 Hey everybody. Today is Tuesday, which means there was a financial call, an investors call, is that what it basically is? Quarter three, earnings and sales call. We have recorded this on Saturday the 6th of February, so we can't really address any information that might have been brought up in that earnings report. So if we know exactly what's happening with Assassin's Creed next and all of this episode is rendered outdated information, we apologize, but we hope you can enjoy it anyway. What's up everybody? I'm The Hook. And I'm The Blade. And I'm the cheesy writing. And together we're, you know, welcome to the Endblade Stavcast, a show about all things Assassin's Creed. I'm your host, Lawson. With me as always is your other host, Tim. And of course we are joined this week by the illustrious Endstav13, also known as Noah. How's it going? Noah, who should win? Godzilla or Kong? You know, Godzilla has a pretty awesome face laser, so I'm gonna have to go with that. But Kong, he monkey. Okay, but monkey alone weak, monkey together strong. You know, I was thinking about the the issue with these like versus movies is it's not like someone is just opening up a computer and like simulating these things, like there's all kinds of like conditions and intentions around it. So whoever ends up winning, someone's gonna have an issue with it. And that someone is gonna be me. And then then the movie becomes Godzilla and Kong versus Tim. Which I would watch the shit out of personally. Me too. Especially if Tim is scaled up the way Kong was. Just a big, big old Tim. And and like Godzilla roars and Tim just goes, I'm really mad. No, no, no, no. I go, I'm the blade. So Noah, we're here to talk about we have some as we as we mentioned last episode. It has been Leak City. Everyone in their mother is trying to predict what the next Assassin's Creed game is going to be. Yeah. And you know, what's really weird about this year? Is it's the first time in like seven or eight years that there's a really wide collection of leaks? Because usually it's really centralized. Like, oh, it's going to be Egypt. It's going to be London. Like this time, no, it India, Japan, France. It's going to be Morocco. Persia. Usually like by this time in the year, someone at Kotaku has already told us at least the country that we're going to be in. And then from there, we can really narrow it down. Like we figured we knew it was Vikings a good year or so before any detail started coming out about Valhalla. Well, that was because of the Division II Easter Egg, right? Yeah. That was, I think, April of 2019. There's actually a leak prior to that from Fiji the Four Pillars. But that was also still banking on the Rome game as well. And we can get into that in a few moments. That's a first leak that I wanted to bring up. I've heard of there being Fiji leaks, Fiji being Ethan of the Four Pillars fame. But I don't know what they are. So can you tell us? Yeah, of course. It was a multiple part leak. The first was that there was going to be a Bayek sequel of some sort in Rome. Oh, God. It was either going to be a direct Bayek sequel, or it's going to be a spiritual Bayek sequel. And I think that's supposed to be made by Sophia. That obviously never happened. This is an old leak. Yeah. Yeah, this was back from like early 2019. Oh, gotcha. This is when he was predicting Valhalla. Yeah. Multiple YouTubers after that came out and said that they had insider sources saying that there was in fact a Rome game in development, but it was canceled for feeling too similar to Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Yeah. So we don't know if that part was true. However, there are two more parts saying that there was also a game in development from Ash's team at Ubisoft Montreal that was making a Viking game, and that there is also another game at Montreal being produced. There's going to be for next gen and be on a new engine set in China. Okay. I mean, that tracks. Yeah. And I mean, they were all saying that that was going to be 2020. So obviously the year was wrong, but Valhalla did happen. That was before Division II even launched. So that at least lends a tiny bit of credibility and obviously take the YouTubers insider sources with a grain of salt. But 1.5 out of 3 so far. And there's some concept art leaks that might show that the Chinese rumor also has some validity. And let me ask you about the concept art stuff, because I know you've posted a lot about how you can sort of analyze based on, I mean, you're essentially seeing some of these concept artists, they have publicly visible portfolios, and oftentimes they have concept art for various settings that line up with having been drawn like a few years out from the game release. I know you have some background in the world of game development. My question is, what's the likelihood, because I genuinely don't know, what is the likelihood that someone at Ubisoft could say to an artist, show us what you think Assassin's Creed would look like in China, outside the context of there being any active development on a China game. Is that possible? I would not think that that's going to happen like that. There's a good chance that during pre-development, so I don't know the full workflow of Ubisoft Studios. I don't know if they're still using Waterfall or Kanban or Agile development structures. During pre-development, the director or other people in charge might say to a group of concept artists, hey, we want to explore this country or this period. Can you give us some concept arts on these specific things and work from there? They probably have a good idea already going into that, what setting they want to do, and that's probably going to be largely based on market research. So a number of years ago, Ubisoft was really heavy into surveys, and more recently, they've been pushing a lot into direct user feedback by using multiple user feedback companies, one of which was in the San Francisco Bay area, we know from a few leaks. So the really weird part about it is the fact that those concept arts got released at all. Because generally, if a game is in development, you're not really supposed to say that you're working on it until it's at least announced