While recent reports have indicated that Ubisoft’s multiplayer project, Assassin’s Creed Invictus, has seen incredibly negative responses from playtesters, few details have been revealed about what the game actually is. In new report, Insider Gaming‘s Tom Henderson claims to have gotten his hands on some gameplay footage from the playtest, indicating that the multiplayer title will revolve more around arena-based combat than competitive obstacle courses, as previous rumors had indicated.
While Assassin’s Creed Invictus had previously been described as being similar in structure to Fall Guys, the report notes that it will instead revolve around characters from throughout the franchise engaging each other in combat. Henderson has noted that the footage included an arena from Assassin’s Creed Mirage and another one from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
As for the playable characters, no details have been revealed aside from the fact that the video features “several iconic Assassins from the franchise.”
A Ubisoft developer was discovered to have criticised Assassin’s Creed Invictus all the way back in February. According to leaker xj0nathan, the developer said that “I don’t know a single colleague who likes Invictus. Only the managers will probably keep smiling and singing the praises of this project.” They allegedly went on to say that Invictus had “ridiculous animations, hideous and cartoonish characters” and “idiotic sound and visual effects”, among other things.
“’It’s awful: ridiculous animations, hideous and cartoonish characters (their faces are just as awful), idiotic sound and visual effects, combat arenas… the concept is just plain dismaying. I wonder who this game is even for and why it was made. Maybe it’s only meant for kids… six-year-olds? I have no idea. If that’s the case, I pity the parents of those kids who are going to be hounded for money to fuel a fresh wave of microtransactions.’”
Interestingly, the arena-based combat would also set Assassin’s Creed Invictus apart from the multiplayer modes we’ve seen from the franchise in the past. The first mainline entry to get a multiplayer mode was Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, which had players set up their assassins with tools and perks and tasked them with finding and taking out opposing players. This system, along with the ones we saw in other titles, focused quite a bit on the franchise’s stealth systems.
Assassin’s Creed Unity left the competitive mode behind to instead offer a co-op mode where players, alongside allies, could take on distinct missions that take place throughout the main story of the game.
However, since Unity, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has largely left multiplayer game modes behind. More recent entries like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Valhalla, and even Shadows offered an asynchronous style of multiplayer where players could see where other players died, and could opt to take revenge on their behalf in exchange for rewards.
In the meantime, the latest single-player entry in the franchise was 2025’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Ubisoft is currently working towards the July 9th release of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. In the longer term, players can also look forward to Assassin’s Creed: Codename Hexe, which is noted as also bringing in some darker elements to go with the Assassin’s Creed gameplay.