Assassin’s Creed‘s a franchise that looks like it would be amazing if it visited either China or Japan. While that didn’t happen yet, according to Ubisoft’s worldwide Uplay director, that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Speaking to a group of Chinese reporters on Thursday during the PlayStation China announcement, Ubisoft’s Stephanie Perotti talked about everything from the arrival of the PlayStation into China, to bringing some of Ubisoft’s core franchises into the country.
The question that the Chinese reporters were most eager to find out about was the possibility of an Assassin’s Creed in China.
Previously, Assassin’s Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson told IGN that setting an Assassin’s Creed in Japan would be too familiar.
“Feudal Japan would work as an Assassin’s game, for sure, but I feel like it would start to look like ‘oh, have I played this?’ You know what I mean – ‘oh, I’ve been a ninja before, I’ve been a samurai before.’”
Course, what Hutchinson said didn’t rule out the possibility of an AC in Japan, nor does it even come close to talking about AC in China, but Ubisoft has yet to do an AC game in either territory. Again, I’m talking about a full-on AC game, not a spinoff game like the upcoming AC Chronicles: China.
“I don’t think that we said we weren’t interested in Chinese history. I think that we notice a lot of stories — we want to have creativity to create the right story [within the right context],” Perotti told the small cubicle full of Chinese press. “If we have Assassin’s Creed creators that want to spend time [understanding the history of the setting], we can understand Chinese history or Japanese history and make these games about history.”
As it stands right now, there does seem to be interest in an Assassin’s Creed China, after all they’re making Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. Though it will be interesting to see if they ever do a full AC game set in China and that if they do, if it will ever release in China, due to the country’s stringent media control.
Comments
16 responses to “Assassin’s Creed Asia Isn’t Impossible, Says Ubisoft”
That screenshot is so fake. As if Ubisoft would animate a female assassin. It’s too hard to animate and too expensive.
Lol, it’s just a re-skinned Aveline from AC:L 🙂
This is what they need to give it a more new fresh feel in my opinion.
Black Flag being an exception in recent times, this franchise is getting extremely long in the tooth…..
Asia will be Ubisofts trump card once everybody has lost interest in the series.
Well they better pull that card out now.
I feel like we may experience some series fatigue before they play that card though, and that’s what worries me.
Where have you been for the last 3 years?
Believe it or not, I haven’t been playing Assassin’s Creed! I picked up the first one last year and am playing through the second one atm. A couple more are on my pile of shame 🙂
Japan, I can’t really go for. Too many games set there.
China has potential though. You’ve got the Taiping Rebellion in the 19th century where something like 50 million people died, you’ve got the Opium Wars with invading European powers…a lot of potential for Assassin/Templar shenanigans.
Saying that too many games are set in Japan is like saying there is such a thing as too much fun… simply impossible!
There is such a thing as too much fun, Just Cause 3.
I think the comment “I’ve been a ninja before” is bang on target. If they’re going to do Asia, they need to mix it up and put it in South East Asia/Thailand…. Or get really nuts and do something in Mauritius. Or go North and include a Russian/North China thing.
Really? ‘Assassin dude #63’ is totally original but ‘Samurai/Ninja Assassin’ isn’t?
What say they give it a 2 year development cycle though when they do get around to it, then if they still wind up releasing a broken ass product, ubisoft should close up shop for a while and sit in the corner and rethink its life.
They probably are giving each game 2 years or more of development. According to the leaks about the next game it isn’t being developed by the Unity team. They also revealed that AC3 had been in development in parallel with Revelations. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people working on Unity back when Black Flag was in development.
While they obviously had problems with the most recent game, I don’t think it was from trying to compress the development into a single year.
I’d like to see an AC game set during the expansion of the Mongol Empire. That’d be somewhat different to the many ninja games out there.
A game set in the modernising period of Japan in the 19th century, similar to the China comment above, would be fun to play. Meiji Restoration/Satsuma Rebellion/Arrival of Matthew Perry that sort of deal. It would be a chance to combine modern military, samurai and ninjas (or the historical equivalent) plus a variety of European factions into a big ol’ ball of fun.
I’d be keen to play some Horn of Africa or West Africa empires Assassin/Templar action. A return to the Ottoman Empire, particularly the later rebellious period of 18th/19th centuries. A game set during the Great Game period in Central Asia would also be an interesting setting.
they should just worry about fixing unity first. That would be a good place to start