After the rumors of Assassin's Creed III taking place during the American Revolution became a reality and Ubisoft started releasing artwork and screenshots for the game which emphasized its wild, outdoor environments, the immediate reaction among the Game Rant staff was that Ubisoft was embracing the Red Dead Redemption style for the next Assassin's Creed.

As it turns out, Rockstar Games' award-winning game based in the Old West was, in fact, a source of inspiration for Assassin's Creed III.

In speaking with CVG at Ubisoft's first Assassin's Creed III media event in Europe, lead writer Matt Turner recalled the release of Red Dead Redemption, a game that came out as Ubisoft has already begun development for AC3.

"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."

"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."

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 (new protagonist) adventure from the four previous installments.

Some of the new features that didn't make the cut however, include scalping British soldiers (deemed too violent), a harpoon weapon reminiscent of Mortal Kombat's Scorpion attacks (deemed too fantasy), and lastly, the city of Philadelphia (deemed too open for gameplay).

To see some of the weapons and attacks that do remain in the game, check out the latest Assassin's Creed 3 weapons trailer. If you're excited for the game and its new story, also be sure to read our Templar-Freemason theory feature.

Assassin’s Creed III releases on October 30, 2012 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, and later on the Wii U.

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Follow Rob on Twitter @rob_keyes if you're excited for the next Assassin's Creed.

Sources: CVG, VG24/7, Joystiq, Destructoid, Kotaku