Ubisoft has ditched the annual release of Assassin's Creed games, and while the next big installment won't arrive this year, it's likely already in development. As you know, the company likes to hide hints of future releases in the form of "easter eggs" in their projects. One of the newest, found in Tom Clancy's The Division 2, may indicate that the new action-adventure about assassins will be set in Scandinavia.
According to GamesRadar +, the secret was discovered by an Assassin's Creed Wiki user under the pseudonym AlifMorrisonudin. It happened on March 25, but game resources began to distribute this information only now. One of the posters in Tom Clancy's The Division 2 shows a man in red and white (the traditional colors of Assassin's Creed) holding a spear (or staff) in one hand and an Apple of Eden, a powerful artifact from the Assassin's Creed universe (more precisely , one of several similar). Complementing this unambiguous hint is the inscription Valhalla.
Rumors about Assassin's Creed about the Vikings originated last year, when former Ubisoft Milan concept artist Michele Nucera published two illustrations on this topic on ArtStation (you can see one of them at the very beginning of the news, the second below). He later clarified that these works are not related to Assassin's Creed, but fans have noticed that the name of one of the files contains the mysterious combination of Assassin's Creed Ragnarok. The company also hinted at the possibility of a "Scandinavian" game of the series in one of the user surveys.
Scandinavia is not the only option: in the middle of last year, rumors spread on the Web that the new Assassin's Creed would move the action to Japan. Their source was Reddit user DoktahManhattan, who noticed in the opening video of Assassin's Creed III (2012 game) three symbols that allegedly refer to future parts of the series. The first of these, the wajet (or eye of Ra), refers to Egypt (Assassin's Creed Origins), the second, the omega letter, to Greece (Assassin's Creed Odyssey), and the third is a torii, the gate in front of Shinto shrines in Japan.
In February of this year, another suggestion appeared: the events of the new game will take place in Ancient Rome, around 169 AD, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. According to user Fireden.net, it has the working title Assassin's Creed Legion, will be released in 2020 and will again offer a choice between two main characters (a woman and a man). However, Kotaku editor Jason Schreier doubts the veracity of this information.
Speaking to Official Xbox Magazine seven years ago, former Ubisoft creative director Alex Hutchinson noted that fans often suggest Egypt, Japan, and World War II as settings. He called all these options "boring", but the company still used the first of them in last year's game. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China was not very successful, and perhaps the developers have already changed their minds about sending gamers to the East in the main series, but this possibility still cannot be ruled out.
Another curious (but not related to Assassin's Creed) secret was found by players in 2016 in Watch Dogs 2. In one of the missions of the hacker action, users were asked to hack Ubisoft servers and steal a teaser of an unannounced game. As it turned out later, in this way the company was preparing the audience for the announcement of the sci-fi Pioneer, about which the Kotaku portal wrote three years ago. According to January rumors, this is a co-op shooter based on the latest Anvil family engine (which is the basis of the Assassin's Creed series). Perhaps Ubisoft will introduce it this year.
The latest Assassin's Creed, Odyssey, was released on October 5, 2018 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (in Japan, also on Nintendo Switch). It received high marks from the press (Metacritic rating - 83β87/100) and was nominated for many prestigious awards, including The Game Awards 2018 and BAFTA Games Awards 2019. Last week, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed III Remastered for three relevant platforms (May 21 re-release will get to the Nintendo Switch).
Source: 3dnews.ru