Could the Next Assassin’s Creed Game be Set in India?
As with my last Assassin’s Creed Valhalla article (which you can read here) this is a script for a video I’ve made. If you’d like to watch the video, check it out below. Otherwise, enjoy reading and please clap the article if you liked it.
At the time of writing the script for this video, it’s the end of my working day as a freelance writer, and my mind is already a bit frazzled. Lo and behold that the Assassin’s Creed community comes along to absolutely destroy any sense of sanity that I have left. I am of course talking about the recent news that’s been doing the rounds regarding the next game in the AC series.
According to a report from Tech Radar, a leak has been found that indicates that the next AC game is going to take place in India of all places. The setting isn’t entirely new, since the series visited India in Assassin’s Creed Chronicles, but this would be the first mainline game to actually hit the region and bring it to life AC style.
The leak was posted on 4Chan, a site that I stay well clear of personally. However, the most important parts of the leak have been picked up by various news outlets, so I’m going to bring all of the details together here in this video so you guys have all the facts in one place. As always, I’ll link all my sources in the description if you’re curious. I will not be linking 4Chan though.
Okay, so first things first, the leak contained a rough map. Rough is right. I’ll get it up in the video for you now, and you can see how vague everything is. There are basically just points where there would be cities or settlements I guess, and then huge sections of wasted space. You can also see the two distinct colors. They’re being used to define the two key areas of each faction, which I’ll jump into in a second.
The leaker claims that they’re from Ubisoft, or were part of Ubisoft. I’m not clear on this point. They’re referred to as a Ubisoft Insider, but that could just mean that they do the mail or did work experience there.
Anyway, they say that the game will include the entirety of India, Bangladesh, and parts of Pakistan. The aim, they say, is to make a larger map than that of AC Valhalla.
As I went over in my AC Valhalla map video, Saxon England isn’t the largest map the AC series has ever seen. If you want to know more about the maps of the AC games, there’s a link to the video in the description.
The next thing the leak covers is the setting itself. We know the alleged location, but the time period is said to be the 17th century, so anywhere between 1601 and 1700. For some reason, Tech Radar mentions that this means that it’s likely to include the Taj Mahal because of the time, but that place is still standing today so I’m not sure why they mentioned it. The place was officially completed in about 1653, so it lines up that it could exist within the time frame if that’s what the outlet meant.
The setting is also said to be largely focused on the relationship between the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company. These are the two major factions if you will.
On a side note, if these are to be the major factions, I reckon we’ll start off playing as an employee of one of these companies. It makes the most sense, since we’ll then be seeing how the companies are ripping the countries apart. However, I also think the game would include a focus on a native, someone who has no loyalty to either company and just wants to fight for what is right. It may be that we’ll see some sort of dual storyline, or a relationship similar to the core characters in AC Unity.
What surprises me most about this alleged leak is the fact that there has apparently been no talk of any naval gameplay yet. I find that incredibly surprising given that the two major factions are both trading companies that would have had a fleet of ships at their disposal. If the timing is to be believed, this is set roughly 100 years before AC Black Flag, which was all about pirates. At this point in history, there were still pirates, there was still naval combat, and there should be in any AC game set during it.
Moving on from my biggest bugbear with this news, the leaker also explained that there will be a fully written female protagonist for this game as well. I reckon they must mean that there will be both a female and male protagonist, though whether it goes down the same route as Eivor or Odyssey’s Kassandra and Alexios is anyone’s guess.
Now we come to what might be the truth in all of this. The game is said to be an exclusive for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Ubisoft apparently isn’t working on this game for last-gen consoles. However, if they follow what they did with the last new generation of consoles, we might get a separate game for those last-gen consoles at around the same time this game launches.
The final part of this that Tech Radar covered is the fact that Ubisoft is considering bringing back the bounty hunter system. This was great in Origins and Odyssey, and I was sad to see it left out of Valhalla. I don’t think it fitted Valhalla’s tone though, so that at least was a good decision. In a game that’s all about companies and a sort of industrious time though, I think bounty hunters would work well.
So how likely is this so far? Well, AC Valhalla was the most popular game in the series to date. Obviously, Ubisoft would be crazy not to be working on a new game in the series. Their development cycles have shifted slightly, so I don’t think we’ll see a new game until 2022 at the earliest. A lot of these leaks seem like they could be true, but then so does a lot of fan fiction. I think we need to put a pin in it and see what Ubisoft reveals during their press event around E3 this year if anything.
Let me know what you guys think of this leak in the comments. Call it now, why not? Is this fake, or is it true? I’ll go first, I reckon it’s true. Why not? We’ve not had a proper AC game based in India, and I was thinking late last year that it would make the perfect setting. Maybe the story could even follow an Indian modern day assassin too. Tell me your theories in the comments.
Thank you so much for watching, I’ll see you guys in the next one.