At this point, I am entirely convinced that this has all been carefully planned, timed, and orchestrated by the Ubisoft Marketing team. I’m not complaining.
It’s not entirely clear where these screenshots and concept art pieces originate, but most sources point to All Games Beta. There’s no official confirmation from Ubisoft yet, but based on the quality and consistency of these screenshots it’s a pretty safe bet that they’re legit. Breakdown below the pics.
Check out the new leak below, all images clicky-biggable.
And some gorgeous concept art:
What do we see here? It’s nice to see some densely built urban areas, putting to rest some concerns about how we’d get our beloved rooftop-parkour action. But what I’m seeing in these screenshots is confirmation of my earlier prediction that we’re looking at a very different kind of Assassin’s Creed this time around. Altair and Ezio’s games were so similar partly because they took place in similar environments, whereas Revolution-era America is obviously a different landscape altogether. Unlike the urban sprawl of AC1 and AC2 et al, America hadn't been building on top of ancient cities for over 1,500 years and the scenes we've seen above appear to reflect gameplay adapted to that fact.
The bow has been a prominent element in pretty much every look we've had so far, but I'm excited to finally see our new Assassin with a proper rifle in hand as well. I think I can safely predict that ranged combat and assassinations are going to take a much more prominent role here. I think it's important to note the Assassin scoping out some folks from a tree–especially considering all the ancient-growth forests that were still around in Revolution-era America–because we're probably going to see a lot of tree-climbing and maybe even running through treetop branches as prominent movement abilities.
The Assassin crouching in the snow appears to be stalking that Elk–and you know, about to plant an arrow in its pretty face. I can't help but wonder if we might be looking at the addition of some Red Dead Redemption-style hunting/survival elements.
From a purely speculative point of view, I expect the kind of large battles we occasionally saw in AC2:B and AC:R installments are going to play a larger role in this game. Everyone loved calling down a loyal assassin army with the pull of a trigger, and given that we’re looking at an instance of open warfare for the first time in the series–as opposed to tenuous occupation–it only makes sense that large conflicts with multiple allies will be par for the course.
Lastly, I keep expecting to see 18th Century London pop up in one of these leaks, but these screenshots don’t conclusively answer that question just yet.
As always, we’ll keep you posted with any updates as they come out.
[What are you looking forward to now that you've seen some in-game shots? What are you more concerned about than ever? Let us know below.]