After a year off, people are more than ready to jump back into the world of Assassin’s Creed. This year is to see the release of the Viking-themed Valhalla, and had many fans excited due to the involvement of some talent from the older titles. That was fitting since the game is apparently looking to bridge gap between the older titles and the new ones that have a much looser connection to the Assassins/Templars story. But it seems one of those old guards won’t be there after all.
Ashraf Ismail was set to be the Creative Director for the game, a position he had held for both Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed: Origins. He took to his official Twitter to announce that he would be stepping down from the position. Those tweets, as well as his official account, have since been deleted, but Ubisoft issued a press release confirming the step down with a simple statement: “Ashraf Ismail is stepping down from the project to take a leave of absence. The development team is committed to delivering a great game in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.”
It seems this come in light of a recent allegations against him that seem to stem from an alleged affair he had. We saw something similar happen recently with Chris Avellone being cut from certain games, though it seems there’s less information out there at the current time about Ismail, so we’ll just leave it at that for now. As it stands, it seems that it won’t affect Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which is still slated to come later this year.