During Ubisoft’s most recent financial conference call, Yves Guillemot stated that the publisher is currently working on Assassin’s Creed 3 and that it will be released on 30 October, 2012.
According to Guillemot, the game will be the “true next generation of both the Assassin’s Creed brand and interactive entertainment/storytelling in general.”
Apparently the game has been in development for three years, and Guillemot believes that it will be the biggest release in Ubisoft’s history. It also introduces a brand new protagonist.
The Assassin’s Creed series was supposedly always planned as a trilogy, although that is excluding the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, which were released after Assassin’s Creed II.
Ubisoft has yet to make a formal announcement to the media, and the proposed release date is obviously subject to change. There has been no mention of the game’s location or era, but we can expect Ubisoft’s PR engine to start churning up hype sometime in the next few months.
Assassin’s Creed has been one of Ubisoft’s most successful franchises of all time, both commercially and critically. The first game earned a Metacritic score of 81/100, but it was the sequel that really elevated the brand to critical acclaim, with Assassin’s Creed II earning a Metacritic score of 90/100. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was also well received, although the last release, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations dipped below the high expectations which some fans of the series had.
Assassin’s Creed III will be the franchise’s first fully fledged sequel since 2009.