if not released. That's obviously going to differ by NDAs and what company you're with. My NDA is a little bit on the stricter side, but I know other NDAs can be a little bit looser. But we know from Valhalla that this has happened, and they confirmed that those of Ragnarok concept art pieces from a Ubisoft employee were in fact actual concept art pieces for Valhalla when they were discussing potential name changes and settings. So early on in development, probably like late 2016, early 2017. So there's a pretty good precedent for us being able to find this concept art and go, that's cool. And then years later, a game shows up that's attached to it. Right. And then soon after that, we got those China concept arts that were also from an actively employed Ubisoft developer. Again, it started out saying that this is a fan piece, but it has the exact same naming convention used as the other concept art pieces. Naming conventions are extremely important, especially within the context of Assassin's Creed, because Jade Raymond back on Assassin's Creed 1 really put forth a huge structure within Ubisoft and for Assassin's Creed to specifically name stuff for the project being worked on. And that naming convention is what's still being used according to these concept art leaks. Interesting. Yeah. And that was because they planned from Assassin's Creed 1 to be able to reuse those assets moving forward. And that way they'd be able to easily track all assets for every game. Go Jade Raymond. Yeah. Hope she ends up, I feel bad for her game studio just got closed, I think. Yeah. I miss Jade Raymond so much. I miss Jade. Bring back Jade. Ubisoft get Jade on the phone. Jade Raymond is the savior we need for Assassin's Creed after the fall of Darby. Do you think she'd even want to come back? No. Definitely not. Probably not. She'd be like, oh, Assassin's Creed whack. That is so 2007 of my career. She should make like a Star Wars game or something. Wasn't that supposed to happen at some point? Well, she was supposed to be doing the EA equivalent of Assassin's Creed before she went to Stadia. So I don't know if that is even alive at all, if even a little bit. So, all right. From what you're saying, if you take the Fiji leak in tandem with the concept art, the picture that's being painted is that China is imminently on the horizon as a next-gen Assassin's Creed title on a new engine. Is that about right? Yeah, that's exactly what I've been saying for a little while now. Yeah, yeah. And it makes sense too because Eve has also said he really wants to tap into the Chinese market. So it makes sense that they'd want to start pushing the Chinese or Eastern Asian influence games soon. But as far as I know, no Assassin's Creed has yet shipped in China, other than the new Manhua that was just started being released within the past few months. But who in China is going to buy a manga for a video game they've never played? Yeah. I'm a little bit worried about going into the socioeconomics of China. We don't have to, yeah. So, all right. We've got China. Where does this whole thing about medieval Europe come into play? So there's been a good number of rumors about that. I've been speculating for although over a year, maybe even two years now, that the next game is going to be during the Black Plague or the Hundred Years War. So those surveys that I mentioned a little bit ago, there are about five of them between like 2010 and 2015. There's like one every year. The one from 2015, like right before Origins or right after Origins launched, so 2017, actually. It includes the settings of the Viking invasions in the Great Army, the conquest of Alexander the Great, the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta and classical Greece, and the one that I most interested in is the Joan of Arc's battles and rises of Black Death during the Hundred Years War. And the reason I've been thinking so much about the Hundred Years War or the Black Death is that Joan of Arc fought towards the tail end of the war and that was really encapsulated in the book Heresy, which launched around 2016 and 2017 as well. We have some opinions about Heresy. And so far, the games teams like to take settings that don't have too much lore attached to them so far, which makes it a little bit easier for them so that they don't have as many retcons as they normally do. And as a result, the Black Death, which ravaged Europe from about 1345 to 1350, would neatly fit into that time period as well. So I have to tell you, Noah, that for most of, and Tim, I don't want to mischaracterize any of your sentiments here, but we've often thought that you're wrong about this. We've talked about, I mean, we've read your posts and stuff and we've all talked and like, I don't know. Tim, how do you feel about the whole idea of like a Black Plague game, perhaps next year, recycling Valhalla's assets? Oh, I mean, you and I have very, I guess, very, very similar opinions on just like I and you, me and Lawson. The both of us. The hook and the blade. I might just start over. So pretty much, I feel like if they were to do like a fourth kind of iteration onto this Origins Odyssey Valhalla formula, that that would be very unprecedented for what we've seen for how long the kind of like half-life for these engines and systems last in these games. It seems like it begs the question of how we define and characterize Valhalla is quite similar to Origins and Odyssey, but it's also a lot more different, you know, from Odyssey than say Odyssey was from Origins. Certainly the same base systems are there, but it did feel like Valhalla was taking those systems and it's about as different as Revelations is to AC1. Like it's the same, it's still the same skeleton, but it's Revelations is plays, you could say plays almost completely differently, although it's the same bones. So I think, so even by Revelations, you know, I feel like that engine was dragging in. So that's so yeah, the AC2 engine. So Valhalla is different, is pretty different from Odyssey. It's it's still very much in that same like utilizing a lot of the same assets and whatnot from what I know. So it feels, yeah, it feels to me like, like at some point, I think Ubisoft