With today being the day our most anticipated game of the year (Mass Effect 3) launches onto store shelves, it’s had a tough time fighting for the spotlight thanks to the Game Developer’s Conference seeing major announcements and reveals for Halo 4, Forza Horizon, and even moreso because of Ubisoft’s long-awaited Assassin’s Creed III dominating the headlines with reveal after reveal, after leak.
The game’s new setting and protagonist hit online before Ubisoft had planned, and it was immediately followed up with details and images from Game Informer’s cover story, leaked screenshots, official box art, and yesterday, the first ever Assassin’s Creed 3 trailer. Today, more leaks share exciting details about the addition of co-op play to the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
Even though AC3 has reportedly been in the works for three years, between Assassin’s Creed II and now, two games filled the gap to allow the series to support annualized releases. They continued the story of Ezio and from a gameplay perspective, added a major component to the series: multiplayer.
Multiplayer returns for Assassin’s Creed III with 8-player competitive play as before, but it also looks to be adding 2-4 player co-op, at least according to not-careful posting by Microsoft on Xbox.com.
CVG managed to screen grab the listing before Xbox secretly edited it to remove that feature, but this marks yet another fail from Xbox services, who also leaked a major Mass Effect 3 spoiler through posting DLC early on the Xbox Live.
We at Game Rant always support and encourage developers to add co-op play so this is a welcome addition for us and many fans of the series. Playing an Assassin’s Creed game is a lengthy time investment, but doing those repetitive side missions in the last three games would have been much more fun with a friend, especially considering Brotherhood and Revelations let Ezio recruit additional Assassins to send on missions and to call upon for reinforcements. Now, players can presumably play them.
We’re still waiting on word from Ubisoft regarding the new mode but this is something they wanted kept under wraps for the time being. Information overload!
If you’re a fan looking for even more details, check out the Assassin’s Creed III character and story spoilers list we put together.
Assassin’s Creed 3 releases on October 30, 2012, for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.
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Source: Xbox.com
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Of course only online co-op. Ugh. When will devs realize that people (like myself) still enjoy having local gaming! It’s so much more personal and fun to play games with friends when they are right beside you as opposed to miles away. Connecting two Box’s isn’t terrible… But still restricting. I can’t just grab a friend and play. They’d have to have their Xbox! This better turn out to be split screen, too. I will be upset. Still going to buy however. Love the series.
Split screen would PROBABLY lower the frame rate, cause graphical downgrades, and make things more difficult due to lack of screen space.
Get with the times, man. Online is much better, enjoy the FEEL of single player with a buddy, its more personal space.
I played Black Ops and MW3 split screen, and its cool cuz they don’t have the game to play online with me, but it can ruin the experience.
@Garrett I totally agree with you bro, no matter how much online multiplayer is fun, a proper Split Screen support is the shizz. IDC how much it affects the console’s performance, if you really need to, just lower the graphics settings for the co-op, if these games were mainly built for PC, they’d have splitscreen support with mutliple controllers with full graphic settings, when they focus on consoles, obviously their hardware is limited, hence they use that fact as a scapegoat to be lazy. :S Anyway, for me right now, just the inclusion of Co-Op is freaking exciting, can’t wait to see how it turns out. :S
That’s how I feel. At least make it an option for those of us who don’t want to or can’t play online, right? (Well, I can… I’d just rather not.)
I agree with Garrets sentiment – having it locally would be awesome.
@ATG: you wouldn’t even need split screens – just think of Marvel Ultimate Alliance or the early Sonic games. There you had all the players on the same screen. It is possible. And it was damn fun, back then.
I’m not saying that I don’t play online. I most definitely do. I guess my point is that there isn’t a reason for them to not include it whether it slows some stuff down or not. At least offer it as an option. If people don’t like to sacrifice framerate, that’s their choice. I also have this problem, the only two people I can think of that would actually play AC with me is that one doesn’t have the Internet, and te other plays AC (and the rest of her games) on a PS3. I have a 360. I am “with the times” trust me. I definitely do agree that splitscreen can Diminish the overall play value of the game (whether it be personal space or otherwise) but I’m willing to give that up to play co-op when I can’t online.
I doubt I could find 3 other people to play with, MAYBE one if I’m lucky.
Forever alone?
No, just prefer to play with someone I know personally, or someone who will take the game serious that can communicate well.
Not some random jackass with no mic that does whatever he wants.
Just imagine though, 2 master assassins, they’d be unstoppable!
Man, totally agree with ya when I’m playing online there’s always a dick out there who jacks around.
True lol
I really wont be happy with this, the past games were , for me solo play storylines of epic proportion, the games have been about one person, and his exploits over time, and that’s what drew me to play, co-op, whether online or locally, will stop me playing this game,
You know it’s optional?
Wow, if this is true, then I believe it to be an amazing addition to the franchise! I can’t wait to see how this turns out, and if it would have local offline splitscreen support that would be 10x more welcome. For those complaining how they’ll find 4 people to play with, it says 2-4 meaning you can just play with 2 if you want.
Hope it ends up with a splitscreen option of some sort. Not only do I detest playing online, I also play games with my wife whom I live with, rendering online co-op useless. It boggles my mind that the “play with the person sitting beside you” option is becoming almost completely phased out.
Look, I’m just gonna back up real quick and take a deep breath.
“Called it.”
No lie, Im a huge fan of AC and since Brotherhood released Ive felt the series has moved into a sorta “Blah” time, however, with AC3 my interest is Piqued once more. And Although Im going to miss Ezio, I look forward to getting to know Conner throughout his story.
Everyone wanting splitscreen put in Assassins Creed and play for a little bit then imagine having only half or even a fourth of your screen whilst playing now wouldn’t that just be terrible, and playing like Ultimate Alliance wouldn’t be Assassins Creed just picture Assassins Creed where you can only move a certain distance from the other assassins wouldn’t that also suck. If you insist on sitting next to who you play with bring your console to their place or vice versa it’s not that hard me and my buddies do it all the time we even bring a TV.