Assassin’s Creed fans “can be excited about some remakes” of the older games in the open world series, permits generous soul Yves Guillemot, via one of those odd promotional things disguised as a conversation. They’d like to “revisit some of the games we've created in the past and modernize them,” Ubisoft told Ubisoft about Ubisoft.
Elsewhere in the blog, Guillemot repeatedly praises what he sees as the potential for generative AI and how it “can enrich NPCs to be more intelligent, more interactive,” saying this could “potentially extend to animals in the world.” So, look forward to remake Ezio putting glue in his pizza sauce I suppose?
]]>As an Assassin's Creed girlie, I enjoyed Assassin's Creed Mirage, a pared down (but still big game, which is really just proof of how bloated AAA games have gotten, but I'll stop because it's not time to take my personal bugbear for a walk) Ass Creed game that was closer to the simplicity of the older games in the stab 'em up stealth-action series. Yesterday creative director Stéphane Boudon and art director Jeal-Luc Sala took to Reddit for an AMA, and in response to a question about plans for Mirage DLC, Boudon said no - but that they have ideas for more stories for Basim.
]]>Ubisoft has laid off more than 100 staff, continuing what feels like an unending wave of layoffs across the video games industry. The latest job losses spanning visual effects and IT departments come less than six months after the Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six publisher made dozens of custom service staff redundant.
]]>Card game Magic: The Gathering introduced sets which cross over with other worlds last year under the name Universes Beyond. Wizards Of The Coast announced during an investor call today that future crossovers would include Final Fantasy and Assassin's Creed - although not until 2024.
]]>Since Google announced they were giving up on Stadia last week, some developers and publishers are taking steps to ensure players don’t lose their progress when the platform shuts down in January. So far, Bungie, IO Interactive and Ubisoft have issued statements to reassure Stadia users that they’re investigating ways to salvage their saves. It’s a welcome development following Google’s sudden shutdown revelation.
]]>Assassin’s Creed Valhalla might be winding down before the series heads to Baghdad with Mirage next year, but today’s free 1.6.1 update lets your friendly neighbourhood viking tackle one last set of puzzle tombs. There’s also a new building that lets you craft runes, along with the usual bug fixes and performance tweaks. The village of Ravensthorpe’s Oskoreia festival returns for one last bash next month too.
]]>Epicly long action RPG Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is leaping onto Microsoft’s PC Game Pass subscription service today. The move was announced by surprise during this morning’s ID@Xbox stream at Tokyo Game Show, which I guess is appropriate for something to do with assassins. Odyssey’s predecessor Assassin’s Creed Origins was already plonked on to Microsoft’s subscription service in June this year.
]]>Want to know more about Assassin's Creed Infinity? Assassin's Creed Infinity is not a new game in the popular stealth franchise. Instead, it is a hub from which you can hop into a series of different Assassin's Creed games, acting as an Animus (the device used to leap into the past canonically in Assassin's Creed) on your gaming platform. It's an odd concept, but one that will seemingly let you collect various upcoming Assassin's Creed games in one place and hop between them easily, while also diving into the occasional free content drop.
Below, we'll break down everything we know so far about Assassin's Creed Infinity, with more information on what the hub entails, along with the expected release date, supported upcoming Assassin's Creed games, details on how it impacts the modern day storyline, and what Infinity means for the franchise moving forward.
]]>Chinese media giants Tencent have invested €300 million (£260 million) in the company operated by Ubisoft’s founding family, the Guillemots. The deal will see Tencent bring some of Ubisoft’s most well known game series to mobile, and to PC in China. Tencent’s investment in Guillemot Brothers Limited follows speculation last month that they were looking to take out a bigger stake in Ubisoft, even becoming the single largest shareholders.
]]>What sounds like the entire Assassin’s Creed line-up for Saturday’s Ubisoft Forward presentation may have been leaked online. Unnamed sources have supposedly told TryHardGuides that three new AC games will be announced during the event, with an instalment set in feudal Japan being among them. Bloomberg backs up the report, stating that the other games purported to be in development include one set in the 16th century that could be dealing with witches, and a mobile game set in China.
]]>Leaked Assassin’s Creed game Mirage is real, Ubisoft have confirmed, and they’re planning to show more of it at next week’s Ubisoft Forward event. All we know for sure so far is that the game exists, it’s definitely called Mirage, and returns to the Middle Eastern setting of the original Assassin’s Creed. I rather like the blue highlights to the assassin’s robes in this one.
]]>Back in February, Alice O. highlighted an expansion planned for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla that’s reportedly being spun-off into a standalone stealth game. At the time the project was being referred to as Rift, but multiple sources are now saying the game will be called Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. Both Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier and Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb say they’ve been told by people familiar with the game that Mirage is accurate.
]]>Chinese gaming and social media giants Tencent have approached Ubisoft’s founders, the Guillemot family, in an effort to expand their stake in the AAA publisher, Reuters report. Tencent acquired a 5% stake in Ubisoft in 2018 and now multiple anonymous sources are now saying that Tencent intends to become the single largest shareholder in the publisher, a company valued at almost $6 billion (£4.9 billion).