got spooked about the whole idea of iterating on a particular format, like even three times. And that's why partially we never got, you know, a third game on the Unity engine or potentially this whole idea of a Rome game. I mean, can you imagine like if the Rome game really happened and we got that and then Valhalla, is there any way that they're doing a fifth game after that in Black Plague France? Like I would sure hope not, right? Because it would just be so much of the same formula being so clearly recycled. So like what I'm wondering is, is Ubisoft really so keen on being able to recycle the assets of their various games that they would risk the kind of like fatigue of having this formula repeat again a fourth time, which wouldn't have happened in probably, I mean, unless you consider like AC1 in the same vein as two Brotherhood of Revelations, which I personally don't, I feel like AC2 and 1 are pretty different. I don't know if they're technically different engines. I know in AC1 they called the engine Simitar and by AC2 they were calling it Anvil. They are different engines. Simitar is different from Anvil. Simitar is basically like the parent of Anvil. And then Anvil is what was used going forward. Anvil was used between AC2 and Revelations at which point they made Anvil next for AC3 through Rogue. And then Unity every game since Unity has been on the same engine Anvil next 2.0. Right. So we're still using Unity's engine. The game systems itself and how they interact, they don't necessarily need a new engine, you know, to make a substantially different game. Which is a common thing I've been seeing a lot where people say we need a new engine, but that's not necessarily actually can change anything within the game's systems that we're seeing. Right. Because like Rainbow Six Siege and Steep also run on Anvil next 2.0, you know. Well, so Noah, let me ask you this. So you think if there is a Black Plague game that follows Vahalla, my issue isn't just that it's going to, it would potentially use the same engine. Do you think if there were to follow Vahalla with a Black Plague game that it would actually be as different as you're saying like Unity to Origins comparison of different assets? Well, no, no, no. The point, the game systems itself are assets, but traditionally assets is used to refer to art rather than code. So the art of Assassin's Creed Vahalla is mostly new. There are some regurgitated assets that we could see from like weapons and stuff, which isn't too uncommon, but the environment is almost completely new assets. They use completely new shaders, and they had to make an entirely new system within the engine for rendering due to the new consoles that we have. And as a result, they have a lot of new environmental assets that's very expensive to make. And this is exactly why we've had so many games that reuse those assets, you know, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Revelations both use assets from two, and they look very different because they just did a couple of texture swaps basically. But if you look, they are the exact same models in a lot of the environment. So will we definitely get a game if my speculation is right that we're going to get a game in Northern Europe that recycles the assets of Assassin's Creed Vahalla, will it definitely be like Origins or will it be more like Yundi? I can't say because there are rumors saying both ways. And I could see Ubisoft wanting to actually change it up. And also depends on the budget of the game and, you know, the core design philosophies within that. But they can substantially change gameplay systems and what they want to do for the game while still retaining all those assets like Rogue did. So they could still do a lot of stuff reusing those assets and making a few new ones themselves. So let me ask you this, because here's part of the whole rumor that I found interesting. Now we've talked about like, you know, that Black Plague, you know, Europe is it's represented on the survey. So it's a possibility there. It's, you know, it would be a logical asset flip from Vahalla. But a lot of the rumors, they get a little bit more specific than that. Usually when I've seen rumors about Black Plague, it's accompanied by the idea that it would come early 2022, like in spring, which would be a big, you know, that would be kind of a change for the franchise. And that it's developed by Ubisoft, Sophia, the same team, well, maybe not team, but at least the same developer that made Rogue back in the day. But also in the rumor that I saw that had that information. And maybe you can just, you can comment on like, oh, it's a plausible setting, but this rumor might not be as plausible specifically. But one of the things that was associated with it is this idea that they would refresh the parkour and the stealth. And that seemed unlikely to me. I was thinking like, if this is a game that was presumably made over the course of like a year, that would have been developed by one of their smaller studios that would be similar to Rogue, like Rogue in comparison to Black Flag, not that different. The gameplay and design philosophy, there are, there are slight iterations, as you say, but it is largely like, if you released Rogue as a DLC for Black Flag, I don't think anyone would have blinked at it. But changing the parkour and the stealth, that's a big change. So how plausible is that? If Sophia makes a Black Plague game next year, how likely is it that they're actually making the kind of structural changes where they could overhaul a parkour system that's been same for the last three games? I don't think it's too unlikely. I mean, first of all, we have to ask, how long has the game actually been in development? Because Vahala was in development for three years. And just because Sophia worked on that doesn't mean they worked on it for the full three years. They could have jumped off Vahala a year ago and start production on, or full production on Black Plague or whatever it's going to be, Champions or King Richard, you know. I'm not sure if the rumor, there's been a couple of those Black Plague and 100 Years War rumors saying, they're going to revamp stealth and it's going to