Persistent Updates and Multiple Historical Settings
The Assassin’s Creed games have been getting bigger and bigger over the years, with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla being so large it could easily over 100 hours to clear, and Ubisoft has noticed. Rather than change gears, the company has decided to double down, meaning the next game in the series–codenamed Assassin’s Creed Infinity–will be a live service game that receives persistent updates.
For those of you who aren’t quite sure what that means, it will be joining the ranks of games like Fortnite and Apex Legends that release regular ‘seasons’ of updates to keep players engaged. The game will also be taking place across multiple historical settings, so the decision to make it a live service game may have been to give players more time to spend in each time period and more things to do there.
Not all fans are thrilled about this, but Assassin’s Creed Infinity will also be a joint production between Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Quebec that is expected to guide the future of the franchise, so it’s clear that Ubisoft has a lot of faith in the project. Whether that faith will pan out is another story, of course.
“Rather than continuing to pass the baton from game to game, we profoundly believe this is an opportunity for one of Ubisoft’s most beloved franchises to evolve in a more integrated and collaborative manner that’s less centered on studios and more focused on talent and leadership, no matter where they are within Ubisoft,” stated Nathalie Bouchard, managing director at Ubisoft Quebec, and Christophe Derennes, managing director at Ubisoft Montreal, on Ubisoft’s blog.
Ubisoft also expects this new structure within the development team to help bring diverse voices to the forefront so that the franchise’s representation of diverse settings, peoples, and languages continues to get more accurate. Development on Assassin’s Creed Infinity will be led by Assassin’s Creed franchise executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté. Hopefully, he knows what he’s doing with this change in format.
Assassin’s Creed Infinity is currently in development.
Are you looking forward to an Assassin’s Creed live service game? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter and Facebook.