Assassin’s Creed Was Initially Intended to Be Co-Op
For nearly 20 years, Assassin’s Creed has developed and evolved within a deeply immersive gameplay and cinematic experience. Now, with Assassin’s Creed Shadows on the horizon, fans are talking about two protagonists again and how it can affect an engaging experience. Before we even had Assassin’s Creed, the franchise was almost an entirely different game that was designed to launch as a co-op title.
Multiplayer Mode Hidden in the First Game
During a 2015 presentation in Paris, former technical director at Ubisoft, Julien Merceron, revealed that Assassin’s Creed started with a multiplayer mode. This cooperative aspect of the game was developed late into production, but Ubisoft decided to remove it before shipment. Still, it is said the remnants of the mode exist in early versions of the game.
Merceron explained that if you plugged in a second controller in early copies of the game, a bug would cause a second assassin to appear, indicating that past Ubisoft had experimented with the idea of local co-op gameplay.
The Development of Multiplayer in Assassin's Creed
While the initial Assassin's Creed game featured only single-player gameplay, Ubisoft would eventually dip its toes into the multiplayer pool with many of its later titles. The franchise introduced multiplayer gameplay mechanics in games like Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Revelations, Assassin's Creed III, and Black Flag. These titles included competitive modes, like "Wanted," but the first instance of full cooperative gameplay would not be until Assassin's Creed Unity. Unfortunately, technical problems in the multiplayer section left some fans conflicted about whether Unity earned the co-op slot.
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Is Co-Op on the Horizon for Assassin's Creed?
Although multiplayer for Assassin's Creed still exists outside the core single-player experience, Ubisoft continues to experiment with elements of multiplayer. After all, had Assassin's Creed relased with co-op capability, the course of the franchise's destiny would have taken a different path altogether. With Assassin's Creed Shadows currently explore two protagonists, perhaps the Ubisoft team is thinking about what could have been in a fully developed Assassin's Creed co-op experience.
