Patrice Desilets, creator of Assassin’s Creed, and twice ex-Ubisoft employee has spoken with GameReactor Spain about 1666, his followup to the mega-series he kicked off at Ubisoft and which now resides in development limbo, having been bought from THQ by Ubisoft and then canned.
“It was to be the new Assassin’s Creed,” Desilets told the site. “The first year was to build the team, to study [the historical era], but also to create a new IP.”
1666 was still very much in its early stages, though the bulk of the development team’s time “was going on the mechanics, no matter that it was a new IP and the history, just the gameplay.”
He wouldn’t reveal much about the game, saying only that ”Rembrandt was still alive in 1666, died in 1669. [I] took one of his most famous painting, The Philosopher, and put it [in the design documents for the game], so I referred to this matter, more or less.”
Once Ubisoft bought THQ Montreal, absorbing it into their own Montreal-based studio, they quickly went about firing Desilets and putting 1666 on hold. Reports that Ubisoft bought the studio to feed into the fires which keep the Assassin’s Creed development engine turning remain, as yet, unconfirmed. Though the stocks of developer meat must be running low after four Assassin’s Creed games and numerous expansions/spinoffs. Not to mention all that DLC.