be dark and have gothic architecture and they're going to have big castle sieges. I mean, that makes sense because, you know, cities were a little bit denser by that period. You know, there were actual historical castles and larger sieges by that period. It makes sense that they could really fall into that medieval night stereotype and really go full force into that. So it makes sense to an extent, whether or not they have time for that. I mean, it's debatable because they could really overhaul those systems. Not that they really even need to overhaul the parkour system that much. It's fairly similar to Yundi and Syndicate. The issue is that they have reduced some mild functionality of that, which can be brought back if they really wanted to. And based on what you've told us about kind of the way they look at assets in these contexts, one question I have is just, because again, I do kind of feel like I wouldn't expect Ubisoft to keep going down a particular path of design philosophy for as many as four games in a row, in this case, too, over the course of about five or six years. Do you think it's even like, what percentage of likelihood would you give it that Ubisoft does say, all right, those Valhalla assets were great, but they're on to different things now because we're making a China game next? I would say like 5% possibility that happening at this point. Really? I'm very confident that the next game will be releasing most likely in this fiscal year, and it's going to be reusing art assets, especially environmental art assets, from Valhalla. I don't know about the actual game systems, how much they're going to reuse that, because there has been a backlash on Reddit and YouTube and all forms of social media about the current game systems and how people are starting to actually get tired of those. To be honest, I don't know if they're even going to go forward with a plague based game. The core is they're definitely going to be using the Valhalla environmental assets for the next game, and I am almost certain about that, because it is so monumentally expensive. It costs tens of millions of dollars to make these games. I think Assassin's Creed 3, which is the last one that we know about, costs like 50 million dollars. And the games are only getting bigger, and they're only getting more expensive to develop overall. And that's why microtransactions and DLC are so prominent, because that's how they make back most of their money. Because it's a $60 game, but they're not getting $60 per purchase. They're getting closer to about $30 per purchase. So to make back $60 million, you don't need to sell 1 million units, and you need to sell like 2 million units just to get back to the cost of development. And that's not including the cost of marketing, which can sometimes cost double. Yeah. So if we're talking about like arguments against, say, a Black Plague or Medieval Europe game, the other thing too that commonly is mentioned, and that I think about a lot, is that we're going into Paris in one of these DLCs within the year for Valhalla. How likely is it that, you know, okay, if they do include, I mean, we know they're doing Paris in the DLC, but like if they do Black Plague France even as a next main game, like, do they just copy and paste Paris? Is that feasible? Is that likely? No, it's not due to changes in architecture. Paris in 885, yeah, 885 was radically different to Paris in 1345. But even if they don't copy and paste it, isn't there going to be something kind of weird about not just getting the same city, you know, that we've already had, which happens occasionally, but is kind of rare, but getting the same city represented in Assassin's Creed, potentially if the Spring 2022 rumor is true, not just within the same year, but maybe within the same six months. I mean, there could be a little bit of strangeness with that. I don't think it's impossible for them to do that. It is going to be a radically different city. And if they do a game and send France as a whole during the Hundred Years War, or just a large portion of France, and maybe a little bit of the Holy Roman Empire, there's still a lot more France that they can focus on, like Orleans and Bordeaux, and Calais and Poitiers, that they can really focus more of the marketing on, and then also be like, hey, look, we have a different version of Notre Dame here, and we have a radically different version of Paris and what you saw in Unity or Valhalla. All right. So what we have so far is it seems likely that, you know, we get at least something that flips Valhalla's assets, potentially, you know, Spring of 2022, made by Ubisoft, Sophia. What's your likelihood rating for that rumor as a whole? So including the idea that it's that date, that developer, that setting, time period, and the idea, I think, was also floated that it would be a smaller $40 game as opposed to a full $60 release. That rumor actually stated there was Ubisoft Toronto that was making it, not Sophia. That's a big one that said it was going to be the Hundred Years War, or Black Play in France and Germany, and it was being developed by Toronto, not Sophia. It was the YouTuber Jonathan that then said it was Sophia, not Toronto, but it was correct about 2022. And I think 2022 is the really strange part because he's made a few hints about what the next game could be. I have mixed feelings about that. But that's strange for Assassin's Creed. I'll definitely agree that with what you said earlier, it's really weird for Assassin's Creed to not launch as a big holiday release. In fact, that may be the only way that it lines up with if it was going to be a smaller release, doing it in Spring might make more sense if it was going to be a $40 game. Yeah. And there's also some rumors that it was delayed due to COVID, which makes a lot of sense. We've seen a lot of games delayed due to COVID now. Like it would have been like holiday release for this year, 2021, but it got pushed back to Spring. Yeah. So like, I mean, Vahala had some issues due to COVID. They cut Ireland and they're putting that as DLC now due to issues with COVID. It was just being the main game. Yeah. Yeah. Ireland was initially supposed to be in the main