Just the other day, a series of leaked images seemed to confirm a long-standing rumor that set the next Assassin’s Creed game in Paris (at least partially) during the French Revolution. That is no longer just a rumor; Ubisoft has confirmed that the next game in the AC series, titled Assassin’s Creed: Unity, will take us back to 18th century France later this year, on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
The confirmation comes via the trailer below, which offers no sense of characters, gameplay revisions, or how the current day setting that frames the games factors in. The earlier leak also claimed that there will actually be two AC games this year, released for different console generations. We know that Unity will be on the newer hardware and PC, while a rumored separate game, known by the reported codename “Assassin’s Creed: Comet,” could be released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (and presumably PC). Oddly, no word on a Wii U port.
The French Revolution was a bloody and tumultuous period in French history, dominated in our imagination by the ever-looming presence of the guillotine. During the one-year period known as the “Reign of Terror” that took place from 1793-1794, as many as 40,000 people lost their lives in France, many of them under the guillotine’s blade. It was a brutal and horrific era, and it’s a perfect fit for the philosophical themes the Assassin’s Creed series wraps itself in as freedom and order mixed with bloody results.
The time period also allows Ubisoft to potentially continue the story of the Kenway family, which began in Assassin’s Creed III with Connor Kenway assassinating his way through the American Revolution. That story then continued in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag that focused on Connor’s grandfather Edward Kenway, who sailed the Caribbean as a pirate. There is no confirmation that the series will continue to focus on that bloodline, but the timeframe would fit, and the Kenway family could easily still be active. If not a direct familial relationship with the new lead assassin, don’t be surprised to see cameos from characters in the Kenway lineage and possibly other assassins – as well as Templars – with familiar surnames.
So far the trailer is the only confirmation Ubisoft has offered. With the release date of Holiday 2014, expect to hear more very soon.