]]>Historical spin-off port Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD could well end up totally unplayable for people who own it. At the start of July, the publisher shared 15 getting-on-a-bit games they intended to shut down online services for, including access to bought DLC. Now, Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD, Space Junkies and Silent Hunter 5 have already been delisted from Steam at Ubisoft’s request, and won't be accessible from September 1st.
]]>Former Ubisoft developer Charles Randall has been spilling the beans about the original Assassin’s Creed on Twitter again. This time, Randall made several of the RPS team spit out their tea when he revealed that the game’s horse model is really a stretched out human skeleton. That’s some genuinely nightmarish imagery to contemplate first thing in the morning.
]]>Assassin's Creed Valhalla's first major piece of DLC has been released, the Ireland-themed Wrath of the Druids, and now Ubisoft are discounting a whole bunch of Assassin's Creed content to celebrate over at the Ubisoft Store. As well as offering the AC Valhalla DLC Season Pass at 25% off - the first time it's been discounted - you can find significant savings on almost every entry in the long-running sneaky-stabbing franchise.
]]>Every game and their dog seems to be getting a TV show these days. Just this week Crystal Dynamics announced a new Tomb Raider anime that will continue the reboot trilogy, but last year brought us news that Fallout's getting one too, as is Disco Elysium - and The Witcher, of course, already has one (which we've dissected in great detail). Assassin's Creed is in Netflix's sights as well, but having spent a good 100-odd hours in Assassin's Creed Valhalla recently, there is only one possible form an Assassin's Creed TV show should take: a time-travelling adventure show that stars Eivor, Kassandra and Evie Frye, because let's face it, they're the best protagonists the series has and together I know they'd sort the Templars right out. Let me explain.
]]>Assassin's Creed Valhalla contains within it a fictional language, one used by the Isu, the ancient and highly advanced civilization that predates humanity within the series' lore. Now some dedicated players have worked out how to translate some of that language into English.
]]>I'm dead serious, on both counts. Netflix's NX Twitter account just Twote out a little teaser for a live action Assassin's Creed Netflix Original Series. Right now there's no date, no hint at the setting, and no actors attached. It is a few bars of that musical sting we all love, and the AssCreed logo with an N in it.
]]>During today's Facebook Connect developer conference, Facebook revealed the Oculus Quest 2 launch date and price along with information on a whole slew of games coming to the VR platform. Among them will be Oculus-exclusive Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell games and quite a few other VR games.
]]>If the thought of Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Viking rugby tackles and recruitable cats for your long boat has you frothing for more of Ubisoft's time-travelling murder series, then why not take a stealthy glance at Fanatical's new Build Your Own Assassin's Creed bundle? There are ten games to pick from in total, all dating back toward the earlier end of the Assassin's Creed series, and you can either pick up three for £8.59 / $10 or five of them for £12.49 / $15. Here's what's on offer.
]]>Are you looking forward to the Assassin's Creed Valhalla soundtrack just as much as the actual game? If so, then you should check out our latest music quiz, which focuses on all things Assassin's Creed.
Because the masses have been eating up online quizzes during lockdown, RPS' video wing has been testing the waters to see if you, the video game playing public, also enjoy them. And it turns out you do. And that's lovely.
]]>Following its teaser-slash-art-project reveal last night, Assassin's Creed Valhalla finally has a proper cinematic trailer. Beards, axes, longboats and raiding? Yup. It's Vikings. Down on their luck and out of options, our latest assassin is crossing the sea to live out the ninth-century Norwegian dream - pillaging the ever-lasting christ out of England.
]]>Following a curious build-up through a livestreamed drawing, Ubisoft today announced Assassin's Creed Valhalla. This time, Vikings seem to be the stars of the sandbox murder simulator. For now, all Ubisoft have to show is a seven-hour drawing and all they have to say is mutterings about the lads coming "to conquer a new land" and that. We'll learn more tomorrow when a trailer arrives.
]]>Today's the day for Ubisoft to announce a new Assassin's Creed game, or at least to reveal where they're taking the globetrotting murder simulator next. This is happening through the unconventional medium of an artist drawing a picture on a livestream, which when finished will show the game's landscape and the murderer who'll roam it. Some earlier unconfirmed rumours claimed the game would be Assassin's Creed Ragnarok, a Viking-o-rama, though other guesses I'm seeing in stream chat range from Scotland to Rome so... who knows. Come watch the stream and join in the guessing game.
]]>Hello there! It's me again, Gera - Rock Paper Shotgun's official ambassador of Canada. I'll be your guide this week on the balmy seas of gaming's evening news. As the sun sets on England, I get to work - slipping on my traditional Canadian Press-Touque, before I press my ear tightly against my monitor and listen for incoming news. Alice isn't convinced by my methods yet, but I prefer it to the alternative: letting our blood into Kieron's sacred skull then waiting for a press release to form in its drying curdles. I won't get into how we watch trailers.
