You may have heard the recent news that Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate will not have any sort of multiplayer. Every Assassin’s Creed game since 2010’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood has featured online multiplayer, but Ubisoft have opted to omit this feature in Syndicate for a few reasons.
Creative Director Marc-Alexis Cote stated that Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate is more focused about the main characters Jacob and Evie, and a multiplayer element would get in the way of that. Cote said to GameSpot:
“The reason we are doing this is to really focus on the roots of the franchise. That’s why all nine studios are focused on delivering this single-player experience.”
Another reason for the omission of multiplayer is the fact that Syndicate will focus on melee combat and hijacking vehicles, and apparently these features would be hard to translate into co-op.
“We felt like, especially with the type of fight that we have, a very hand-to-hand, very close combat fight, that we needed to have very high responsiveness on the system,” explains Executive Producer Francois Pelland. “That’s one thing. It’s navigation as well. When we decided two years and a half ago, we said, let’s do London of 1868. You cannot have vehicles that are just cosmetic. You cannot have vehicles that are just there to look good. Players would have said, I want to drive those things. That adds complexity to the thing. It’s more technical reasons [for leaving out multiplayer.]”
It’s also worth noting that the amount of multiplayer featured in last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity wasn’t very warmly received, and some fans were of the opinion that it distracted from the main story. No doubt some fans will be sad to learn that multiplayer is out for Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, but others will be pleased.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate is due to be released on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 23rd of this year. A PC version will be released soon after.
[Source: GamerHeadlines, GameSpot]
