Is Assassin’s Creed Ready for Its Next Era?

In another timeline, 2024 would’ve been more of a landmark year for Assassin’s Creed. That November, Ubisoft’s action-stealth series celebrated the respective 15- and 10-year anniversaries for Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed Unitytwo of the most important entries in the franchise. And November 15, 2024 was the originally intended release date of the Japan-set Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Instead, Shadows moved out of that original date and wound up delayed twice; it will finally arrive March 20, 2025. The game carries a lot of weight on its shoulders, as it may be Ubisoft’s last major release before the developer’s potential buyout with Tencentand has had to deal with a pre-release leak that led Ubisoft warning players to avoid spoilers when possible. Suffice to say, things are different for this particular Creed, to say nothing of its place in a culture war that only wants to talk about it because one of its leads is based on a historical figure that Japanese media has had no trouble inserting into its own works over the years.

It’s easy to forget now, but once upon a time, Assassin’s Creed was nothing more but a game with a neat premise whose marketing teased greater secrets. Like other games that spawned franchises during the PS3/360 era—Uncharted, Borderlands, and so on—the first Creed had a good premise and solid ideas that did enough to forgive the spotty execution. Its sequel felt like a stab of fresh air when it jumped to Renaissance-era Italy and with Ezio Auditore Firenze’s growth from womanizing playboy to hooded killer seeking justice against the corrupt nobles who had his family murdered. And it took some wild swings, like having players start off as a newborn Ezio or teasing historical connections as far back as Adam and Eve.

Ezio’s story continued with 2010’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and 2011’s Assassin’s Creed Revelations, beginning the series’ transformation into an annual release. The II trilogy casts a long shadow over the rest of the franchise: to date, Signore Auditore is the only Assassin to have an entire sub-series of games to himself, and even after his story concluded, he stuck around. He was a guest star in Soul Calibur V, and mentored Shao Jun in spinoff game Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. (His presence has been further extended thanks to Jesper Kyd’s musical theme for him, which has been tweaked to fit the the musical stylings of later games’ settings.) No matter what Ubisoft added to the Creed formula, be it multiplayer, naval battles, or an extended opening as the main character’s father, the goodwill of the Ezio saga and the franchise’s general consistency kept things going enough for players to not mind.

Goodwill can only go so far, and there comes a point where every franchise hits a wall. That came with Unity, the series’ first release onto the then-new PS4/Xbox One generation, and its first entry with four-player co-op. (The game’s reveal trailer and a goofy TV promo for this feature remain some of the franchise’s best marketing.) Set during the French Revolution, Unity puts players in the shoes of Arno Dorian, the son of a French Assassin murdered by a fellow member—to see how that shook out, play Assassin’s Creed Rogue, a last-gen game released concurrently with Unity—and unknowingly taken in by Templars. Complicating matters further for Arno was Elise, his childhood friend-turned-lover who remained with the Templars after he eventually defected back to the Assassins.

Unity launched to mixed reviews owing to its rough technical performance. Opinions have come around on it since, thanks to patches, and it sold well, but the damage was done: Ubisoft stopped annualizing the series, instead choosing a “when it’s ready” approach that’s seen some back-to-back releases. After Assassin’s Creed Syndicate the following year, Ubisoft skipped 2016 and reinvigorated the series with 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins. There, the franchise pivoted into an action-RPG, complete with gear numbers and skill trees. Save for 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the franchise’s RPG era has continued throughout mainline installments like 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and 2020’s Valhalla, which leaned further into the genre with dialogue choices, romance options, and the option to play as a male or female character.

Those elements all return for Shadows, which puts players in the shoes of young shinobi Naoe Fujibayashi and Yasuke, a real-life African samurai who served under Oda Nobunaga in 1581 and 1582. While the series has always been historical fiction, and more than willing to lean on the second part of that term—you can play as Odin in Valhalla, and Assassin’s Creed III has a whole expansion where George Washington became king of the USA—there’s something tangibly different in turning a historical figure into not just a major character in Shadows, but a fellow protagonist standing among its fictional, more brand-connected lead. And unlike Odyssey’s Alexios or the male version of Valhalla’s Eivorboth Naoe and Yasuke are getting their fair share of marketing, with trailers and posters going out of their way to show that they are a double act working together, rather than one skin being swapped for another.

In a November 2024 BAFTA talkseries executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté called Shadows the start of Assassin’s Creed’s “third period.” That first period was informed by Ubisoft realizing it had a hot new IP with a hungry fanbase, and the second by realizing it bit off more than it could chew and should dial things back, maybe mix them up a little. As of that interview, the main focus for this next era is making history a centerpiece of the experience once again rather than the modern day stories. The ways Ubisoft used the history of the past to build out the series’ incredibly goofy lore is part of its charm, and allowed for some potent exploration of race, class, and gender from fans and critics. No doubt the return to history helped inform the decision to incorporate Yasuke, and it’s easy to imagine the clear, non-bigoted response to his inclusion here informing decisions for future Creed games and whatever real-world figures those bring into their individual orbits.

Assassin’s Creed tends to sell well, and Ubisoft has often relied on these games having a long tail to make it through a financial quarter or two. The series likely isn’t in danger of instantly going away if Shadows isn’t a bestseller within its first month of release, and Unity especially showed it can weather some tough blows to come back swinging. But 2014 isn’t 2025, and the time between taking hits and getting to get back up has grown increasingly, depressingly shorter. Ubisoft itself is undoubtedly in need of an overhaul that makes it a better, healthier place for everyone working there—it just all shouldn’t rest on the shoulders of a game about stabbing people and jumping off of high places.

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