Assassin’s Creed: Unity has made headlines since its November release thanks to its numerous bugs and performance issues. But you don’t have to worry about that anymore, because we’re already starting to learn about the next major release in the franchise.
You already know that publisher Ubisoft is preparing another Assassin’s Creed for next year, but now, details are leaking out the game. Ubisoft is calling it Assassin’s Creed: Victory, according to the rumor that Kotaku first published. It is set in Victoria-era London, and Ubisoft’s Quebec team is leading development. While a big leak like this is interesting on its own, this one is especially peculiar since the most recent release in the series, Unity, only went on sale three weeks ago. But that game has not found a loving audience. Instead, it has a number of issues that have tainted the Assassin’s Creed name, and the Victory leak could end up drawing attention away from Unity’s mess.
Assassin’s Cred is incredibly important franchise for Ubisoft. The series is always among the best-selling of the year, and Unity’s problems scared the hell out of investors.
The Kotaku article mentions some footage that it saw (but didn’t share), and it is very positive on the outlook for Victory. That kind of positive press is precisely what Ubisoft needs to turn around fan perception on Assassin’s Creed. But despite how this might benefit the publisher, Ubisoft is claiming that it did not do this intentionally.
“It is always unfortunate when internal assets, not intended for public consumption, are leaked,” a Ubisoft spokesperson said in a statement. “And, while we certainly welcome anticipation for all of our upcoming titles, we’re disappointed for our fans, and our development team, that this conceptual asset is now public. The team in our Quebec studio has been hard at work on the particular game in question for the past few years, and we’re excited to officially unveil what the studio has been working on at a later date. In the meantime, our number one priority is enhancing the experience of Assassin’s Creed: Unity for players.”
That last bit, about making Unity better, is key. The most recent Assassin’s Creed release is still experiencing a number of issues. Ubisoft has rolled out three updates for the open-world adventure game, and has made improvements to the framerate on multiple platforms and stopped characters faces from disappearing, but Unity still has matchmaking, graphical, and gameplay problems.
Ubisoft knows it’ll still have to make good on Unity to get back players who jumped on Unity and are now feeling burned.