Assassin's Creed Creator Reveals Why It's No Longer a Stealth Series

The creator of Assassin's Creed, Patrice Desilets, who no longer works on the series, isn't a huge fan of where the franchise is at in 2021, noting it's "a shame" the more modern games have gotten increasingly away from the series' stealth roots in favor of a hack-and-slash, open-world, RPG structure, which as you would expect, is quite trendy right now. While revealing that he's not a fan of where Ubisoft has taken his creation, Desilets does note he understands why it's happened.

Speaking to this, Desilets points out what many of us already know about the AAA space: nobody takes risks. Why does nobody take risks? Because of the money involved. The more money involved in a game's development, the less likely those banking the game will greenlight developers to take risks. And while this unfortunate, it's understandable.

That said, injecting some insight into this observation, Desilets also reveals that social stealth, which the first games are famous for, is really hard to do, and only getting harder as game development advances, which may sound counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when the creator of Assassin's Creed breaks it down.

"Because it's tough," said Desilets when asked by PC Gamer why the series has moved on from proper social stealth and stealth in general. "It's hard to make you believe in it. It's tough to render a crowd and make sure that players get that they're hidden. AAA is a lot about precision, in the character models and the rendering of the crowd.

"But I still find it interesting. It was unique and different and not easy to make. But maybe that was abandoned for something more trendy. You said AAA, and AAA, it's money, man. It costs a lot to make, so you need to make sure a lot of people will appreciate it. That's why, I guess, people say, 'We'll just do the hack and slash, and NPCs will be there but they won't be the main part,' which is a shame. We had something."

In the wake of Valhalla, Odyssey, and Origins -- all of which have hardly any of the DNA of the older Assassin's Creed games -- many players have called out Ubisoft for the direction it's taking the series and are demanding a game more like the first few in the franchise. However, all three of these modern releases have also sold very well, so it's unlikely it's going to make any changes to what it's been doing.