Ubisoft’s massively successful Assassin’s Creed series may have a longer lifespan than anybody could have imagined, as according to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag’s lead writer Darby McDevitt, nobody knows how the series will end yet. Before the release of Black Flag last year, director Ashraf Ismail had claimed that there was a definitive ending planned. According to McDevitt, however, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
“There’s been a bit of confusion in that [Ismail] once said that Assassin’s Creed has an ending — that’s not exactly true. This storyline [Assassin’s Creed IV] has an ending, but because all of history is open to us we see the universe as a Doctor Who type thing. There are so many possibilities, we don’t want to definitively end the universe, but we can have storylines that have endings.”
So, we can probably expect to see Assassin’s Creed games for some time yet and considering the quality of Assassin’s Creed IV, that’s definitely good news. It also explains why the overarching storyline of Black Flag was left pretty unexplained (clearly we will be returning to Abstergo Entertainment’s Animus machines in the future).
For those who don’t know, the first three parts of the Assassin’s Creed storyline (compromising the first five games) are now being labelled as the Desmond Trilogy, named after the modern day protagonist that the series is based around. Those titles took place in a virtual reality controlled by Desmond as he seeks training and answers from his ancestors’ memories to stop the Templar Order from enslaving the world.
Assassin’s Creed III featured an abrupt ending to Desmond’s story, leaving fans wondering how the series could possibly continue. Then Black Flag came along and revealed that Desmond’s memories had been extracted and were now being explored by the Templar-run Abstergo to create entertainment products like films and games (presumably to fund their evil exploits).
While the ending to this epic tale may not be in sight right now, fans can breathe easy knowing that Ubisoft are continuing to explore exciting new directions for the Assassin’s Creed series.
