Ubisoft unveiled a whopping four major Assassin’s Creed games during Ubisoft Forward 2022. One of them, however, was teased as a ‘different kind of Assassin’s Creed game’. That game is Assassin’s Creed: Codename Hexe, a game that appears to involve witches – ‘hexe’ is the German word for witch.
A very brief announcement trailer shown off during proceedings panned through some dark, ominous woods before focussing on an Assassin’s Creed logo constructed out of twigs. No other details were given, with Ubisoft presenters remarking that they couldn’t wait for the community to deconstruct the trailer.
Read: Four new Assassin’s Creed games announced at Ubisoft Forward 2022
The use of German in the codename suggests that Hexe could very well be set during the widespread witch trials in the Holy Roman Empire, which occurred around the 16th and 17th century in present-day Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
The key creatives behind Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe are Clint Hocking, and the team at Ubisoft Montreal, which makes the suggestion of a ‘different kind of Assassin’s Creed game’ very exciting. Hocking is a long-time Ubisoft veteran, known for designing creative – and polarising – innovations on gameplay systems that create unique emergent narratives.
Hocking’s work includes Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (a landmark stealth game that had a very strong emphasis on environmental noise, among other genre innovations), Far Cry 2 (infamous for its degrading weapons, unruly fire propagation, and malaria system) and Watch Dogs: Legion (where your cast of protagonists could be literally any character in the game world).
Needless to say, we’re very interested to see what Hocking and the Codename Hexe team come up with.
In addition to unveiling Assassin’s Creed Hexe, Ubisoft also announced several other upcoming titles for the series: Assassin’s Creed Mirage, a stealth and parkour-focussed action-adventure title; Assassin’s Creed Codename Red, the next mainline RPG-styled game, set in Feudal Japan; and Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade, an open-world mobile game set in Ancient China.