While fun, the multiplayer aspect of the Assassin’s Creed franchise has been a diversion peripheral to the main story. With Assassin’s Creed III, that will all change, as the next installment in Ubisoft’s flagship franchise will find the modes affecting each other as they are progressed through.
Ubisoft Annecy has been exclusively working on the multiplayer element of the game, as well as building the story of Templar-affiliated corporation Abstergo. This story follows Abstergo’s commercializing the Animus and allowing the entire public access to the past. This affects the actual game in that “Abstergo” releases updates and files for the public, translating to new challenges and content for actual players every month. This all creates a central multiplayer storyline that will be unlocked piece by piece throughout the year. Damien Kieken, Game Director at Ubisoft Annecy, said that playing these challenges to unlock files and story elements creates an incentive for players to keep playing.
The consistent additions of challenges and content are not the only changes coming to the multiplayer. Dynamic weather such as rain or snow can alter visibility, and players can perform environmental kills on each other. Additional modes are also planned, including Wolfpack, which tasks groups of players to work together to hunt down groups of opponents against the clock.
I’ve been excited for Assassin’s Creed III since the initial reveal, and now that Ubisoft is really putting in effort to make the multiplayer shine, we’ll have a reason not to trade it in right away, which is probably part of Ubisoft’s plan anyway. But if the game shapes up to be anywhere near as good as promised, gamers should be in for an excellent time when the game releases in October.
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