For several years, numerous rumors have circulated about the production of multiple remakes of older Assassin’s Creed games. However, it is now officially confirmed: Ubisoft is indeed working on a complete restoration of major episodes from its most profitable series in its catalog. This was stated by Yves Guillemot himself during an internal interview at Ubisoft, which has since been made public on the French company’s official website. In response to a question about whether the Assassin’s Creed series will continue (or not) to alternate between massive games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and more intimate experiences such as the recent Mirage, Ubisoft’s CEO officially confirms the existence of these remakes, specifying that the public is now eager to rediscover older games from the past, modernized.
In the Assassin’s Creed universe, Mirage offers a more modest tribute to the series’ origins, whereas Shadows boasts a wider scope and shares similarities with Odyssey and Valhalla. Moving forward, can we expect this kind of variety to continue? Will there be both smaller-scale games as well as larger ones?
YG: Firstly, players may be excited about certain remakes that will allow us to revisit some of our past games and modernize them; there are worlds in some of our older Assassin’s Creed games that remain extremely rich. Secondly, to answer your question, the experiences will be diverse. The goal is to release new Assassin’s Creed games more frequently, but not to repeat the same experience every year. There are many positive developments ahead, including Assassin’s Creed Hexe, which we announced, and it will differ significantly from Assassin’s Creed Shadows. We aim to surprise people, I believe.
Although opinions vary on social media regarding this remake policy implemented by the video game industry as a whole, sales figures support Yves Guillemot’s statements. He views these remakes as a way to restore the rapid pace of past Assassin’s Creed game releases. It is important to note that prior to the 2017 release of Assassin’s Creed Origins, the franchise was annualized, which allowed Ubisoft to be one of the most profitable publishers in the industry at the time. However, this strategy eventually demonstrated its limitations by not only decreasing the quality of certain titles but also exhausting development teams and boring players. With a financially challenging year in 2020, marked by underperformance from Just Dance and Mario + the Rabbids, Ubisoft needed to find a viable solution for future years. This new approach involves alternating between major games, smaller episodes, and remakes to offer diverse experiences each year. As for the first games being revisited, Black Flag has already been leaked as a remake candidate, and it is reasonable to expect that Altaïr and Ezio will follow suit, returning in even more beautiful iterations than before.
