About a year ago we learned about the existence of something called Assassin’s Creed Infinity (or, more precisely, Project Infinity, but we’re all just calling it Infinity). The suggestion that Assassin’s Creed might become a live service online game akin to Fortnite was quite upsetting to me. Thankfully, VP executive producer on Assassin’s Creed Marc-Alexis Côté (aka MAC) appeared on tonight’s Ubisoft Forward livestream to explain more about Infinity, and I am slightly less alarmed but no less confused. Rather than a game, MAC says that Infinity is “going to be the single entry point for our fans into the Assassin’s Creed franchise in the future”.
Despite senior community developer Alice Terrett describing it as players being able to “explore their very own Animus, kind of like a time machine”, MAC clarified that “Infinity is going to be a hub that will unite all our different experiences and our players together in meaningful ways”, adding that the team is investigating how to bring back “standalone multiplayer experiences into the Assassin’s Creed universe all connected to the Infinity hub”. I still do not have any idea how Infinity is going to function.
It’s not a game, fine. So is it a kind of platform? Is it sort of like a storefront; will I have to have an Infinity account to launch and play any future Assassin’s Creed games? Will it have a subscription cost, or premium price point for extra services? All the questions and more went unanswered during tonight’s livestream. If I had to place a bet I’d say it’ll be an optional subscription service sort of like Game Pass, where you pay a monthly or annual subscription to get digi-access to AC games, but I have literally no way of knowing if I’d win that.
I do know that the two other big Assassin’s Creed games teased, Codename Red and Codename Hexe, were shown to be under the Infinity umbrella in some form, but it’s still not clear how they’ll function within it. Stay tuned for more; as yet almost all the future games and Infinity itself don’t even have a year release window. They’re just “on the horizon”. Somewhat Ominous.