In any case: Ubisoft has now launched its latest in Discovery Tours, this time bringing the educational mode to Ancient Greece in Assassin's Creed Origins.
]]>Much like its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has snared me with its marvellous camera. With it, I’ve been exploring and snapping Greece, all the way from the Ionian Islands in the west to the Cyclades in the east. I know I should be worrying about wars and parents and magical spears, but that’s all ancillary to the scenes and vignettes playing out on the paved streets and dirt paths that weave across the Hellenic world.
Greece is full of incredible views, epic monuments and, straight away, a huge statue of Zeus dominating the landscape, massive willy hanging out for the world to see. There’s no dearth of things to climb and, more importantly, photograph, but my screenshot folder has even more snapshots of regular life, of people working and partying, or of little bits of striking architecture, especially of the ruined variety.
]]>Pseudo-historical stabventure Assassin's Creed Odyssey is shaping up to be an enormous game right off the bat, but Ubisoft have plans to keep players coming back well into next year. Today, they unveiled their post-launch roadmap for the game.
Now confirmed, the season pass includes two episodic story arcs - one featuring an encounter with the original Hidden Blade-wielder, the other taking players to Atlantis, but there's plenty of free goodies on the way too. Season pass owners will also get a remastered version of the kinda wonky Assassin's Creed 3. Below, a video detailing everything planned so far.
]]>As mindbogglingly huge as Assassin's Creed Origins was, it never felt possible to get lost in its sprawling Egyptian landscapes. For Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Ubisoft want you to get a little bit lost. Spotted by Eurogamer during a hands-on preview, Exploration Mode is a new option described in-game as "the way Assassin's Creed Odyssey is meant to be experienced". Rather than hold your hand as you explore ancient Greece, this new mode removes quest and navigation markers, forcing you to listen to and follow directions instead. Also below; a fancy new trailer.
]]>Ubisoft are giving their studios a moment to catch their breath after the launch of Assassin's Creed Odyssey in October. After debuting a new Odyssey trailer (below) at Gamescom, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated that there's no sequels, spinoffs or side-games due in 2019, as reported by Gamespot. Their focus for next year will be live support for Odyssey. Probably for the best, as according to Odyssey director Scott Phillips (in a video interview with Game Informer), the new game will be "much longer" than the already massive Assassin's Creed Origins.
]]>Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will let us play as either Kassandra or Alexios, both Spartan warriors, but creative director Jonathan Dumont told Reddit that it’s the former who is considered the canon protagonist, at least in the upcoming official novelisation. It won’t affect the game, however, as whoever you play as will be treated as the one, true hero.
The game's marketing, however, seems altogether Alexios-inclined...
]]>Ubisoft has tried to fill Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which is set in 5th century BC Greece, with as many Greek actors as possible. This, of course, sounds like common sense, but it’s lamentably worthy of note in an industry that’s often dominated by Americans, regardless of the setting.
]]>After a great many leaks, Ubisoft today finally announced Assassin's Creed Odyssey, taking the open-world murder simulator to Ancient Greece. Playing as a lad or a lass who's the grandkid of Leonidas, the Scot who was crowned king of Sparta after kicking a postman down a hole, we'll sneak, sail, and stab across the land. It largely resembles last year's Assassin's Creed Origins, obviously, but the return of naval combat to the series is quite welcome. It also leans on the drama a bit more, with dialogue options and even optional romances. Here, come watch all this.
]]>On top of being a broadly pleasant surprise and a very strong return to form for Ubisoft's open-world murder-sandbox series, one of the key selling points of Assassin's Creed Oranges for me was a promised feature that wasn't quite ready in time for launch.
Ubisoft are finally making good on their plans next week. On February 20th, the Discovery Tour mode will be arriving as a free upgrade for existing players (or as a $20 standalone product), converting the violent saga into a serious educational product featuring 75 narrated and guided tours through ancient Egypt.
]]>I have been, since November, utterly enamoured with digital Ptolemaic Egypt. Assassin's Creed Origins’ snowglobe version of the kingdom makes it excellent fodder for long, meandering walks and screenshots of tantalising vistas, but it's the small vignettes of daily life and scenes of mundanity that make Egypt feel less like just another theme park.
Since the first Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft Montreal has used scale as its default weapon. Huge towers, massive crowds, more map icons than the eye can handle. But while, yes, Origins is still a gargantuan game, it’s one that spends a lot of time zoomed in on the streets instead of hovering around the rooftops. It’s inspired me to do the same, accompanied by the game's impressive photo mode. It pauses the action and unlocks the camera at the press of a button, letting you tweak the image with filters and by changing things like contrast and depth of field.
