UPDATE 14:25 English: Ubisoft has now officially recognized Assassin’s Creed Infinity and detailed how it will be done and who will be working on it.
The boring one blog entry including the mention of two teams led by two creative directors. Clint Hocking, formerly of Splinter Cell and Watch Dogs Legion, will lead a team at Ubisoft Montreal. Jonathan Dumont, a veteran of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Odyssey, will lead a team at Ubisoft Quebec.
Project Infinity, which includes both teams’ play, will be led by Marc-Alexis Côté, who will now be executive producer for the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise. Côté worked at the Brotherhood before becoming Creative Director at Syndicate and is one of the senior executives at Ubisoft Quebec.
Côté is backed by longtime brand director of franchise tienne Allonier from Montreal and Valhalla producer Julien Laferrière from Quebec. I spoke with last year about the Valhalla Viking Center.
The harassment cases mentioned below are not mentioned. There’s been a lot of talk about how this new production model reflects the modern, post-pandemic model of remote collaborative game production that is no longer focused solely on specific studios, and the push for more diversity and representation among teams.
After all, there are still no exact details about what Infinity will actually offer. Ubisoft calls it “an important upcoming and still developing project” – and that’s it. But with more than one extra year for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, that’s probably not surprising.
ORIGINAL STORY 14:00 English: The future of Assassin’s Creed is powered by a new live services platform that connects multiple individual games. Bloomberg have called.
It’s called Assassin’s Creed Infinity and is being developed by a team from Ubisoft Montreal (Unity, Origins, Valhalla) and Ubisoft Quebec (Syndicate, Odyssey). Quebec will now take the lead in development, a change for the franchise that is most often managed by Montreal.
Meanwhile, in Montreal, three executives previously accused of “harassment or toxic behavior” remained at work, troubling employees. Other employee reports of racism and sexism were also not taken into account, the employee said.
In response to the Bloomberg report, a Ubisoft spokesperson said the company had investigated every claim since the company was involved in a tidal wave of sexual assault, harassment and misconduct allegations last summer. Many high-ranking employees have been laid off – some publicly, some not – although questions remain as to whether Yves Guillemot’s boss should have known or could have done more.
“Any employee who has an allegation and resides at Ubisoft is thoroughly vetted by a third party and is acquitted or he or she is subject to appropriate disciplinary action,” a Ubisoft spokesperson told Bloomberg. “The employee under investigation will not stay with Ubisoft if the results of the investigation warrant resignation.”
To be clear, the Bloomberg report states that the Assassin’s Creed franchise will continue to be released through multiple games with their own creative team that “may look and feel different, but they will all be connected”. There is no mention of the time frames these games will play or any changes in the franchise’s single-player focus at this time.
So what is Assassin’s Creed Infinite like? Details on live services are few and far between, but the last few parts of this series can provide some pointers. Origins adds weekly challenges to the franchise, while the well-received Odyssey expands its adventures with monthly releases of new story episodes. Recently, Ubisoft confirmed that Valhalla will be the first game in the franchise to offer a second post-launch expansion after being the first game in the franchise to offer multiple different countries.
Infinite is described as a platform that connects games from different time periods. It felt like it could act as a central hub, changing over time, adding new periods of time to explore as the game progressed and new titles came out.
I remember the Assassin’s Creed Unity opening screen teasing fans with various time periods accessible via the animus (actually, you play 99 percent of the game in France). I imagine a kind of Assassin Central Area that grows over time and gets new lines from Danny Wallace when new time periods or games are released. We’ll see.
Assassin’s Creed Infinity pic.twitter.com/Fsa0EMN3PZ
– Tom Phillips (@tomphillipsEG) 7 July 2021
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