Ubisoft: Assassin's Creed franchise can carry on "forever"

Ezio and Altair are finally on their way out the door (and off a ledge, and into a conveniently placed haystack), and that's a very, very good thing. After all, Revelations marks the third entry in the story arc AC II kicked off. Ezio's getting old, and - depending on who you talk to - so are his high-flying, face-piercing antics. So, what's next for the series? A much-needed vacation? Hardly.

“Assassin's Creed is a big brand not just for us, but for the industry,” Ubisoft senior VP of sales and marketing Tony Key told [a]list . "The meta story is supposed to be carried on forever. We can go on with this brand where we want to – that's the exciting part about the way it's constructed. As we've said all along, this is the end of Ezio's story arc; it's a great place to jump in the franchise and anyone who has played the previous games should have some satisfaction with the answers they get at the end."

The gaming industry, of course, hasn't gone a holiday season without having Ezio leap down its chimney since 2009. Key, however, insists that the yearly model doesn't come at the expense of quality.

"One thing I keep hearing is, 'How can you make it in one year?' We work on it a lot longer than one year and that's part of it; we have multiple studios. Assassin's Creed is a blueprint brand. What that means is it has a lot of resources focused onto it. We constantly have people thinking about it, so we have a lot of people working on future iterations, while these games are being made we're already thinking about the next one," he explained.

"I hope people are getting over the idea that we rush them out; we don't make Assassin's Creed games in one year. That's something we want people to understand, and hopefully the message can get out."

Regardless, 2012 will almost certainly see yet another entry in the ornately cloaked parkour through time simulator thanks to a certain series plot element. Will it finally be a major change of pace, or simply more of the same? Fingers - symbolically chopped off to make room for a hidden blade or not - crossed for the former.