Games

So You Think You Know Assassin’s Creed?

Assassin’s Creed, the action-adventure stealth video game franchise, was created by Corey May, Jade Raymond, and Patrice Désilets on the 13th of November 2007. It was developed and published using the Anvil game engine by Ubisoft, and its depictions of struggles hundreds of years old, now and then, between the Assassins and the Templars has captured the hearts and minds of fans the world over.

Are any of these interesting, relatively little-known facts, new to you?

20 Games Have Been Released Across 15 Platforms

If you count Rogue in 2014 but do not include The Ezio Collection in the count, there have been nine major Assassin’s Creed games to date. Then we have seen 11 derivations, from 2-dimensional side-scrollers to isometric adventure titles across an astonishing 15 different platforms, including the Mac, PC, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Assassin’s Creed’s Backstory is 2 500-Years Old

In the mainline games, the story goes back a little over 800-years, from the original 1191 setting to Desmond Miles’ modern-day in around 2012. Ubisoft created an enormous backstory akin to the Star Wars Expanded Universe and filled it with myths, legends, and actual historical events.

The publisher has revealed that the first-ever assassin was Xerxes, who murdered Darius the Great, a Persian King in power from 550-486 BCE. Herodotus, the Greek historian, tells his story. Much like the Australian Roulette games we still enjoy today, some things never get old!

The Black Flag World Is So Big You Couldn’t Walk Across It

The open-world in Syndicate is a sprawling one, with just over 3 square kilometres depicting Victorian London, but it is by no means the series’ biggest map.

That honour goes to the game IV, Black Flag, which is so huge that sailing across it at top speed takes 30 minutes! You could, technically, swim that, but it would take a very long time.

The Franchise Began by Accident

Assassin’s Creed is a household name these days, but it was very nearly something completely different.

The original game set during the Crusades was based on a Prince of Persia title called Assassin. It featured the monarch’s bodyguard as a protagonist, but Ubisoft executives were not pleased with a game with Prince in the title not actually centring around a ruler. They insisted on a new brand, and so one of the greatest video game series of all time was born.

It’s More Successful Than FIFA

In a way…

Although a stealth title being pitted against a Soccer simulator is hardly the fairest comparison, and Ubisoft is certainly not seeing the enormous amounts of revenue that Electronic Arts generates each season, these two games make for an interesting parallel.

Over 90 million Assassin’s Creed games were sold between 2007 and 2015, but it took EA 15+ years to vend 100 million FIFA units. They only reached that milestone in 2010. This means that Assassin’s Creed sold much faster than FIFA, although sales recently have been relatively on par.