The creator of Ubisoft’s widely successful Assassin’s Creed franchise, Patrice Desilets has shared some new insight on his depart from the company. When speaking with Gameology, Desilets explained the difficulties that he experienced while working for a major company. He explained that he had to come up with “political” lies during interviews to relay to the media.
“My biggest struggle with being in an organization is that I was the guy at the end or in the middle also… I was the guy doing interviews like what we’re doing right now and I had to come up with political lying and I would receive comments and decisions made by other people and not me because it’s all about compromising when you’re in a big organization somehow,” he said. “And as my role, the creative director, it’s tough to live by the decisions of others when being in front of the camera or Skype and I said I’m not a really good liar so I can’t do it anymore.”Desilets also added “And then I also realized that when you do a really big franchise, you also make money for other people and they don’t really care about you (Laugh). So I said, enough! if I do another Assassin’s Creed at least it would be for me and my guys and also for Quebec and for my people in Montreal.”
Desilets said that it took him some time to leave Ubisoft. He now heads up a studio office called Panache. The team curently has 24 staffers, but they aim to grow to 30 by the end of the year although Desilets doesn’t expect them to grow any larger than that. By comparison 800 people worked on Assassin’s Creed II. One of the benefits of working on a smaller team is that everyone knows each other, which most likely isn’t the case for teams that worked on the big Assassin’s Creed games when Desilets was at Ubisoft.
Also during the interview, Desilets said Penache will eventually create the game 1666: Amsterdam which he regained the rights to during his lawsuit with Ubisoft. “That’s my game about the devil in us that we are all good guys but sometimes we’re not and how come sometimes we’re not?” he said. “And it’s an international subject matter also and in our culture the devil symbol is there so I want to attack that and eventually we’re going to make it here at Panache.” For more info you can view the full interview here.
Not much is known about 1666, it was first revealed through a 2012 trademark application and also through THQ bankruptcy documents. Ubisoft picked up the rights for 1666 at THQ’s bankruptcy auction. They paid $2.5 million for not only 1666, but also the THQ Montreal studio and a new game code named Underdog.
Desilets left Ubisoft in 2010 to establish THQ Montreal, but became a Ubisoft employee again when the company bought out the studio in 2012. Desilets didn’t remain at Ubisoft long though, in May of 2013 he claimed that he was fired by Ubisoft and went on to sue the company attempting to reclaim the rights to 1666 in the process. According to Desilets, 1666, at least at one time, was to be the new Assassin’s Creed.
The next title from Desilets and Panache is Ancestors: The HumanKind Odyssey, which is a third person adventure game that takes place 10 million years in the past. The game was originally going to be release episodically but that is no longer the case.