Wesley Pincombe, the creative director on Assassin's Creed 4 story DLC Freedom Cry, has told Eurogamer that there will be hints regarding where the next core game in the franchise will be set.
"There are some [hints] but our fans will only discover them in the future. They're in your face, but you'd have to be a hardcore fan to understand them."
Many players have long hoped for a game set during the French Revolution, Feudal Japan, or Victorian London while Assassin's Creed 4's director Ashraf Ismail has said he would like to see a game set in Ancient Egypt – really, any of those locations are possible or it might be none of them all. You'll just need to keep your eyes peeled for what Ubisoft alludes to in Freedom Cry.
The DLC itself is set 15 after the main story in Black Flag comes to an end and focuses on Adewale – Edward Kenway's ship mate – and while there will be at least one returning character and a "notable object" from Assassin's Creed 4's main story there will also be new elements which weren't in the core game.
"You're going to a new setting with new crowd life. New enemies, new AI. Port-au-Prince is a French colony – there are no French colonies in Black Flag so that is all new.
"This is primarily an Adéwalé story – Edward isn't present – but we do shoot a couple of lines back and forth with him reminiscing about his past."
Ubisoft decided to create new areas in response to Assassin's Creed 3 DLC The Tyranny of King Washington, which gave areas that existed in the main game an alternative reality twist.
"The alternate universe was a great idea and each episode had its own set theme and abilities, but we wanted to focus on one DLC and put all of our content in there. We also wanted to give the player new locations. In King Washington we revisted locations – we changed the themes and settings – but we wanted to push it further."
Fantasy elements one might expect of a pirate adventure will not present however; including the oft-requested kraken.
"I'm going to have to disappoint some people – no, we didn't put the kraken in,."I'll even say it was part of our conception at one point. We were going to do some fantasy missions to do with piracy and the Caribbean at one point but we changed our direction in conception.
"We wanted to continue the story of Black Flag in the DLC. Aside from the fantasy stuff we were looking at different types of assassins – we were looking at Mary Reade and Duncan Walpole to figure out their origin stories but Adewalé really had a strong presence on screen."
Freedom Cry is set for release on December 17th for $9.99. Last week, Ubisoft sent surveys to players asking what they wanted to see from Assassin's Creed 5 and whether they'd be interested in a non-assassin pirate spin-off series.