]]>Welcome to the freshly relaunched RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show! You might think this is episode 31, but actually it’s episode 1 again. We’re rebooting it, even though we just did that last year. We’ve started by making it more accessible. Instead of three of us chatting about videogames between snippets of jaunty music, there’s just a sad man saying “Sonic the Hedgehog” over and over. We’re confident you’ll like it.
]]>Have you been finding Assassin’s Creed Origins, a game where you can control the trajectory of your arrows, a bit on the easy side? Don’t fret -- the December update will add a new "nightmare" difficulty mode, level scaling and two new quests, one of which introduces horde mode.
]]>Assassin’s Creed clothes are some of the best clothes in all games. Those layers, all those flowing, flapping, swinging layers: cloth and leather and swords and knives and pouches and harnesses. I often idly wonder, as I watch an Assassin’s Creed loading screen, how many people - how many studios! - produce Assassin’s Creed’s clothes? They’re a wonder of code and art coming together, of layers of beautiful fabric flapping just right. And Ubisoft knocked Assassin’s Creed Origins’ clothes out of the goddamn park.
]]>Cowardice is a virtue. So says the team on this week's RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. That's because our theme is "running away" - games that encourage you to flee from danger, or that give you a choice between fight and flight. Adam will run from the soldiers of Arma or the post-apocalyptic antagonists of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Brendan will scarper from poor odds in For Honor or Overwatch, while Alice only pretends to run away in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, tricking her foes into giving chase before ambushing them like some kind of velociraptor.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
The Assassin’s Creed series has abandoned its mutliplayer modes and that makes me sad. The multiplayer, introduced in Brotherhood, was one of the most playground-like games you could find. It’s basically the game of Assassin, popular among university students, but played on cool-looking streets from the past. You’re hunting somebody, but somebody else is hunting you. And – oh no – you’re all disguised as computer-controlled characters. You need to find a Jester among dozens of Jesters, while also hiding your own Courtesan among dozens of Courtesans.
]]>It's a simple theme this week with the Electronic Wireless Show. We're talking about guilty pleasures - the games that make us feel a wee bit embarrassed but not so much that we won't squirrel away at them while grinning like idiots. Alec feels a bit sheepish bringing his toy steering wheel to work when planning to play American Truck Simulator. Meanwhile, Matt remembers how he enjoyed the passage of time while picking flax in a Runescape field, and Brendan attempts to explain the relaxing sea-based boredom of Sailaway.
We've also been tinkering with alchemical puzzler Opus Magnum from Zachtronics, fiddling with small machines to produce precious metals, hangover cures and the kinds of "stamina potions" you might find spamming up your junk folder. Come listen, guilt-free.
]]>Our full review of Assassin's Creed: Origins is yet to come, but Edwin has been exploring its world on our behalf and sends back this report.
I've only had time for a quick poke through the world of Assassin's Creed: Origins, thanks to a combination of Ancient Egypt-grade download speeds, short notice and a tortuous wrangle with graphics card drivers, but I'm already enjoying myself. This is something of a surprise, as I've become profoundly weary of the Ubiworld in recent years and Origins is very much an Ubiworld - a Pharoah's haul of bite-sized distractions and trinkets that may or may not add up into something genuinely compelling.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
The first Assassin’s Creed, with its underwhelming and repetitive missions, seems destined to be judged as Ubi’s half-decent prototype for the much better AssCreeds to follow. But as much as the sequels added some much-needed character and features, the series also lost something. Most people will probably be happy it’s no longer a part of the game, but I really liked it when you had a long, final chat with the people you killed.
]]>Video games always come with an expectation that the player will suspend disbelief to some extent. Genetically engineered super-soldier clones don’t exist, radiation has never and will never work like that, and overweight Italian plumbers could never make that jump. In most cases, if we are unwilling or unable to suspend our disbelief, we may well struggle to enjoy the game and our questioning of the basics of its ‘reality’ would probably make us insufferable to be around.
There are some games however, where the realities of our world are key to enjoying the game. These are the builders like City Skylines, simulators and sports games like Prison Architect and FIFA, and even crime games like Grand Theft Auto. One genre has a particular problem when it comes to maintaining a foot in the real world yet still creating a setting where one can have fun without becoming mired in morally questionable events and choices: historically based games. And among historical games, few subjects are as complex to represent as slavery. Many have tried, from Europa Universalis IV and Victoria II to Civilization and Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry, and in this article I'll investigate the portrayal and use of slavery in these games and more to explore what they get right, what they get wrong, and how games could do better in future.
]]>So, in news I am still not quite ready for and haven't had enough coffee to take seriously, GamesRadar have pointed out that the Assassin's Creed Collection has turned out to be a hideous partwork figurine subscription service.
Is it wrong that it's kind of so terrible that I'm now really into the idea?
]]>Would I want to watch a movie about Michael Fassbender's chiselled, time travelling jaw? Yes. Would I want to watch an Assassin's Creed movie? Slightly less so. But this first trailer goes some way to convincing me that even if the plot turns out to be about Desmond, there'll be enough leaping about and kicking to make it worthwhile watching on Channel 5 in four years time. Come see.
