Assassin's Creed: current story arc already has ending, but won't necessarily end the series
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag may have triggered a new story arc in Ubisoft's franchise, but the ending is already planned. However, this doesn't necessarily signal the end of the series as a whole.
It follows my chunky Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag making-of, which is full of interesting behind-the-scenes nuggets about the game's development and potential future. Feudal Japan anyone?
Speaking with Edge, Black Flag writer Darby McDevitt explained, "There's been a bit of confusion in that [Ismail] once said that Assassin's Creed has an ending - that's not exactly true. This storyline has an ending, but because all of history is open to us we see the universe as a Doctor Who type thing. There are so many possibilities we don't want to definitively end the universe, but we can have storylines that have endings."
He added, "The end of the Desmond trilogy changed slightly but it was always intended to end that way. And then about two years ago we planned for another story... [But] we've moved on from specifically defining when a story will end."
Wherever the series ends up, it's worth noting that a teasing document found within Black Flag's modern day section - which suggested potential settings for future games - was written by McDevitt to parody fan suggestions. They included the Old West, Ancient Japan and other settings.
It doesn't necessarily mean that Black Flag's naval tech will return either, but McDevitt stressed that none of those tools go to waste between projects. "Nothing ever gets set aside," he stressed. "There's often ways to creatively use old technology for new things. One of the things that made AC3's naval combat possible - and then of course AC4 - is that we were able to have characters climb and walk around on dynamically moving objects... This technology, it might appear in future games - it might just not be on boats. It might appear in a completely different way."
Where would you like to see the Assassin's Creed series end up? Ninjas right? You want ninjas.
Via Eurogamer.