When that formula started floundering for the series, Ubisoft went back to the drawing board and came back with Assassin’s Creed Origins, expanding the series to new horizons and turning it into an action RPG franchise, once again establishing a new formula that the series has been following since then, and which has, in turn, led to the most impressive commercial growth and performances Assassin’s Creed has ever seen. And now, it seems like the time is coming for the series to redefine and reinvent itself once again. Following the quick one-two punch of a report by Jason Schreier talking about this reinvention and the subsequent Ubisoft update officially confirming many of those details, we now have a vague and general idea of what to expect- but the general feeling is that this, perhaps, might not be the best possible direction for the series to take.

Before we get into that, let’s cover the basics- what do we know for sure, and what’s been rumoured but not officially confirmed? What we do know is that Ubisoft is bringing together its Montreal and Quebec studios to collaboratively work on the next era of the franchise, which is taking the shape of a live service model. This online live service project is going to encapsulate a growing, evolving, and changing experience that will regularly add new stories set across multiple settings, each with their own unique tones and methods, all of which will be connected via a single hub, a unified platform, which, in its current early development process, is being referred to as Assassin’s Creed Infinity. It’s essentially the Fortnite version of Assassin’s Creed, if we’re being rather reductive about it (curiously enough, reports suggest that Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to do similar things with a growing and changing map- but that’s another discussion entirely).

On top of this, there are some other things that are a little bit up in the air right now. For instance, is Assassin’s Creed Infinity going to be a premium release, or will it follow a free-to-play model? Neither Ubisoft’s confirmation nor Schreier’s report have talked about that, but Ubisoft does seem to be determined to emphasize F2P going forward, and a live service platform would, of course, be rather well-suited to something like that. Not that long ago, insider Shpeshal_Nick suggested that the game would indeed be free-to-play, and would even have Destiny-style raids- but again, that’s not yet been confirmed. Meanwhile, it’s also unclear whether Assassin’s Creed Infinity is going to have multiplayer elements. It being a live service would suggest that it will have multiplayer, but according to Schreier, given the fact that the game’s so early in development, a lot of the details are in flux right now. The one thing that’s certain is that Infinity is going to be a connected hub, a platform that will contain many games and settings being added to it, but how multiplayer will figure in, or if it will even figure in, is not yet known.

Now, out of all of those details, some things are actually rather encouraging. The fact that Ubisoft has confirmed that Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Quebec are going to be working together on a collaborative and much more cohesive vision for the series is one of those things, for instance- a large-scale live service isn’t easy to main (Ubisoft’s own The Division is evidence of that), but with the combined forces of the Montreal and Quebec studios behind it, Infinity would have a much better shot at getting things right. And Montreal and Quebec are, of course, the two biggest Assassin’s Creed authorities. While Montreal was exclusively in charge of the series from its inception all the way up until Unity, since then, the two studios have been taking the lead on alternate entries, with Syndicate and Odyssey being developed by Quebec, and Origins and Valhalla by Montreal (while Rogue, of course, was made by Ubisoft Sofia). The prospect of these two studios co-leading the next big step forward for the series, then, sounds smart, at least on paper.

Meanwhile, the talent confirmed to be in leadership positions for this project is also top-notch. On the production side of things, the likes of Marc-Alexis Côté, Étienne Allonier, and Julien Laferrière have been named in leadership positions, and they’ve been involved with the series for a long time now. Meanwhile, Jonathan Dumont and Clint Hocking of Quebec and Montreal respectively have been named as the project’s creative leads, and both have impressive track records. Dumont was world director on Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and and then creative director on Odyssey, while Hocking has been creative director on games such as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Watch Dogs: Legion.

Beyond that, however, things start getting either a little murky, or a little misguided- or, in some cases, both. For instance, it’s true that fans have been asking for a more cohesive vision for the series for some time now, and Ubisoft has mentioned that as one of the reasons for this radical change. But most series fans would tell you that they’re going about implementing a more cohesive vision in the wrong way. When series fans say they want more cohesion, they’re talking about the larger, series-wide story, which, frankly, has been a mess and mostly directionless ever since Assassin’s Creed 3 (even though it has started getting back on track starting with Origins). Almost no one wants a live service Assassin’s Creed that’s possibly an MMO-lite, for all practical purposes. Ubisoft are definitely doing the right thing by trying to give the series a more coherent long-term future, but they’re not doing it the way they perhaps should.

