We have some surprising new details about the cancelled sequel to Immortals: Fenyx Rising.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising itself was an open world game from Ubisoft, set in an mythological Grecian world. It was developed by Ubisoft Quebec, the same team that worked on Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, and was deliberately made as the team was interested in using what they had already researched of ancient Greece to make a new game based around its mythology.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising would be more child friendly, and was prominently advertised as a multiplatform release with more stylized, cartoony graphics. Among those platforms was the Nintendo Switch. So, not only was Ubisoft open to the comparisons between its game and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Those similarities were pitched as part of the game’s marketing pitch.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising received mostly favorable reviews, but very clearly falls under the shadow of both its more mature Assassin’s Creed brethren and its sister from another developer, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Ubisoft seemed to be upbeat about the potential for an open world franchise for children, and so they greenlit a sequel.
That sequel was reportedly cancelled last month, and now, we have more details on what the new game was going to be.
As reported by Stephen Totilo on Axios, Immortals 2 was referred to by the internal codename Oxygen, and was going on a completely different direction. For one, it moved away from Greece to a Polynesian setting. The player character would now be gaining powers after making good with Polynesia’s gods, and they would earn tattoos that reflected player choices. Some readers with a long memory may remember that we reported similar rumors from Jeff Grubb about this game last year.
Now, however, Stephen reports that Ubisoft was planning to break apart from their open world conventions for Oxygen. For one, there would be less conspicuous markers to help you find your way around the world. Instead of signs and arrows, you would have to follow the wind, the movements of animals around you, or even look up the stars in the sky.
Oxygen would also lose Immortals’ narrator, and puzzle solving, in favor of a more open game whose story is determined by the choices you make. The graphics were also going to be more realistic, which led to Ubisoft considering to rebrand it into its own game.
Stephen sums up his report by pointing out the cancellation caught Ubisoft Quebec employees by surprise. But, reflecting troubled times at the company, they have chosen to trim down their releases, and have subsequently moved those devs working on Oxygen onto other projects.
While we can only wonder about what could have been in this regard, there are other bigger questions surrounding Ubisoft, its ongoing lawsuits, and its possible future.