]]>My calendar tells me we're now over halfway through April. The Met Office tells me astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere started on March 20. Yet the weatherman told me yesterday that I can expect highs of a whopping nine degrees centigrade here in Glasgow this weekend. I'd swear it was still winter had the annual Uplay Spring Sale not kicked off this week, with big discounts on the likes of Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Rainbow Six Siege and Far Cry 4, among others. Which others, you say? Find out after the drop.
]]>Since 2009's Assassin's Creed II, Ubisoft have released a new open-world murder playground every single year. Not in 2016. AC will indeed be taking a rest for a bit of a reworking, as was rumoured. I wonder if that means the Ancient Egypt setting for the next entry that rumourmongers mentioned is real too. Point is, Ubi are skipping 2016 and planning to return later with something fresher. Say, I wonder if Watch Dogs 2 will fill that October/November slot now open in Ubi's lineup for this year.
]]>Think what you will about the wildly unconfirmed rumours of the core Assassin's Creed thread skipping 2016 (the RPS line is that they're a fun excuse for daydreaming about revamps), we're certainly seeing some Assassin's Creed games this year. The 2.5D spin-off miniseries Assassin's Creed Chronicles [official site] is one step closer to its conclusion, as ACC India launched last night. We've still got Russia to come.
Oh, and Ubi have shared the first stills from the upcoming Assassin's Creed movie and oh god of course it has a present-day plot strand too.
]]>A rumour is going round, based on anonymous 4chan posts supposedly by an Ubisoft employee, that we'll not see a new main Assassin's Creed game in 2016, but it'll return in 2017 with a complete overhaul set in Ancient Egypt. Not the most reliable of sources, that, and probably not a rumour to put money on. However, now we're all back at work and loitering around water coolers with idle hands and malevolent intent, let's gasbag and tell other people how to do their jobs. We ask: how would you revitalise the open-world parkouring murder simulator series?
]]>Review code for the PC version of Assassin's Creed Syndicate [official site] activated this evening and I've spent the hours since playing through the opening sections and fiddling with various settings to see how it all holds together. In short, it runs beautifully and looks a treat. Details and early thoughts about my trip to the Big Smoke are below.
]]>"Admire the Chief's feather headdress, his wives' shameless outfits and the adorable little faces of their red-skinned offspring. Feeding time is not to be missed!"
If that excerpt from the XIXth Century Search Engine hasn't caused your sides to split, don't worry - there's more. Ubisoft sent news of their latest AssCreed [official site] marketing initiative this morning, calling it "a rich historical research tool designed to look just like the search engines our great-great-great-grandparents used in 1868". I clicked on it expecting an irritating collection of steampunk iDevices and mustachioed memes. What I found was somehow worse than that.
]]>It wasn't fair that last year's Assassin's Creed: Unity became the fall guy for an entire industry's reluctance to make its digital people diverse. Unfortunately the apparently contradictory excuses, rather than acknowledgement of oversight, for cutting playable female characters from a game whose headline feature was co-op play with customised avatars made the situation much worse. In any case, the series now seems determined to be more inclusive, starting with the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Syndicate [official site].
We already know that you can switch between its male and female protagonists, twins Jacob and Evie Fry, and now it's been revealed that the supporting cast will include a trans man.
]]>Ubisoft have launched something called the Assassin's Creed Council which appears to be a souped-up version of a devblog with a promise of some exclusive content and a side helping of "community". I have been going through the comments to see what I can learn from the community. So far I know someone made a real life hidden blade using a drawer runner, some power tools and actual blades.
Right, I guess we should cover what the Council is in a touch more detail:
]]>Almost every time I watch a trailer for an Assassin's Creed game, I think the same thing: I want to go to this place but I do not want to spend my visit climbing up the walls, collecting feathers, and bumping into people (and bumping people off). My repetitive cry of "great city, tedious experience" has itself become tedious. But here I go again because Ubisoft have released a new trailer for Assassin's Creed: Syndicate [official site] and when the marketing department considered the target audience they wanted to reach, they were looking at a picture of me. It's a beaut and I'm going to pretend it's a trailer for a tourism simulator. Or Dishonored 2.
]]>Haha, that could be anyone in there. Though if you look really closely, you can just about make out a wince of shame in his eyes. But yes, this is our very first look at Michael 'Big Boy' Fassbender in the movie adaptation of Ubisoft's jumpy-stabby Assassin's Creed series.
]]>I've been on holiday, which means I've spent more energy walking around and looking at things, than I do when I'm at work. It's a tricky thing, this holiday business. How am I supposed to enjoy the majesty of nature (and the cold pint in a country pub that waits at the end of nature) when my muscles are aching, the sweat is like an oil slick on my brow, and I've fallen into the habit of checking my maps every fifteen minutes because I'm convinced I'm walking in the wrong direction.
