Assassin’s Creed Infinity is a new project and feature of the behemoth stealth series. It won't be a new Assassin's Creed game in terms of what we're used to but rather it will serve as a new entry point into the whole series - both new games and old.
Ubisoft’s Marc-Alexis Côté has described Assassin's Creed Infinity as a “platform” or a “hub”, and something that will change how players interact with Assassin's Creed games. This means it won't be a game in and of itself, and it's also seen as a single entry point into the series and something that will link every game together.
While we wait for more official news on how Ubisoft will use Assassin’s Creed Infinity to tie into and link upcoming games in the franchise in an interesting, accessible way, here's everything we know about the platform so far.
Assassin's Creed Infinity: cut to the chase
- What is it? A platform for the Assassin's Creed series
- When can I play it? TBC
- What can I play it on? TBC
- Who is making it? Ubisoft
Assassin's Creed Infinity - what we know so far
We don’t know when Ubisoft will launch the Assassin’s Creed Infinity platform just yet, but there are plenty of tidbits to ruminate on and speculate from.
A Bloomberg report in July 2021, which confirmed the existence of Assassin’s Creed Infinity, stated it is “still years away from release.” Later, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier clarified this statement, telling us it's “at least three years away”.
And while Ubisoft hasn't formally confirmed a release window, what it has suggested is that we can expect it around Assassin’s Creed Codename Shadows or Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe. The former launches early next year, so it'll be interesting to see if Infinity is launched alongside it somehow.
When Assassin’s Creed Infinity launches, it looks like it could leave last-gen consoles behind. Speaking to VGC (also in September 2022), Marc-Alexis Côté said, “we wanted to mark a change technologically and gameplay-wise as we’re moving to a fully next-gen – or current-gen, I guess we call it – with the PS5 and the Xbox Series X.”
Assassin's Creed Infinity - what is it?
Assassin’s Creed Infinity isn’t a traditional Assassin’s Creed game so attributing something like 'gameplay' to it is a little off the mark. Instead, it’s being described as a “platform” or a “hub”, through which we’ll be able to launch future Assassin’s Creed games. It won’t, however, be a standard game library – it’ll be a sort of Animus, with the standalone games presented as DNA memories that you can click into and play as you usually would, while also being the new home of the series’ modern-day storyline, with new standalone games seemingly becoming uninterrupted leaps into the past.
In an interview with IGN in September 2022, executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté explained, however, that that might not be the full extent of it, saying, “The version of Infinity that we launch will not be the final version of Infinity. It's something that will evolve through time as our experiences grow and we can connect them more together. So I think it opens up a world of possibilities as to what we can do that go far beyond being just a launcher for our different games.”
Côté went on to tell IGN that the way they tell the modern story will “evolve with time” but revealed it’s not about Desmond or Layla and that “the abstraction that we want people to have is [Infinity] is your Animus. It is your DNA explorer on your desktop. You are the main story character.”
What we do know in terms of not gameplay but games, is the first two that will be available via the Infinity hub. Those will be Assassin's Creed Red and Assassin's Creed Hexe. Now that Assassin's Creed Mirage has been released, and is 'out of the way' these two will likely lead the way in the development of the series, but also with Infinity in mind.
Infinity could also present more opportunities for crossover stories between games, with Côté telling Eurogamer, “I want us to do more of, to crossover between our different games [...] I think we have such an engaged community that we should provide them with more free products and free experiences and Infinity is a perfect vessel for us to be able to do that.”
Interestingly, Côté told IGN that the games featured in Infinity will be quite different beyond their settings, telling the outlet, “[Hexe] is not an RPG. When I say it's a different type of game, I want people to go beyond the expectations of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. They're all an iteration on our RPG design, right? But Hexe and Red are taking different tracks.”
Infinity could, then, allow Ubisoft to create “different experiences of different sizes” in the Assassin’s Creed series with Côté saying they will be “priced accordingly”, even sometimes with “free experiences as well”.
It seems that a big part of the aim with Infinity is to create a lasting system of support for the Assassin’s Creed games, with Côté telling IGN, “We want to support everything that comes out on Infinity for a much longer period of time [...] What I'm very excited about with Infinity is not just our big games, but this idea that we don't replace the games with another game, you [don’t just] supplant your new RPG. I think these games can live for a longer period of time and we're architecturing them differently than in the past.”
Assassin's Creed Infinity development
Instead of being the endeavor of a single arm of Ubisoft, the publisher confirmed Infinity's a collaboration between multiple internal studios.
Ubisoft outlines Infinity as being headed up by at least two teams, run by two creative directors. Clint Hocking (Splinter Cell and Watch Dogs Legion), will lead a team out of Ubisoft Montreal, while Jonathan Dumont (Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Odyssey), head up the crew at Ubisoft Quebec. Hocking's team, we now know, is working on Assassin's Creed Hexe while Dumont is working on Assassin's Creed Red, two of the games which will be on the Infinity hub.
These two teams, and the games they produce, will ultimately be overseen by Marc-Alexis Côté, who's become executive producer of the entire Assassin's Creed series. One of the top dogs at Ubisoft and a senior member of the Ubisoft Quebec team, Côté worked on Brotherhood and Syndicate before moving to upper leadership positions at the company.
We’ve seen for years now that Assassin’s Creed games are slowly shifting from single-player games into something a little more connected, and a little more fluid in terms of how content is layered upon each successive release.
First up, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood added competitive multiplayer into the mix, while Black Flag added a fleet-management meta-game that continued playing while you were away from your console. Assassin’s Creed Unity experimented with co-operative multiplayer missions, while Origins introduced weekly challenges for players to tackle.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey expanded its story with monthly content releases. Meanwhile, the latest game, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, received significant campaign updates in the two years after its initial release, including a spin-off in Dawn of Ragnarok.
How Infinity will play out is an interesting prospect and we're still waiting for more specifics. What we do at least know is that it won't be free-to-play. During a 2021 earnings call (via VGC), Ubisoft confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Infinity won’t be among the upcoming “high-end free-to-play games” it spoke about earlier in the year. This makes sense given it appears that Assassin's Creed Infinity will be made up of games which are purchased individually.
“It’s not going to be free to play and this game will have a lot of narrative elements in it,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said. “It’s going to be a very innovative game but it will have what players already have in all the Assassin’s Creed games, all the elements that they love to get in them right from the start. It’s going to be a huge game but with lots of elements that already exist in the games that we published in the past.”
In addition, Ubisoft confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Infinity is still in early development. So it’s unlikely that we’ll get our hands on the game for some time yet.
Assassin's Creed Infinity news
Ubisoft officially reveals Assassin's Creed Infinity
Ubisoft formally confirmed Assassin's Creed Infinity back in July 2021. Revealed in an official news post, Nathalie Bouchard, managing director at Ubisoft Quebec was joined by Christophe Derennes, managing director at Ubisoft Montreal. While this confirmed very little about gameplay, Ubisoft announced Infinity's a joint effort between its two teams, focusing more on development details.
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