game, according to Darby. Did you know that lesson? No. What the fuck? Another fucking area to go conquer? Fuck that, garbage. So that's actually why I think the most recently called Champions could actually be accurate, because that's saying that it's going to be half Dan's return to Ireland and his death, and then the ally with the king of Dublin and kill the druids that killed him. And I could see that being really close to what happens, since Darby more or less said that the arc was going to be going to with half Dan to Ireland, and then he dies there. There could be some credence to it. Just take it with a massive grain of salt, because there's so many other ways they could have figured that out or got that information. That said, I know that some people have been saying that it's going to be next gen only or speculating that it's going to be next gen only. I do believe the next game will be cross gen just because next gen only is not feasible at any consideration at this point for an Assassin's Creed game. Why do you think that is? So Assassin's Creed Unity, actually let me go back to Black Flag. Black Flag had a 50% adoption rate in 2013 at 4 million units sold, which is phenomenal. However, we have fairly low units sold across the board right now for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X, just due to scalpers and manufacturing issues due to COVID. So we already have a lower market base and Black Flag was cross gen release. Then the next year, they released Unity as next gen only. That only sold 7 million units, and they always need to get to about 10 million units. And that's why they made Rogue, and that made the extra 2 to 3 million units sold to get to that 10 million units that they needed per year. So that's how they hit their sales figures. And people did not like that at all. So I don't think they're ever going to do two games in one year again, or those two games in one fiscal year, I should say. Okay. And as a result, due to the low population on the next generation, it would not be financially responsible for them to release next gen only. They'd never go for it money-wise. They just would not be to make that money back. Noah, I wanted to ask you about engine stuff just really quickly, just before we got too far away from the topic of the engine stuff. It would seem that this last, what is it, Unity Syndicate? Hold on, I'm terrible with math, I'm sorry. Unity Syndicate, then Origins out of 5 games on one engine. So I have a two-pronged question. First would be, what necessitated these games to switch engines seemingly in that pattern before? And the second part of the question would be, why is it that we have Unity to Vahalo with the same engine? And so how long could that last until we start seeing, I suppose, until the players start noticing? Because I don't feel like it's inherently noticeable that Unity and Vahalo are the same engine necessarily, just because everything is so different, obviously. So the second part of my question is, how long could that last until they absolutely have to do it? I will say though, just real quick, I think next gen will necessitate a newer engine sooner rather than later, just because it would allow them to take more advantage of next gen console hardware and get more graphical fidelity and processing power out of it. Yeah, I agree. Could they have done AC3 without switching engines is a thing, because AC3 is mechanically and gameplay wise very different from AC Revelations. So what necessitated a new engine for that, you know? So the big things that made them do new engines is how they want to grab basically the power of the consoles and use that within their games, and that meant primarily AI and civilians in the crowd. That's a big thing that really made them do new engines for AC2, they want to have larger crowds, more dynamic crowds than AC1. So you could actually blend with pretty much anyone rather than just one group of monks that were walking around. And then AC3, the thing that they wanted to do was really show off how big the American Revolution was. They wanted to have those fields of 10,000 men firing with cannons and explosions everywhere. They wanted to show that off as a huge set piece. And they could only get that many people on screen if they made a new engine that could actually process that much on screen at once. Because a prior engine wasn't able to draw the power necessary to actually manage all of that, essentially. And that's why they also upgraded to Unity. Because once again, they wanted to have those large crowds, because before they could only have crowds of about 100 people on screen at once, they want to upgrade that to about 1,000 people now to show how dense Unity's Paris was and to make those crowds really dynamic and actually react to people. Ultimately, the graphical intensity and computational intensity of Unity just killed the performance, which is why we didn't see anything else's generation that was on Unity's level. But that's why they made that new engine. And they basically pushed the engine and the current hardware to its limits within the first game that they made on it. So I think we're going to get a new engine with the China game. I think that's super likely. And then they'll have 10,000 people on screen. Yeah, exactly. So something stupid like that is what they're going to be doing, for sure. It does seem, though, that while the engine itself may not necessarily mean new assets or new gameplay systems, it does seem like until recently in the series, that has been the pattern is every few games, new engine and new gameplay. So I guess it seems unprecedented that we've had five games on one engine and that has changed gameplay among those five games. But it definitely, it speaks to the flexibility of these engines. Obviously, as Noah pointed out, if you can take the same engine and make AC Unity and Rainbow Six and Steep and every other Ubisoft game, that's obviously pretty flexible software. Also, because when you look at the pattern as you point out, Tim, in the series history, like it up until Origins, the new design philosophy always corresponded with the new engines with Origins that basically stopped being true. They