The biggest problem with Assassin’s Creed Infinity, however, is that it has the potential to exacerbate and double down on all of the worst, most exhausting tendencies of this series in recent years. Complaints about bloat, excessive open world grinding, and a deluge of cookie cutter content that almost feels procedural in nature have been growing louder and louder with each new entry in the series, but rather than cutting down on those aspects, Ubisoft’s going with a model that is pretty much built on bloat, grinding, and repeatable content. It’s virtually impossible to have a live service platform without stuff like that, at least if you want to retain players and increase engagement. Who knows, maybe Ubisoft will find a way to strike that balance- but somehow, I doubt it.

Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, there’s been no word yet on whether the game is going to be multiplayer, or whether it will be free-top-play- but if it is, what does that mean for Assassin’s Creed? Because of its free-to-play, does that mean that it’s going to grow more reliant on microtransactions, as any free-to-play game has to be? If it’s multiplayer, does that mean the core sensibilities of the series are going to change? Assassin’s Creed has always been an extremely narrative-driven series, so how would that even work in an ongoing live service, potentially multiplayer game? There is, of course, the possibility that multiplayer is just going to be an aspect of the experience, with multiplayer-centric quests like raids, or PvP like from the older Assassin’s Creed games, or even co-op missions similar to what we saw in Unity. And all three of those, frankly, actually do sound exciting- but not if they become the primary focus of the experience. Multiplayer content like that will be great to have, but most importantly, Assassin’s Creed needs to retain its single player narrative-driven identity… and a live service model seems to be at odds with that.

That said, it’s still worth noting that for the last few years, the series has, for all practical purposes, followed a live service model. Odyssey and Valhalla especially are both live service games, with continued and prolonged post-launch support in the form of updates, seasonal content, new features and ways to play, free quests, and of course, the big paid expansions. And if that’s the model that Ubisoft intends to keep on following for the series, only this time for a single platform that grows and evolves overtime- well, then that’s great! That’s honestly a sensible evolution for the series (assuming it doesn’t shift focus away from single player content). But then again, we don’t know if that’s what Infinity is supposed to be.

I’m not writing Assassin’s Creed Infinity off, because honestly, we don’t know enough about it yet for it to be written off. What we do know so far doesn’t sound very encouraging, and seems to be at odds with what the series should ideally be doing- but with the project so early in development and so far away, maybe Ubisoft does have a plan in place that will simultaneously protect the series’ identity and move it forward into its next major era. It will definitely be interesting to see how The Division Heartland is structured and handled when it releases next year, because that might give us a pretty good idea of what to expect from Infinity. If Infinity is a hub that keeps on delivering the kind of narrative-driven single player Assassin’s Creed experiences that one would expect to see from the series, and if on top of that it adds the sort of surprisingly good multiplayer content the series has been known to deliver in the past, then it might actually be worth keeping an eye on. But that’s the ideal scenario, and several harsh lessons have taught us over the years that when it comes to the very idea of a “live service”, the ideal scenario is also often the least likely scenario.

With Assassin’s Creed Valhalla having been confirmed to receive support in 2022 as well and with Ubisoft Quebec and Montreal being fully focused on Infinity, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be another new Assassin’s Creed game in the interim. There’s a lot riding on it, then, and for the series’ sake, and the sake of the millions of fans it has across the world, we really do hope that it turns out to be a good idea- even though right now it seems like it probably won’t be.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

There’s going to be lots to play this holiday season, and we do mean a lot, and one game that will help close the curtains on 2020 is Immortals Fenyx Rising. The open world game from Ubisoft sees a bright, cartoon-like style in an open world and Greek myth setting. It’s said to be heavily influenced by adventure games of the 2000s, and you’ll be able to try it out soon, at least on Stadia.

As part of their “Good Stuff” announcements, it was revealed that a demo for Immortals would be dropping for Google’s Stadia service come tomorrow. The demo will be a limited time deal, only being up for a week. It’s unclear if the demo will be available in any form on the various other platforms it’ll be part of. As you can also see below, there are also demos for Humankind and Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle as part of the same promotion.

