In the next Assassin's Creed games, you can still climb buildings, hide in crowds and perform leaping assassinations -- just don't expect to do it to a friend online.
With two new Assassin's Creed games coming later this year, Ubisoft is betting that each console generation will find something it likes. Assassin's Creed Unity will be released for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, bringing stealth action to the French Revolution. And then Assassin's Creed Rogue will offer another naval entry in the series, for play on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But unlike past titles, neither game will feature competitive multiplayer modes where players try to kill one another stealthily.
"With Assassin's Creed Unity, the pillars of the franchise have evolved thanks to the potential of new generation consoles. With that evolution, we wanted to bring a new type of multiplayer experience, which was asked for by fans and which we wanted to explore for a long time: cooperative gameplay," Ubisoft told Joystiq.
Indeed, Assassin's Creed Unity's biggest new feature is four-player cooperative gaming, that is seamlessly presented along with the single-player campaign of the game. In these specific co-op missions, two to four players will take on a variety of assassination targets. Ubisoft has hinted that how you have built up your version of protagonist Arno, what skills and abilities you have specialized in, will offer benefits in the four-player game. In this mode, how your friends specialized their assassin will make them suitable for other parts of these missions.
Asassin's Creed Rogue continues the naval gameplay found in Assassin's Creed 3 and in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, but perhaps since the variety of naval tasks in the game -- from simply sailing to cannonball fights to boarding enemy ships -- were not part of the multiplayer versus experience, the entirety of those online deathmatches have also been ignored for this game.
Since the third game in the series, 2010's Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, each entry in the series has offered a variety of multiplayer modes. Some feature you playing against up to seven other assassins to see who was the best killer. Other modes had you part of a group of assassins taking on another group. Besides getting points for simply assassinating targets, the stealthiness and style of your kills also granted points. The results were deathmatches unlike the brute killing found in most online games or first-person shooters.
Ubisoft has not announced if a third, online multiplayer-focused title is in the cards in the future. It just may be that the company has decided to wait until next year, when the latest consoles have larger install bases and the company has a better handle on the technology, to bring online versus modes back to the Assassin's Creed series.
Assassin's Creed Unity will be released October 28 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Assassin's Creed Rogue will be released November 11 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
