Lots of remakes are planned, Ubisoft wants to find its rhythm again

For several years now, numerous rumors have mentioned the production of several remakes of old Assassin’s Creed, but it has now been official for a few hours: Ubisoft is indeed working on the complete restoration of major episodes of its most lucrative saga of its catalog. It was Yves Guillemot himself who said this during from an internal interview at Ubisoft and made public on the official website of the French firm. Asked whether the Assassin’s Creed series will continue (or not) to alternate between massive episodes like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and more intimate experiences such as the latest Mirage, the CEO of Ubisoft formalizes the existence of these remakes, specifying that the public is now fond of finding old games from the past which are modernized.

On the Assassin’s Creed side, we’ve had Mirage, which was a lighter homage to the series’ roots, and now Shadows, which is much larger in scope and more in the vein of Odyssey/Valhalla. Looking to the future, can we expect this continued variety? Smaller games alongside bigger ones?

YG: First, players may be excited about some remakes, which will allow us to revisit some of the games we made in the past and modernize them; There are worlds in some of our older Assassin’s Creed games that are still extremely rich. Second, to answer your question, experiences will vary greatly. The goal is to release Assassin’s Creed games more regularly, but not for it to be the same experience every year. There’s a lot of good stuff coming, including Assassin’s Creed Hexe, which we announced will be a very different game from Assassin’s Creed Shadows. We’ll surprise people, I think.

Although opinions differ on social networks regarding this policy of remakes carried out by the entire video game industry, the sales figures in fact support the words of Yves Guillemot, who found in these remakes a way to rediscover the frantic pace of Assassin’s Creed game releases in the past. We recall that before the release of Assassin’s Creed Origins in 2017, the franchise was annualized, allowing Ubisoft to be one of the most lucrative publishers in the industry at one time. A strategy which has, however, shown its limits, not only lowering the quality of certain titles, also tiring the development teams, but also boring the players. But with an extremely complicated year 2020 financially where Just Dance and Mario + Rabbids flopped, Ubisoft had to find a viable solution for future years. So this is this new formula: knowing how to alternate between major games, smaller episodes, but also remakes to offer different experiences each year. As for the first games revisited, there is already the Black Flag episode which has leaked, and we imagine that Altaïr and Ezio will be the next two heroes to return more beautiful than ever. We don’t get too wet, that’s obvious…