GDC Europe adds design talks on Assassin's Creed 3, storytelling, next-gen consoles

The 2013 European Game Developers Conference has added a new round of talks to its panel lineup, including design talks on storytelling and Assassin's Creed 3 as well as discussions of the next console generation, according to a post on the conference website.

Ubisoft Montreal's Steven Masters will discuss how the studio worked on Assassin's Creed 3 for three years in the Design Track's keynote, "Designing Assassin's Creed 3." The company hosted a similar panel at GDC 2013, "Three Years of Collaboration on Assassin's Creed 3," but its GDC Europe panel will delve deeper into how the company built the title's core gameplay.

Epic Games level designer James Brown will explore whether or not a game's story can co-exist with a player's "organic" experience, or the story they build as they play. "Once Upon a Time: Giving Players the Freedom to Create Their Own Story" will discuss popular storytelling techniques in games.

Game designer Don Daglow — pioneer of several different genres including one of the PC RPGs, Dungeon, and baseball game Baseball — will discuss the opportunities and hurdles the industry faces with the next generation of consoles. In "This Time It's Different: Treasures and Traps in the Next Gen," Daglow will discuss what it could mean to have download-only games in the future and emphasis on online components as games' core features.

GDC Europe will take place Aug. 19 through 21 in Cologne, Germany.