CHENNAI: Ever since the rumours started over the last few weeks, I had been preparing to keep my expectations measured for potential announcements in the Ubisoft Forward.
Personally, a big fan of Assassin’s Creed, I didn’t want to hear lacklustre news of only a potential single game in the next few years. But the surprising news crept on me with the stealth of Altair from the first ever Assassin’s Creed game. Ubisoft has announced not one, but four separate projects in the upcoming few years for fans of the franchise.
Starting with the obvious — Assassin’s Creed made a big claim to return to its roots with “Mirage”. The protagonist is Basim, a spoiler for those who haven’t gotten to the end of AC Valhalla.
“Mirage” teases a familiar landscape from the older games and the stealth-heavy gameplay that puritans have been yearning for all this time. The next on the list was an open-world adventure for the mobile phone, set in Ancient China. For now, it’s called Codename Jade.
Ubisoft has historically made games for the phone before phones got as good as they have now — and this is an excellent opportunity for a wider audience to hop onto the franchise.
Everyone seems to have the same opinion on the next AC announcement — Codename Red; that Codename Red is just another version of the famous PlayStation exclusive “Ghost of Tsushima”.
Red features a feudal Japan and mentions a similar open-world RPG style to the franchise’s more recent games. I know it’s going to be a while before it releases, but I’m already looking forward to the grind of a hundred hours on it.
Ubisoft Forward also discussed a “Codename Hexe”, supposedly very different from any Assassin’s Creed game we’ve ever played. I don’t quite know what to expect from it, but it’s Assassin’s Creed — I’m instantly sold.
Obviously, Ubisoft has a host of other games and there were a lot of announcements on all of them. Nothing caught my attention as much as the announcement of “Infinity” — a sort of central hub for all AC games as I understand it. I only hope that doesn’t mean an augmented reality game is in the works for the franchise.
Surprisingly enough, the most exciting announcement for me wasn’t the release of four new games in my favourite series. Ubisoft is also the not-so-secret super boss of a fictional game in a now famous Apple TV series —Mythic Quest. Season 3 of this show was also announced for release later this year, and the trailer teases an interesting plot line for the show.
All these announcements have me satisfied with the fact that I have things to look forward to from the world of triple-A video games. As Ezio Auditore would say, we can all “requiescat in pace”.
Anusha Ganapathi
@quofles
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)