Ubisoft surprised the world today (not really, but just play along) with the announcement that they are currently developing a new Assassin’s Creed title, which will be released during their next fiscal year (sometime between April 1, 2013, through March 31, 2014). Yves Guillemot made the shocking announcement during the publisher’s earnings call, saying:
“We are delighted and proud to announce today that in financial year ’14, we will introduce an all-new Assassin’s Creed hero, within an all new team and time period, and we expect it to be another major leap forward for the franchise. It is the benefit of multiple teams working on multiple chapters of the product, each getting several years to make their versions of an Assassin’s Creed game.”
Guillemot added that more information will be “coming soon”, which we are assuming means at their E3 presentation.
Outside of those little bits of information the next Assassin’s Creed game is a complete mystery, however, that has not stopped the rumor mill from filling in the rest of the details.
Examiner is reporting that word on the street is that the game will be titled Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, and that it will feature some sort of pirate-based story and gameplay elements. We are assuming this means lots of saying “Arrrrr”, peg legs, eye patches, booty, and (if we are lucky) a talking parrot.
The source for all these rumors appears to be a Reddit user who was lucky enough to be on a flight where he sat next to a lady who was “working on a Power Point presentation on marketing strategies” for “AC4: Black Flags”. The user noted that the game was listed with a Holiday 2013 release date, however, he failed to snap any pictures of the slides. He did note that it had “a cool looking logo”, so that’s something.
Obviously, you will want to take all this Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag talk with a giant grain of salt. With that said, we are completely open to the idea of having a ship-based AC title, as the naval battles in Assassin’s Creed III are our favorite part of the game (not that we didn’t enjoy the whole thing, because we clearly did).
Tell us your thoughts on the next Assassin’s Creed in the comments below, and we will let you know as soon as Ubisoft pulls the curtain back.