were able to completely change the design philosophy and make an entirely different type of game, just as different from Unity and Syndicate as like AC Three was to its predecessors. So I wonder how much mileage they'll get out of like an Anvil 3.0. Like let's say they make the China game, they could maybe use it for like 10 years. Yeah, that's exactly what I expect is that the entire next generation of games is going to be on Anvil next 3.0 in regards to the current engine. So one thing that I think does confuse a lot of people is that during Origins lead up, they said that they made an entirely new combat engine. And a lot of people were like, oh, so that means it's a new engine. That more means that there's a collection of scripts and software that they made that handles the combat basically. And they're using that to handle the combat rather than the previous collection of software and scripts that they made to handle the combat because instead of being animation paired now, now it's hitbox based and took them about two years alone just to make a good hitbox based system for Origins. Quote unquote good. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed Origins combat for what it was. It was functional. Yeah, I have issues with every combat system in Assassin's Creed, but for the most part, I also except for the first game, right? You know, I was never able to get combos right to be honest. I hated combos in Assassin's Creed 1, especially for that one achievement that made you get like 50 combos. I absolutely hated that. Well, we'll have to hook you up with jacers. He knows how to do combos in that game like no. He'll tell you everything. He'll tell you everything you need to know. There's I think there's good and bad to pretty much every combat system, though. Some are better than others. I really hate Odyssey's combat system. As a result, I'm really not a fan of the Hollis. But but I don't see massive changes coming again for whatever game comes next, unless it's a Chinese game, you know, on a new engine. Because whatever game comes next is probably not going to be enough time to make a whole new combat system. Is there any leak or rumor that you feel like is even in the same ballpark of likelihood as the idea of there being a 2022 Medieval Europe game? Anything that feels like, oh, that also feels possible. Yeah, there's there's one that discuss from from Jonathan, the the others like Persia, AC Warrior being in Japan, AC Spirits in Morocco, that that's all. Oh, and India is obviously all just fake. There are a lot of people guessing. In fact, the guy who who made the the spirits leak on Reddit came out directly and said this was a joke. So it's it's obvious that I think all of those are just completely false. They don't make sense within the surveys. They don't make sense with an asset reuse. They don't make sense for Ubisoft's plan going forward from what we can see. And also, I just wanted to say as well, this could all change by the time this episode releases because Ubisoft is having a financial call the day this episode launches. So like, we could find out everything that we've talked about. Oh, great. Oh, that'll be amazing. That'll be super radical, dude. You know what we're going to do? Here's what we're going to do. At the end of this recording, we're going to record an alternate intro. And we're going to say, hey, today there was a Ubisoft investor call, except we recorded this two days ago. So so everything we said is a lie on a list of like probability in for you, Noah, like the ones that you were just speaking of are at the bottom. And then King Richard champions and Black Plague are higher. Yeah. So those are all pretty much tied. They've all got stuff in them that seems unlikely and they've all got stuff that seems likely. Okay. Champions is currently my highest. So the King Richard I'll talk about first. I just want to say because this amuses me. I was looking at the spirit leak you were talking about. And yeah, this was an edit that they that they added to the post. Hey, everyone, this post is fake. I typed this up to make a point to everyone that is so easy to just bullshit a supposed leak. I think we all need to get a grip and stop pointlessly speculating and instead enjoy what we have right now. Hope I haven't offended anyone with this post. It was fun making something up. So I hope any of you enjoyed the read. None of us were fooled. Yeah, it's not like this post has hundreds of upvotes. Everyone commented that this is fake. Yeah. What point did you make? It's so easy to make up a lie and have everyone think it's a lie. I'm trying to make a point, guys. This is a social experiment, everybody. Yeah. Of course, anyone could come up with the idea like of an Assassin's Creed League, but the idea of these other ones is that people actually they're gaining traction. People think they might happen. No offense to Mr. underscore Z underscore ball. Okay. I'm a mod. I'm a respectful person. I'm not making fun of you right now. So what is most unlikely to you about King Richard and Champions like the two of those like what is most unlikely about those for you? So King Richard itself seems unlikely to me. So Jonathan said it's going to come in 2022. He's shown pictures of Altair and King Richard and said it's not a remake. Let me preface that saying it's early 2022 and not a remake of Assassin's Creed one. So that's implying that there's going to be a new game centered around King Richard and possibly Altair, which most people are speculating to be his return to England, which is when he was arrested in Austria for the he paid for the assassins to kill his cousin Conrad of Montferrat, William's son, so that his other cousin Guy of Lisbon could become the new King of Jerusalem, despite the fact that the crusaders did not own Jerusalem. So as a result, he was arrested by the Holy Roman Empire to help out the Frankish King because they were all allies. And then while he was arrested, France took back its territory in Bordeaux and Normandy, which he then spent the rest of his life fighting to get back for England. So France and Germany make sense as a setting, especially within the context of King Richard. The issue