Assassin's Creed: how was the Ubisoft series born? Let's find out the background of the first chapter

Those players who have only approached Assassin's Creed with the recent trilogy of Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla may have missed a piece of series history that has made Ubisoft's fortune for more than a decade.

Today let's retrace the birth of the first, historical chapter of the saga of the Assassins which would have continued until today. A few years ago some interesting background emerged regarding the progenitor of the series: Patrice Désilets, creator of Prince of Persia, was working on a spin-off project of the franchise dedicated to the Prince, and after having thoroughly studied the history and culture of the Order of the Assassins and their founding father Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, decided to give life to the prototype of Prince of Persia: Assassins. The title would have featured a lethal and silent assassin whose task would have been to rescue the prince, captured by enemies and in possession of a mysterious power.

After entering pre-production, However, Ubisoft decided to eliminate the references to the Prince of Persia trilogy: The Sands of Time, and consequently create a completely original IP: Assassin's Creed. The game debuted in 2007 while maintaining the game mechanics of the prototype, based mainly on parkour, together with the setting, namely Jerusalem at the time of the third crusade, but the narrative context changed very markedly.