]]>I was waiting during E3 for Ubisoft to prove that Assassin's Creed Syndicate [official site] is a worthy addition to the franchise. True to form, the publisher has released about a million trailers (okay, three) for the game during E3. None of them have quelled my fears.
]]>Yesterday Ubisoft live-streamed its announcement of a new bounty of pre-order bonus opportunities, offering collections containing exclusive figurines, hip flasks, art books and a game called Assassin's Creed Syndicate. With so much variety on offer, we've compiled a list of all those packs to help you choose which one to buy a full six months before the first review!
]]>This year's instalment of Assassin's Creed will visit Merrye Olde Victoriane Londone, Ubisoft announced today (and as we knew ages ago), in Assassin's Creed Syndicate [official site]. It's due on PC this autumn with carriages to ride, urchins to milk for information, working class gangs to recruit, and a smattering of comedy cockneyisms.
Come have a look in the nine-minute gameplay trailer, showing off one mission.
]]>You can pencil this one into your calendars: Ubisoft is revealing the newest addition to its historical neck-snapping game series Assassin's Creed on May 12, 5 p.m. U.K. time. This, according to a 26-second teaser trailer appropriately named "New Assassin's Creed Reveal," which sadly doesn't offer much in the way of information just yet.
Watch for yourself below (and you can take a look at the newly-launched teaser site here): From what I can glean, this will likely be the rumoured Assassin's Creed Victory, said to take place in Victorian London.
]]>The Assassin's Creed movie, starring Michael "elephantine" Fassbender, has finally been actually properly genuinely greenlit, and production's already in swing for jumpy-stabby silver screen action in late 2016. Given that the misfortunes of earlier Ubisoft adaptation Prince of Persia panned out resulted in Jake Gyllenhaal turning away from ultro-budget action movies, if this struggles similarly we might see the Fass slope off back to arthouse for a while. I might be OK with that.
]]>There is, I have discovered, a certain wonder and horror in learning that Assassin's Creed is coming to a city you know and love. Excitement to see your streets and buildings recreated in shiny history-o-vision for you to explore crashes into dread of how horribly it'll mangle your city's culture and history. The open-world murder simulator series is coming to Victorian London, Ubisoft have quietly sorta confirmed after "target gameplay footage" of something named Assassin's Creed Victory leaked to Kotaku. Imagine the mockney accents.
]]>I want to play a game about tourism. It's odd that I can fight in so many wars, across so many continents, planets and timeframes, but I can't simply take a stroll around a city orf national park, taking photos and writing postcards as I go. I'm sure there are games about tourism but they're probably adventure games, or hidden object games. Something will be in the way of the pleasure of being in a place simply to be in that place. From Street View to The Crew, I'm looking for my next grand tour.
]]>Today, I give thanks that there is yet another trailer for Assassin's Creed: Unity crouching in a corner of my inbox, hidden hype-blades snarling somewhere within. I'm genuinely grateful for this one because it manages to contain all of the reasons I'm excited about a new Assassin's Creed alongside most of the reasons that I'll probably stop playing after an hour or two. The good stuff first - Ubisoft's gargantuan CreedCrafting studios make big budget pop culture history that I'm always delighted to explore. The bad is the cloaked figure leaping from a rooftop, doing the same old things in another city, in another time. Following, jumping, stabbing, killing. Where's the mystery?
]]>I always think music is a better model for videogames than film: individual series of games can be thought of as performers, reaching a feverish apex of popularity before settling into comfortable grooves and hoping for the rare, Kylie Minogue-like creative resurgence.
What's unusual about music is that most of its critical discourse revolves around pop. It's not because pop music is what's popular - though that helps - but because pop is obsessed with the new. It's an eclectic, hybrid genre, grabbing new sounds, new ideas, new fashion from wherever it can, subsuming what it needs and discarding the rest. When pop finishes with an idea, that idea either dies or it calcifies as its own genre and people stop talking about it.
In short, Assassin's Creed is now the adult contemporary of videogames. Assassin's Creed: Unity is Michael Bolton.
]]>When you look at the Assassin's Creed series from a standpoint of raw numbers, things gets a little preposterous. I don't mean sales, either. It's well-documented that Hoods and Handspikes is basically this generation's Shoots and Ladders. No, I'm referring to less publicized stuff, like the number of people who work on these ceaselessly cascading historical murder romps. Assassin's Creed IV had all of its ships crammed into a single bottle by 900 some-odd people, the series' latest main entry, Assassin's Creed Unity, is apparently being put together by ten studios working in conjunction. Unity indeed.
It'll be out this fall alongside another, still-unnamed series entry aimed at the previous "gen" of consoles. I wouldn't be shocked if that ended up on PC as well, though.
]]>I am a trusting person, which us why I often gather groups of stranger together and fall backwards into their arms. It's something to do while my pies cool on my windowsill. But I also live in London, so today I've lost three pies and broken two vertebrae. Send help! It hasn't damaged my trust, though, so I'm going to take Eurogamer at their word that they're sure that Far Cry 4 is soon to be announced. I don't think it's any stretch to assume that it would be coming, but the setting promises mountains and elephants.
