Ubisoft's massive popular franchise Assassin's Creed is well known for its single player adventures, putting players in a historical sandbox with famous characters and settings to explore. The franchise has touched on many huge moments in history like the French Revolution, Italian Renaissance, Revolutionary War, and plenty more. As the popularity of multiplayer games began to rise, many companies believed adding similar components would help retain players beyond the normal length of time.
Even a well known single player experience like Assassin's Creed began to evolve as Ubisoft began adding its own unique spin on multiplayer gameplay starting with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. The cat and mouse gameplay offered a different take on team deathmatch or free for all style modes made popular by FPS titles like Call of Duty. Multiplayer offerings would span multiple games before ultimately being left by the wayside after its final inclusion in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and has not been seen since.
While the series appears to have no intention on bringing back the classic hunt and be hunted multiplayer components from earlier titles, perhaps Ubisoft should look to the recently announced Hood: Outlaws and Legends for ideas.
Under development by Sumo Digital, Hood: Outlaws and Legends isn't a one for one comparison to a franchise like Assassin's Creed. For one, it's a online only experience pitting two teams of players against each other as well as AI. It lacks a traditional single player experience, though it does offer a different spin on a popular legend in Robin Hood.
Inside of Hood, two teams of players work against one another to pull off a heist before the other one can. The catch here is that not only are they working against one another, but standing in their way are AI enemies set to protect the prized treasure. According to the studio, players will have access to skills and abilities and have multiple options on how to approach combat from pure stealth to instead going loud.
With a release window set for 2021, there's still a lot fans don't know about Hood: Legends & Outlaws. However, this template could easily be adapted by Ubisoft to fit its own Assassin's Creed franchise. The core tenants of Hood appear to revolve around stealing and stealth, two ideals that Assassin's Creed uses quite well. From a gameplay perspective, it wouldn't take much effort to craft a multiplayer system around this gameplay, set within whatever historical time period the main game is set in.
For example, in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, there could be two rival Viking factions attempting to see who could raid the English castle and steal the treasure guarded within. From a narrative perspective, it makes sense as actual Vikings were made up of different factions from different countries. In fact, previously shown gameplay shows Eivor squaring off against another rival Viking by the name of Rued. Raiding English castles was also a historical fact during this era and makes up a big portion of the core gameplay in the single player campaign.
From a gameplay perspective, Ubisoft has already demonstrated it can make social stealth work in a multiplayer setting. The popular game mode Wanted mixed eight players in with sizable crowds of NPC characters. Players would receive a target and try to hunt them, while also attempting to blend in and look like an NPC character to ward off other players who were hunting them in return. Utilizing these mechanics in a PvPvE match could work well to help differentiate it from Hood and other similar games like Hunt Showdown, Evolve, Escape from Tarkov, and others. Even when a team reaches the treasure, the match isn't over.
Former Ubisoft CCO Serge Hascoet previously said he'd like to find a way to bring multiplayer back to Assassin's Creed, though with the recent leadership shakeup and his departure due to abuse allegations, it's unclear if this is remains a priority for the company. While the core multiplayer modes never became a smashing success for the franchise, adding some unique twists to the formula such as this PvPvE heist element could be the catalyst need to bring the mode back.
Hood: Outlaws and Legends arrives on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in 2021.