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Assassin's Creed: Lost Legacy's concept found in Revelations
Living up to its name, Ubisoft's 3DS game Assassin's Creed: Lost Legacy seemed to slip between the cracks and disappear over the past year. First revealed during Nintendo's big E3 2010 coming out party for the 3DS, little was known of the title other than its premise: "Driven by curiosity and a desire to understand the origins of his Order, Ezio Auditore travels East in search of the lost castle at Masyaf, the ancient seat of the Assassins." But that disappearance was no accident -- apparently the concept for AC: LL is what formed the foundation for this holiday's big AC release, Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Eventually, the 3DS project was dropped in favor of a console release for the final installment in Ezio's assassination hat trick. AC: R lead writer Darby McDevitt explained as much to me during an interview this afternoon. "You may have heard of the game 'Lost Legacy' for the 3DS. It was announced, but that kind of morphed into this idea," he said. While that doesn't mean we'll never see an AC title on Nintendo's latest handheld, it does mean that Lost Legacy is no longer on the cards. And if an AC game does end up on the 3DS, it won't look much like what Ubisoft had planned for Lost Legacy, it seems. "The story that was announced about Lost Legacy was that Ezio goes to Masyaf and investigates the holy land," McDevitt laughed, inferring that the story for AC: LL was more or less directly parallel with AC: R. Update: Ubisoft has since officially confirmed that Lost Legacy is canceled with IGN. CFO Alain Martinez explained, ""[The cancellation] was a decision made back in September 2010. It wasn't due to anything that took place. We felt the [Nintendo 3DS] already had a number of hardcore games for its release."
One vote at Ubisoft for giving the Assassin's Creed franchise a year off
"I don't think there's going to be an Assassin's Creed in 2011," Ubisoft associate producer Jean-Francois Boivin told Eurogamer. "I think we're going to let it breathe a bit and really focus on bringing something new and exciting for the next time around." Since the release of Assassin's Creed 2, we've seen the release of three Assassin's Creed games, with two more on the way. Boivin seems justified in being concerned with franchise fatigue, even citing the case of music games like Guitar Hero, whose releases Activision has pledged to curtail. "Honestly, I think for the benefit of everybody – and business can come back and override everything I say because at the end of the day it's about selling games," Boivin said, "I believe that this license needs a breather. You can't plough a field every year. Once every three years – or once every something – you have to let it breathe." We think he's right about one thing -- that the corporate side of the company can override even the best creative decision to sell some games. Which is exactly what's going to happen in 2011.