And - this just in - there's a first, rather shiny trailer for the next Assassin's Creed game, subtitled 'Unity' and which appears to be set during the French Revolution.
]]>Of all the things that my PC needs right now, another Assassin's Creed game is somewhere near the bottom of the list, right near the Bing Toolbar, the Bing Desktop and Bing. I enjoyed the second game, playing it as a bonkers historical tourism simulator, but I didn't find the time or the energy to trot through the entire thing. Even people who liked playing II three times didn't tend to like playing III once, so I ignored that one. Black Flag did catch the outermost tendrils of my interest when a man appeared to punch a shark in one of the trailers, but there will probably be a hundred hours of not shark-punching. That's a lot of Ass Creed and there's more to come. Liberation, a Vita spin-off, will be coming to PC in a highly defined version.
]]>It's like something out of a storybook. Guy meets gigantic, monolithic game publisher. Guy helps create publisher's flagship franchise. Guy leaves to pursue something new and different. Guy's company is bought by said gigantic, monolithic publisher due to hilariously unfortunate circumstances. Guy reluctantly returns to company. Guy gets fired a couple months later. AND FINALLY: Guy's project is "suspended for an undisclosed period of time." And some unrelated people somewhere else all lived happily ever after.
]]>Eventually, Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Desilets will make another game. He'll just have to make some excruciating blood sacrifice on an arcane altar in some Mayan ruins first, because he is clearly cursed. First he left Ubisoft to chase his new vision, then eventual partner THQ drowned in a sea of unsold uDraws, and now - only a few months after being brought back into the Ubisoft fold - he's flying solo once again. This time, however, he claims the departure wasn't voluntary at all. Well, unless you define "being unceremoniously booted out the front door by security guards" as voluntary, anyway.
]]>There are many frightening things in this world. Some of them are to be expected - for instance, giant, violently writhing millipedes and whatever primeval force gave Gary Busey the power to "smile." Other things, meanwhile, are less expected. Things like penguin mouths. And still others are so expected that they've lost their chill-inducing mystique entirely. That's where videogame monsters enter the picture. I mean, it's always monsters, right? Around corners, in ventilation shafts, being president - they're so predictable. So I can definitely respect Outlast - a new PC-only scare-'em-up from folks who worked on Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted - and its plan to instead focus on intelligent, truly evil (or at least crazy) human beings.
]]>I can only assume I Inceptioned the idea into Ubisoft's collective head. Yesterday, reporting on the news that John Beiswenger had dropped his daft lawsuit against Ubisoft, I contacted the publisher to ask if they were now going to respond to the extreme allegations of illegal activity made against them by Beiswenger's lawyer. Despite the promise of a statement in return, nothing came, and yet today via Gamasutra they've announced they're filing a complaint against the eccentric author. I think I'll email Ubisoft asking them if they're planning to drop all their stupid DRM forever more, and see what appears elsewhere tomorrow! Anyway, the news is, they're filing a complaint against the eccentric author whose lawyer made such extreme allegations of illegal activity against them.
]]>Aw, bums. That batshit lawsuit against Ubisoft has been dropped. The one where the eccentric author/inventor/dreamer of a Christians-only enclave for the end times, John Beiswenger, accused Ubi of having stolen the silly Animus plot from his classic work of literature, Link. But Joystiq has spotted that he's abandoned his case for $5,250,000. Boo.
]]>Okay, easy question. What's the worst thing about the Assassin's Creed series? Correct! Of course, as everyone knows, it's the ridiculous sci-fi nonsense that constantly interrupts the good fun time you're having leaping about in historytimes. It's dumb, it's a shame it was ever a part of the games, and now someone is suing Ubisoft because he says it's his idea... waitwhat.
]]>We interrupt our regularly-scheduled (no, really - we're actually semi-organised about that stuff these days) posting to bring you news that the newly de-olded GoG.com is currently offering the original Fallout for the princely sum of zero for the next 48 hours. Until 23.59 GMT on 8 April, specifically. Here! It's here! Rather good timing, what with the current Wasteland fever. It's like post-nuclear RPGs never went 3D all of a sudden.
]]>Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time RPS have presented detailed instructions on how to build a concealable assassination tool. Given that I'm writing on a website that Kieron Gillen is a director of, I find that baffling. Anyway, how many fingers do you have? All of them? Would you like one less? You'll need a drawer, a screen door, a throwing knife, and balls the size of a baby's head.
]]>The fourth Assassin's Creed game is out on PC now, for once merely weeks rather than months behind the console version. I've been dragging old man Ezio across its rooftops and into its underground lairs of conspiracy for the last few days, and as such... well, you know how this goes.
