Assassin's Creed: Lost Legacy's concept found in Revelations

Living up to its name, Ubisoft's 3DS game Assassin's Creed: Lost Legacy
seemed to slip between the cracks and disappear over the past year.
First revealed during Nintendo's big E3 2010 coming out party for the
3DS, little was known of the title other than its premise: "Driven by
curiosity and a desire to understand the origins of his Order, Ezio
Auditore travels East in search of the lost castle at Masyaf, the
ancient seat of the Assassins."

But that disappearance was no accident -- apparently the concept for AC:
LL is what formed the foundation for this holiday's big AC release,
Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Eventually, the 3DS project was dropped
in favor of a console release for the final installment in Ezio's
assassination hat trick. AC: R lead writer Darby McDevitt explained as
much to me during an interview this afternoon. "You may have heard of
the game 'Lost Legacy' for the 3DS. It was announced, but that kind of
morphed into this idea," he said.

While that doesn't mean we'll never see an AC title on Nintendo's latest
handheld, it does mean that Lost Legacy is no longer on the cards. And
if an AC game does end up on the 3DS, it won't look much like what
Ubisoft had planned for Lost Legacy, it seems. "The story that was
announced about Lost Legacy was that Ezio goes to Masyaf and
investigates the holy land," McDevitt laughed, inferring that the story
for AC: LL was more or less directly parallel with AC: R.



McDevitt also spoke to Ubisoft's annualized releases of AC entries,
pointing out that he began work on the story for Revelations as early as
February 2010, before the last major entry in the series, Assassin's
Creed: Brotherhood, had even been released. "We do a lot of thinking
ahead of time on big arcs, like knowing where Ezio is going, knowing
where Desmond is going, knowing where Altair is going," McDevitt
explained. "The major beats of all our characters' stories are planned
well in advance, so we don't get Lost-itis where we're opening up more
than we could possibly close off." So, no time wheels in Assassin's
Creed, then. Great!

And it certainly doesn't hurt that Ubisoft has other outlets for story,
such as the excellent "The Fall" comic series, which follows two
previously unknown assassins during both modern times and the Russian
Revolution. "The advantage with 'The Fall' is that it got to jump back
and forth between the past and the present much more frequently," I was
told. "So it's like half and half, or there's even more present-day
stuff than the past -- it's probably 60/40. But the big draw for the
actual games is to go and play in the historical period."

Additionally, according to McDevitt, the comic side project "was really
well-received," and will be playing "a role in the larger picture." When
I pushed on the subject of what that role might be, McDevitt laughingly
rebuffed me, and pointed out that he couldn't reveal all his cards too
soon. He remained similarly tight-lipped about the barely announced Wii U
Assassin's Creed title. "I'll probably learn about that from reading
Joystiq," he added. Oh go on, Darby! Flattery will get you everywhere!