Chances are that the next Assassin’s Creed game won’t be a game in the format of previous games from that series. Journalist Jason Schreier from the Bloomberg portal reports that Ubisoft started working on a project called Assassin’s Creed Infinity last year, and although it is a new game, at the same time the Infinity is conceived as a platform that will expand over the years.
So basically, the future of Assassin’s Creed is in the format used by Fortnite, CoD: Warzone and GTA Online. These games have no sequels, but every now and then they get additional content throughout the seasons. Of course, the difference is that these games are multiplayer oriented, while Assassin’s Creed is a traditional single-player series. However, the last three games in the series have already used the format of live-service games with daily tasks, occasional festivals, subsequent expansions, etc. to some extent.
Bloomberg reports that Ubisoft’s plan is to launch AC Infinity as a platform that will bring several different eras and locations simultaneously. This has never happened before in an AC series – there has always been one game thematically related to one historical era and one climate. The closest we got to that was AC Chronicles which was divided into three episodes, but not all episodes were launched in parallel.
The idea is reportedly for AC Infinity to lay the foundation for a platform that would expand over time and keep players playing for longer. Traditionally you can finish AC games in a few weeks or months and then wait a year for something new to come out. In this case, new content would come more often, but would probably be closer to expansions then full sequels.
This may all sound like rumors to you, but Ubisoft experimented with such an approach this year already, in the game Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which gained a whole new climate, mythology and a character through the expansion.
In any case, two teams will work in parallel on Assassin’s Creed Infinity – Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Quebec, with control of Assassin’t Creed series now being taked over by Quebec, which until now was Montreal’s auxiliary studio. While Ubisoft Montreal has made hits like Valhalla, Origins and Black flag, the Quebec team has less experience with the AC franchise and have led the development of only two games – Syndicate and Odyssey.
