Well, that didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would; it seems that Ubisoft’s call for people to do its marketing for them was answered by thousands and thousands of loyal fans. The full gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed III is now available for you to ogle – it is pretty spectacular.

The trailer is made up of pre-alpha footage. In fact, it’s made up of three separate internal videos that Ubisoft showed us just over a month ago at the game’s unveiling in London. The three different clips were meant to highlight three different aspects of the game: one of the cities (you can see Boston in the trailer); exploring the snow-covered Frontier; and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Some of the most exciting bits of all three clips have been spliced together to give us this debut trailer.

Assassin’s Creed III is the cover feature for this month’s edition of NAG, so if you want to read all there is to know about the trailer you’re about to watch, then grab a copy if you haven’t already. Hit the jump to get a taste of that Rope Dart in action – I can’t wait to use that thing.

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There are pros and cons to be a gamer at this point in time. The pros are obvious: multi-million dollar games, increased likelihood of your favourite title getting a sequel, amazing visuals. The cons are just as glaring: DRM, always-on Internet requirements, your favourite title getting a sequel (after sequel after sequel), and publishers forcing you to do their social media marketing before they’ll give you trailers.

Ubisoft is doing just that! If you would like to see the world premiere gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed III, then you have a bunch of things you need to do. You’ll need to Like the Facebook page, obviously, but it doesn’t stop there. You’ll need to Tweet with the #AC3 tag; post things to your timeline, and piss off your friends by “recruiting” them to the cause. Collectively, all of this has to happen 1, 776, 000 times before Ubisoft will unleash the entire trailer. The strange number probably has something to do with the date 1776 – when the Colonies formally gave the British the finger and formulated their United States Declaration of Independence. The irony of this date isn’t entirely lost on me considering the context in which Ubisoft is choosing to highlight it.

Hit the jump! You know you want to, because despite it being 30 seconds, it’s still the first you’ll see of the game…

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Fun fact: before Ubisoft gave us their most successful franchise ever, it was going to be a Prince of Persia spin-off. Originally dubbed Prince of Persia: Assassins, the game later went on to become Assassin’s Creed. I’m glad it did! Somehow I can’t see a spin-off having been nearly as successful.

This has only recently come to light thanks to a demo reel put together by a sound designer who used to work for Ubisoft. The reel itself contains clips for a number of games, but the Assassin’s Creed bits start at about 1:30 or so.

As you can see by what’s in the clip, the game hasn’t actually changed that much. Sure, it’s clearly a very early prototype, but the basics are there. Even Altair’s outfit didn’t change that much. Also, it clearly shows that Assassin’s Creed guards were taking injuries to the knee way before anyone in Skyrim.

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