The original Assassin’s Creed has a “huge” multiplayer component that was cut before release. Ubisoft has now explained the reasons behind this decision.

“Before we knew about the Desmond story and Animus link, we had a huge co-op component in there. But it just became too hard to do: the engine couldn’t support it, and then the metaphor we had above it didn’t support it,” Assassin’s Creed III mission director Philippe Bergeron told OXM. “Co-op was one of those big things at the beginning that just didn’t make sense in the end. For us it was really part of the single player experience, to have in-and-out co-op, and in the end we never thought it made sense in the storyline that we had for the Animus.”

“There was no way to reconcile having multiplayer or co-op in an ancestor’s memories. Your ancestor lived his life in a certain way, so assuming you had branching storylines, it creates a paradox. It didn’t fit.”

I’d love to see co-op in Assassin’s Creed, but sadly it looks like that’s never going to happen–unless the team figures out a way to implement it without breaking the immersion and story. Maybe just optional co-op missions?

Would you like to see co-op added? Share your thoughts below.