There are no more Assassin's Creed remakes in development, because Ubisoft are focused on Hexe, Invictus and "projects you haven't heard about yet"

Ubisoft have announced that they aren't working on any more Assassin's Creed remakes for the moment, despite learning a "tremendous amount" from Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. Instead, it's all shoulders to the wheel for a thrilling future that contains witches, a stronger sense of narrative cohesion, and possibly some kind of Assassin's Creed Smash Bros equivalent. In the shorter term, Ubisoft are still adding things to both Resynced and Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

The news comes as part of a fireside chat from Jean Guesdon, head of content. After offering libations to Assassin's Creed's new leadership team - in particular Martin Schelling, former Assassin's Creed: Revelations producer and nowadays, head of brand – he shares the results of a survey about whatpeople currently want from Assassin's Creed at large. Ubisoft's three takeaways are that players would like them to communicate more, work harder to shore up Assassin's Creed's "unique identity", and create "a more coherent narrative that respects and expands Assassin's Creed's lore."

All of which is basically telling us nothing, though I'm interested to hear thoughts from old AC stalwarts about where the frame story of Assassin vs Templar has gone off the rails. I feel like "incoherent" is AC's default state and a significant part of its charm. Ubisoft are going to do further closed-doors workshops about the future of the series with certain big cheeses in the AC fanbase, via Discord.

The post includes news of changes to existing Assassin's Creeds. Black Flag Resynced has just been updated with a New Game+ mode, a "nightmare" difficulty setting, some takedown animations, and some fresh cosmetics. Resynced's older/younger sibling Assassin's Creed Valhalla is also getting a New Game+ mode, out 5th November, which introduces a new optional progression system, more resources for upgrades, a new gear quality level, a stash system, and some cosmetics.

There's a section on Codename Invictus, Ubisoft's unrevealed multiplayer Assassin's Creed project, which had a closed playtest featuring a new prototype a few months ago. Ubisoft say people like the PvP, parkour, map verticality, and range of AC characters.

"One piece of feedback came through clearly though: players saw great potential in the foundations but wanted more of the pillars that define Assassin's Creed," Guesdon writes. "The team spent the past months acting on it, and Invictus is now evolving in an exciting direction that better reflects those pillars while staying true to its multiplayer ambitions." I quite enjoyed Assassin's Creed's first efforts at multiplayer, in which players posed as NPCs on crowded maps, but as a Doubting Thomas, I also suspect Invictus is some kind of suffocating live service kraken. I suspect this is what the unnamed playtesters meant by wanting "more of the pillars".

I am more interested to hear about Codename Hexe, Ubisoft's other big forthcoming Creedojaunt, even though Clint Hocking is no longer working on it. It's reportedly a witch fable set during the time of the Holy Roman Empire. They'll be telling us more about that next year, Guesdon says.

Finally - well, apart from some flannel about the AC Netflix series and the series' 20th anniversary next year - there's a paragraph about remakes. "One thing we want to be transparent about today is that we currently have no other Assassin's Creed remake actively in development," Guesdon writes. "Our teams are already focused on the next chapter of Assassin's Creed titles, including projects you haven't heard about yet, featuring new settings and stories. But don't mistake that for a closed door. Like many of you, we love the idea of revisiting our classic titles, and we'll keep exploring opportunities to bring older titles back."

Some context for all this: Ubisoft recently made layoffs at Resynced studio Ubisoft Singapore, in the course of wider cost-cutting after an injection of funds from Tencent. In May, company boss Yves Guillemot told investors that the coming financial year would be a "low point", promising healthier returns from Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Ghost Recon by early 2029.

I didn't play Resynced, and I'm mixed on remakes at large. I like remakes when they are effectively brand new games that happen to be retelling a familiar story, and having fun with it: games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which are in ferocious dialogue with the original. But remakes that are just about stuffing the mechanics into Unreal Engine 5 and grafting on some progression and crafting mechanics? It's just feeding ash to the fire. What's your mileage?