Ubisoft Montreal’s Jean Guesdon, who worked as designer on Assassin's Creed 2 and creative director on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, has spoken to Edge about how Edward's piratical adventures will lead to new expierences and stories in future games.
He explained that the decision to kill Desmond was made a long time ago in order to transform the Assassin's Creed franchise from "a well-designed offline solo experience, to a more open" series which could take advantage of mobiles and tablets.
With regard to Black Flag, Guesdon says:
"The idea of Abstergo Entertainment and you playing a researcher there is that we’re telling you that you’re not alone in searching for Edward Kenway’s memories. The more colleagues you have, the more we as designers can benefit from those connections. This is just preparing the franchise to develop some new gameplay and new narratives in the future."
Guesdon adds that the modern day segments of Black Flag at Abstergo Entertainment allowed Ubisoft to offers new insights which they couldn't in previous games.
"It allows us to develop some stuff that we couldn’t develop within the main experience in the past. For me, it was a pleasure to give Darby [McDevitt, narrative lead] the opportunity to write an audio drama about interviewing one of the first subjects of the Animus programme about what it felt like to relive a woman’s memories."
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag's DLC Freedom Cry, which will launch as a standalone product next week, is said to contain hints about the next game in the franchise which could be set in Ancient Egypt, or the Wild West, or Feudal Japan. We just don't know but we do know that Assassin's Creed 5 will not be the last game in the series which it seems does not have an ending in sight.