though is that King Richard and post Third Crusade, I don't feel like he's a most known about person. You know, people don't really know that King Richard was arrested for having one of his cousins assassinated. And then you fought for the rest of his life in France to regain English territory in France. That's not something people really know about, I feel like. That sort of goes back to the surveys, because all those surveys and user research that Ubisoft does is to make sure that the games they're making can be easily marketed and sold to people. And I think that the Hundred Years War, whether or not it's in the Black Plague, the Hundred Years War is a far more marketable setting than King Richard. And that's my biggest hang-up about that entire leak, because Jonathan has gone stuff right before, but he's also gone stuff wrong. He was a person who pushed forward the rumor that Avor's name was going to be Jorah. Ended up being true in the sense that that was originally the name. Yeah, that was one of the first names that they came up with, and then they used that name in the Vinland arc for Avor. So it was partially true, but that also was outdated info by that point. So could Ubisoft Sophia have been looking into making a game about King Richard? Yeah, I think that's very likely. Are they still making a game about King Richard? That's what I think is where I'm on that, because I think that there is truth to that, but then they just had to do a design pivot based on what's going to be more popular according to the producers and settings of research that they've already done, which then goes into champions. That leak is saying, you know, it tells us what's going to happen in DLC. It says spoiler alert potentially. Halfden dies and Avor allies with Odo and Rolo during the Siege of Paris to do something. And that's a little bit strange. That's one of my hand ups there, because Odo was very against the Vikings and Charles, I think the fat, his capitulation to Rolo and the Vikings is part of what got him deposed by Odo. Odo was a count of Paris at the time. Could be that Odo plays a part in the story, and therefore the leaker just assumed they were allying with Avor and Rolo, but perhaps they're not. That could be possible. It could be that. It could be something more like Alfred, where Odo uses Avor as a way to stop the siege, because Sieges take a long time. This was a year-long siege of the Vikings led on Paris. And this is just the Ildilacit in the center of Paris, the island. It was a year-long siege. Yeah, it was a year-long siege from 885 to 886. Which will be fitting for this DLC, because of how is a game that takes a year to play? Exactly. So with how long the siege is, I could see Odo temporarily allying with Avor to just stop the siege and or other trickery to get the Vikings out. Just because he allies with Avor, I don't think necessarily means he's going to necessarily not still be against the Vikings. Because a lot of Sieges, because of how long they lasted, it was a more method of using starvation and subterfuge against your opponents from within to stop the siege, rather than eventually you build a high enough dirt ramp and burst through the wall and just slaughter everyone inside. I mean that happened too, but these longer Sieges took a really long time and relied heavily on insiders to help them out. So I could really see Avor playing that role of being an insider in Paris and stopping something in Paris and that's what gets the Vikings out. And then that leads into the fact that we're going to be playing as some sort of medieval champion and playing up famous medieval stories. I'm assuming it means Robin Hood and I'm sorry it says it's going to play into the high fantasy element of AC. I'm sick to my stomach. So I think before getting too sick, there should be a discussion on what it means to be high fantasy, because there could be dragons and bullshit like that, or it could mean high fantasy that inspired the modern high fantasy, like medieval romanticism. That's charitable. Yeah, Count de Monte Cristo, Robin Hood, King Arthur. I mean, I could see them playing into that type of high fantasy with witch burnings and fair maidens and knights in shining armor, besieging castles and a knight of a round table and medieval tournaments and jousting. I could see them really playing into that. That seems very likely to me. You know, as you're saying that Noah, that sounds pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, yeah, but let's be honest. I know it's charitable. I know it's very charitable, but like I wouldn't like that sounds like how likely is someone saying high fantasy take to be talking about that stuff? I feel like probably not. I feel like they're saying high fantasy. I mean, also, can I just say, did they say high fantasy, or did they just say fantasy? Let me check. A classical European fantasy take on the series is what I see right now. Okay, classical, yeah. So classical fantasy could definitely mean more medieval romanticism than modern high fantasy, like Tolkien and J.R. Martin. You know, Dwarves and Assassin's Creed. Okay, was this one, the champions one? Yeah, that was the one. Yeah, this is champions. That was the one that they were talking about new parkour for, correct? No. No, no, this one only says the DLC. Okay, I get you. What happened in the DLC? And then the next game is coming out in early 2022, codename champions, and is going to be a classical medieval fantasy take on the series. No detail, no developer, no price, just no price, no developer. Which actually probably by force of sheer vagueness makes it the most likely to be completely true. Yeah, exactly. I could really see that happening though. I mean, that also fits with both the Hundred Years War and King Richard, because that's the time period when that medieval romanticism was at its most prevalent. So I could definitely see that actually happening, because there were witch burnings there during the Black Plague. They could play into stuff like not Nostradamus. Shit, what's his name? Jesus. Nicholas Flamel. Oh, Flamel. No, Nicholas Flamel, who made the Philosopher's Stone. And he was alive during the Black Plague. If I remember correctly