Word has gotten around that the next Assassin’s Creed game has a Viking setting – some canny players first noticed a curious poster in The Division 2 that suggested it, and the hint was subsequently confirmed in a recent report on Kotaku. Now, the director of God of War has gotten in on the action, playfully suggesting a God of War crossover with Assassin’s Creed.
Cory Barlog, who you may remember from the emotional reaction video he uploaded to YouTube after looking at the Metacritic scores for God of War, quote-tweeted the Kotaku report on Assassin’s Creed’s new setting. With the ‘thinking face’ emoji, he quipped, “I smell crossover?”
He finished the tweet with a laughing face emoji, to underscore the lighthearted nature of the tweet. And while this is almost certainly just a joke, it’s an undeniably cool idea: Kratos, the Dad of War, showing up somewhere in Assassin’s Creed’s next Viking open world adventure. What’s not to like?
Given the nature of the Assassin’s Creed series present-day framing device, it’s not even hard to construct a justification for it. Maybe whoever’s using the portable Animus device in the modern era needs some additional processing power for some reason, and they have a game console on hand that can give the Animus some extra oomph – and maybe, just maybe, there’s a certain game disc in the console’s optical drive they forget to eject first.
Here’s Barlog’s tweet:
🤔…I smell crossover???
— Cory Barlog 🎮 #BAFTAGames (@corybarlog) April 6, 2019
It wouldn’t even be that weird in the context of some of the delightfully nutty things Assassin’s Creed has done in the past few years. Origins features a crossover with Final Fantasy XV, giving Bayek a magical sword and a camel outfitted to look like a (vaguely upsetting) chocobo. Odyssey is full of wacky characters, and even includes a reference to Black Panther. Next month, you’ll be able to earn Bayek’s outfit in Monster Hunter: World.
The more I think about it, in fact, the more an Assassin’s Creed/God of War crossover seems like a completely sensible thing.
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What that might look like is anyone’s guess, of course. It might be a specific piece of gear, such as Kratos’ iconic axe. Or it might just be a fleeting reference – perhaps a large man with a scary voice could run across your path at some point shouting “BOY!”
In all likelihood, Barlog’s tweet is just a fun tweet. But given Assassin’s Creed’s sense of humor, it seems like just the kind of in-joke that would fit perfectly into the franchise. We’ll find out in 2020.