Have you ever purchased the sequel to a franchise you enjoy and come to find out that it’s nothing more than a glorified expansion pack not worthy of the $60 price tag? I’m sure most of us have. Whether it was the sequel to MotorStorm or the release of Halo ODST, gamers have been over-paying for shady sequels for a long time now and that’s something Ubisoft doesn’t want to happen with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. The developer behind the stealthy assassin’s title also wants you to know that Brotherhood is “not a mission pack” continuing the story of the Creed.

Speaking with Eurogamer, associate producer Jean-Francois Boivin revealed that because of already developing a lot of the base tools, Brotherhood is able to finish the development process much quicker than its predecessors.

“It’s not a mission pack,” he said. “It’s not a 2.5. It’s set in Rome, which is three times the size of Florence, which technologically is a challenge to do, just memory wise. You have this enormous playground to play with. And you have these new features, these new elements that bring a new twist and a new angle to Ezio’s story.

“It’s about Ezio teaching others how to become assassins. There are a lot of core features we worked on. We brought a lot of new, deep and vast features – the old Rome upgrade system, the economic system – the Brotherhood is a game in of itself.

“Plus we’re bringing everything people loved about Assassin’s Creed II. We took each feature and said, ‘How can we make that feature better, or give it a bit of spice, a bit of Tabasco, or a bit of baby oil so it flows a bit better?’ We will be extremely successful in convincing fans once they have the controller in their hands. Then the question is going to be, ‘How did they do it in a year?’ That’s going to be the question that’s fun to answer later on.”

The direction Ubisoft is taking the franchise is certainly an interesting. The idea of training your own stable of assassins to continue on the legacy you’ve built from the ground up is surely going to be an entertaining factor. Hopefully the designers and developers do a good enough job to prevent the feeling of “2.5” entirely and for some reason, I believe AC: Brotherhood is going to be the best of the bunch yet.