Immortals Fenyx Rising will release on December 3rd for all major platforms. The demo will be available on Stadia starting October 22nd and will run until the 29th. For some details on the game’s combat, puzzles, and more in over an hour of gameplay, take a look through here.

https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1318612950836420609?s=20

Virtual Reality is still something that’s growing for the gaming industry. It hasn’t quite got there just yet. While the marketshare has grown, thanks in a big part to PlayStation VR and its association with the behemoth PS4, it’s still not at that mainstream breakout level yet. Some developers have embraced it, however, while others have kept their distance. One publisher that’s surprising doing nothing substantial is Ubisoft. Usually one of the first developers to throw as much weigh behind new platforms as possible, we may have gotten some hints about why they haven’t done so with VR, via the company’s CEO, Yves Guillemot.

At the recent financial conference call, when asked about VR,  Guillemot punted on his answer a little bit, but did say that he felt good entry prices and more good games were needed for the platform to grow, hinting at perhaps thinking that the systems on the market are still a little too highly priced for the average customer to jump in.

“On the VR side, we think seamless, frictionless, and good entry prices, and good games, could help this business to take off because it provides a good immersion for players, but we need to make sure those elements are there to make it actually grow,” he said.

It’s worth noting that he was asked about the recent report that Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell would get VR entries for Facebook’s Oculus, which he didn’t comment on. So this may change pretty soon- but it’s not too uncommon a critique on VR that it’s still a little too pricey for people to jump in. That is changing as good headsets are coming out at decent prices now, but it’ll still be a while yet before it becomes a standard thing.

Ubisoft released their financial report yesterday, and by and large the company is flying pretty high. Their sales have mostly been through the roof, and we’ve learned quite a lot. We know they have at least three major unannounced AAA titles to release by March of next year, we know how successful Far Cry 5 and The Division 2 have been, and how engaged Ubisoft players tend to be with their games. No game shows that as much as Rainbow Six Siege, which thanks to a surge of player engagement, has become one of Ubisoft’s most successful titles.

Siege launched back in 2015 with some criticism, particularly about the content originally in the base release. It was one of the first experiments Ubisoft did with the GaaS (Games as a service) model, which saw the game have continued updates with yearly season passes and constant tweaks to gameplay.

It’s turned out to be a success for them, as less than four years later, the game has raked in over $1 billion for the company, with a player base of over 45 million. The game’s active player base saw a 40% increase from April 1st, 2018 to March 31st, 2019 alone. There’s lots of criticisms levied at the GaaS model, and a lot of potential pitfalls, but between Siege and For Honor, it seems Ubisoft has really hit a sweet spot.

Rainbow Six Siege is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Ubisoft have always remained extremely optimistic about the upcoming Nintendo Switch, and its potential to do well in the market. Now that we know exactly what the Switch is, they are able to speak more freely about why they believe the device will do well, and how they believe it will slot in the market, which has no shortage of devices that play games, after all.

“The console itself is very modern and it can really answer the need of wanting some high quality gaming experience on your couch at home, with long-sessions, as well as being able to take it with you into another room, or on the bus,” Ubisoft’s French studio head Xavier Poix said to GamesIndustry.biz. “This should definitely appeal to a younger audience. I think there will be room for everyone. I’ll be interesting to discover how people will use this on-the-go feature.

“In the future, we will have to manage and look at how people are playing on Switch. No one can tell what the breakdown will be between playing on the couch – for what I imagine will be longer play sessions – and playing on-the-go for shorter sessions. Switch games need to think about that.”

Poix also discussed the perceived lack of games on the system. In his opinion, Nintendo’s strategy is to spread out the quality games over the course of the year, to keep players constantly engaged- which is not a bad strategy in and of itself. “Nintendo’s strategy is to have a portfolio of strong games that will be released month after month, which I think is a good strategy. If I remember correctly, with the Wii U, there were many titles at launch which lacked the quality to engage the player, they didn’t understand why it was different. In this case, I think Nintendo has proposed a good portfolio. It is a good way of moving forward.”

Finally, he discussed where he thinks the Switch will be able to fit in the present market climate. “Today, we have two ways of playing – and a lot of people are doing both. There is the high-end, high value, experience that you have at home in front of your TV – in multiplayer or not,” he said. “But when the TV isn’t there anymore, if someone else is using it for example, then you are left alone with your mobile phone. So there is a need for Switch, and we probably don’t realize it right now, which is what makes this so interesting. There is a promise of keeping the player in the world that he or she loves. Switch can really change the way people are interacting with their games and the worlds we are creating.

“I am confident Nintendo can create a bridge between the worlds of mobile and TV,” he asserted. “Between the desire to play on the TV, but also the need to play somewhere else because you can’t be in front of your TV all the time.”

The Nintendo Switch launches worldwide on March 3.