Experimentation, calibration, celebration and now stagnation: that's been the course Assassin's Creed games have taken, and until Revelations it's been a course of sustained improvement. In some ways, and when looked at alone, Revelations is the best of the bunch, but it's also the most unnecessary. Especially on PC, where delays meant we only saw the last game, Brotherhood, a piffling eight months ago. After a half-decade of tinkering, AssCreed has settled on its formula and Revelations presents an impasse - stay the course, do the COD-style franchise thing and hope the fanbase is loyal enough to stump up for iterative updates, or return to the reinvention it once embraced.
]]>Assassins love their dens almost as much as foxes love theirs. It's where they hang out, sharpening their knives and polishing their coins, so it's hardly surprising that when gangs of angry Templars start storming those dens, trying to dull the knives and mar the coins, the assassins are having none of it. Admittedly, it's a little surprising that there appears to be a tower defence minigame simulating those myriad historical moments in Assassin's Creed Revelations. We can now add magically barricading streets and commanding troops to the list of things parkour-killers are capable of. What next? I say fishing and basketball.
]]>A new Assassin's Creed 2 trailer, once it gets past its, "Look, a bit like The Da Vinci Code which is a book and film you know!" tedium, shows off some of the melee combat in the game. Which looks mighty meaty. Of course, mighty meaty melee combat is going to be all rather put in the shade as a result of Batman. It's going to be interesting to see if the Dark Broody Knight's amazingly visceral fisticuffs will have the same effect on action games as the Persian Prince's introduction of reversing time: make everything else feel like it's missing something important.
]]>I know I've used that headline before, but hell, it works. I really do need to find a way to recharge my pun batteries, however.
Assassin's Creed was one of the most Angry Internet Men-angering games last year, and, like Bioshock, it refuses to go away. This time, there's a piracy problem. Aaargh. I'm terrified that Assassin's Creed + Piracy is the secret formula that will cause RPS readers to rise up and destroy the entire planet, but here we go....
]]>I keep seeing this story doing the rounds, and originally didn't deem it worthy of a post, but seeing as this week seems to have inadvertently been Hot Button Issue Week on RPS, may as well give you folks a chance to have a shout about Assassin's Creed too. I know you do like to.
]]>Somewhere there's a list of things you really shouldn't do in game design.
]]>Assassin's Creed, expanded and revised for PC, is now out there in shopping land. We had been hoping to get round to some serious Assassin's Creed discussion this week, but the RPS team are too busy trying to sort out missions to San Francisco or Shoreditch to actually get around to it. Therefore I'm going to throw this one open to the comments and see what you all think.
]]>Much info appeared in Ubisoft and Take-Two's press releases that appeared last night, which were full of words like "fiscal" that confuse and scare me. They also include the slippy-slidey nature of a bunch of their PC releases. So what do we know?
Ubi's Assassin's Creed is going to take an extra couple of weeks before it's on our machines. Sneaking out of March, it's now hiding in a hay cart until April 11th.
]]>Assassin's Creed for PC has been dated and redated and is now scheduled to arrive on our beloved Chaos Boxes on 28th March. Is that right? Oh it's April 8th in the US for some reason. Oh and it's already out and number one on Bitorrent, except that's a broken pre-release version that won't load half the game, so you might want to wait until it gets pirated properly comes out in the shops before you start playing.
Anyway, the PC version is also going to have new stuff! You're actually going to have more tasks to do before those assassinations can happen, young man. No shirking on the pre-kill investigations. And no shirking on the system specs: Assassin's Creed needs a monster PC. Beyond the jump: everything is permitted.
]]>Much-debated man-stabbing game Assassin's Creed is set to come out on PC at the end of March. Ubisoft's latest transmission has revealed a few details about the beige-box version:
]]>One title that's not currently on our Big Games Of 2008 Wot We Should Post Many Words About list is Assassin's Creed. Mostly that's because it's already available on console, and across the sinister mass of the internet you'll find many a proferred opinion on it, filled with love, hate, hate towards people who love it, hate towards people who hate it or, most commmonly, bitching about its cutscenes. Judging by regular mentions in our threads, it's a game that causes strong feelings amongst you lot too, so perhaps you don't need us to give you the skinny on this one. But you do still need us, right? Right?
Also, we really don't know whether there'll be much, if anything, different about the impending PC port. Until now. The first truly concrete piece of information's just in, and it's a stonker. The minimum system requirements for it are, well, a little shocking.
]]>What the UFC pugilists make of Assassin's Creed:
]]>While we wait to see when the PC version will turn up, Assassin's Creed hits the consoles. Reviews are starting to appear, generally speaking below what people may have expected. That said, the thing that's most caught my eye about the game is Tom Chick - who actually likes a lot about the game - sliding a knife home. The coup de grace?
]]>I keep forgetting that Assassin's Creed is coming out on PC. Perhaps the "delayed-for-PC-'til-2008" announcement deleted it from the buffer memory that I reserve for thinking about upcoming excitements, or perhaps my hype-immunisation jab actually kicked in for this one. (Get yours in time for Christmas!)
]]>
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