New ASSASSIN'S CREED Coming in 2012

News broke today that a new Assassins Creed game will be coming in 2012. The announcement wasn't totally unexpected since Ubisoft seems to want to annualize the franchise the same way Activision does it with Call of Duty.

"In Assassin's Creed we set up a timeline with this whole end of the world plot of December 2012. That's fast approaching, and the story we have to tell, we obviously need to do it before we arrive at that point, We had such a complex and strong narrative that we ourselves did our best to just try to execute these games before that date. It would be stupid of us to be centering a game on a semi-reality and then have that conclusion happen after that date in real life."

In addition, Assassin's Creed Revelations Creative Lead Alexandre Amacio let slip some information about the 2012 game:

"Assassin's Creed is all about cycles - we have the Ezio cycle and the Altair cycle, and both of those are set to conclude in Revelations and we have the Desmond cycle, which is set to end on December 2012, But there's many cycles within the brand - that's the whole point. History is our playground."

Although the good news is that after the 2012 game Ubisoft will apparently give the developers more development time for the next game according to the interview:

"We're already structuring the way we do Assassin's Creed, so it will no longer ever be like that," he added. "Our development approach is changing so our cycles aren't structured the same way - so it gives us a little bit more development time."

It will be interesting to see how the next two Assassins Creeds turn out with the short development time, will the game engine and gameplay start to show there age, or will the games still be great? What do you want to see in the 2012 Assassins Creed game? For me I wish they would set the game in current times. Good idea or do you think that would ruin the franchise?