In 2010 Ubisoft brought competitive multiplayer to Assassin’s Creed with the launch of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Multiplayer modes continued to appear in Assassin’s Creed games up until the infamously disastrous launch of 2014’s Assassin’s Creed Unity. Unsurprisingly, multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed hasn’t been a high priority as of late, but as Ubisoft itself explains, that could soon change.
Could Assassin’s Creed Multiplayer Make a Comeback?
Speaking in a recent interview with Game Informer, Ubisoft chief creative officer Serge Hascoet discussed the return of multiplayer. As Hascoet explains, social game components are a high priority for Ubisoft. If Ubisoft determines that a future Assassin’s Creed game could benefit from multiplayer, the studio will implement it.
“We have many technologies, so it’s case by case, but Assassin’s Creed has no multiplayer mode, and that is very important for the social aspect of gaming, so we are looking for that.”
Hascoet didn’t elaborate on what form a potential future Assassin’s Creed multiplayer mode might look like. However, he did echo an earlier sentiment about not wanting to use the IP to chase the latest trends:
“Now, everybody is talking about battle royale, but we think there are 15 different companies making those games, and like mobile, only two will be successful. Many will be killed along the way; I don’t know which ones will survive.”
Previous Assassin’s Creed multiplayer attempts included both competitive and cooperative formats. The most prevalent format involved infiltrating crowds of NPC’s, figuring out which of them was actually an enemy player, and quietly eliminating them before another player could do the same to you. A cooperative variant called Wolfpack debuted in Assassin’s Creed 3, allowing players to work with rather than against each other. Wolfpack later served as the foundation for a more in-depth cooperative mode in Unity. However, the game’s buggy launch quickly killed overall enthusiasm for the mode.
The Hascoet interview is worth reading since he also discusses Ubisoft properties like Splinter Cell and Beyond Good and Evil. For more on Assassin’s Creed, be sure to read about how Ubisoft wants multi-gender protagonists to be a permanent fixture.