from Unity, he had an underground laboratory in Paris, so they could definitely play into Nicholas Flamel experimenting with the Philosopher's Stone. You talking about this makes me want to play it. Yeah, I mean, it's already in lore though that Flamel was real, and he had actually made a Philosopher's Stone. Yeah. That's back from like memories, I think it was. And the assassin Giovanni Borgia had found... Oh, hey, you're getting it. You're getting to my territory. With the Vahala bringing the East Sea language into the forefront again, I could see them bringing Flamel maybe as one of the Aesir sages or something like that, and that's how he was able to write in the East Sea language the notes about how to make a Philosopher's Stone. Wow. And maybe that's what caused the plague, or maybe that's, you know, how they cured the plague or something like that. So I hope that whatever they say in this investor's call that's apparently happening today, they say, oh, and by the way, Nicholas Flamel. I would love that. Like, here's the thing, Noah has just single-handedly sold, like out of all the leaks, the least one I was interested in was that one. He's just sold me on it. However, can I just say, I went from believing that there was not a chance of that happening to now thinking it's probably going to happen. Right. And you know, it actually sounds not only believable, but it sounds like something that Ubisoft would do and could actually be somewhat decent. It probably wouldn't be like a good Assassin's Creed game again. I'm almost sure that we wouldn't play as an Assassin, because it's been five out of seven games. You don't play as a friggin Assassin. But I could definitely see them going that route, because that's something that people have been asking for since they saw Unity's 100 Years War segment. And I could really see that happening. Yeah. That would be actually exactly what Tim has wanted. Yeah, it would literally be exactly what I... Ever since the Unity prologue, I've just wanted to play in that for eight, forever. Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, they give us a small title setting that and then they take us to China. All right. I'm sold. Let's do it. While Noah has like sold me on this idea, I feel like if it was just like similar Vaha like dialogue choices in like a hundred hour experience, I would I would hate it. So yeah, I'm of two minds on this. Yeah. I mean, there's there's always a question of whether or not they'll do the setting right. And that's a whole other question to whether or not that setting has real promise. The level of similarity to Valhalla is what could make or break this game, because if they really do something fresh and different with it, knowing it's going to be this this sort of side game or smaller game holdover title. If they lean into that and they say, well, you know what, fuck it, we can have good Parkour again. We can we can have maybe a single playable protagonist or something. But if, like you said, it's just very much in the Valhalla mold, if what we're getting is let's say even as similar to Valhalla as Odyssey was to Origins, if it's that close, the odds of it somehow being like better than Valhalla are pretty slim. Even though again, like I don't love I don't love Valhalla. It's pretty low on my list. Did I enjoy playing it? Sure. But I mean, well, probably for at least half of the time I spent playing it, I enjoyed playing it. But yeah, one one thing Jonathan said was it's going to be completely different to anything that we've gone before. And again, take it with a massive grain of salt. It could be correct. It could be outdated info. It could just be flat out wrong. And I've seen some articles on the saying it might be like in an uncharted or last of a style game. And I've seen some people speculating that might be more like the Tomb Raider reboot from like 2013 onwards. Yeah, I mean, I question the same thing. I mean, AC can't go linear, that's for sure. That's not that's not their DNA. But I mean, maybe more set piece heavy linear mission design could come back. Yeah, more like revelations or or maybe it could just be a couple of hub worlds again, more like AC one and two, instead of just a single open. That would surprise me. That would surprise me. But Tim would be Tim would come. Yeah. So since we've just covered a few of the more likely options, I think it would be fun to look at all of the unlikely options. And Noah, you have like a list of all of the possibilities from things that have been rumored to things that you just think historically and from a development perspective are possible. So I kind of just want you to give us very brief one sentence descriptions of each possibility. And then for Tim and I to each have like a one sentence max response to it. I feel like that would be fun. It might not be fun. I don't know. But we should try. So there's a Spanish conquest of the new world. You know, that would be Francisco Pizarro in 1530s Peru or Hernando Cortez in like 1520s Mexico. Cool. Probably not happening next. Yeah. No, I agree. I don't even know what Peru looks like. Next, next is China. There are a ton of settings that they could go to. I think the most likely is the Yuan Dynasty during the reign of Kublai Khan who finished the conquering of Sun China and created the largest Mongolian empire. Injected into my veins. I think it's fairly likely for the next generation game. Yeah. I mean, I'm at the point with like Chinese history that you could just tell me any in any era and I'd be like, cool, let's do it. I just next. Then there's Persia because the art director Rafael Lacoste said it's inevitable. And a lot of people want to Basim Frequel, which could take place during the Abbasid dynasty. Two things. One, there's no need for a Basim Frequel. And two, every time a Ubisoft employee at any level has an opinion about what could or should or shouldn't happen next, people treat it as gospel. Like I think Alex Hutchinson said something about no feudal Japan a decade ago and people have held onto that ever since as evidence they won't do it. But I don't feel like those people are the decision makers. So it doesn't really affect my opinion of how likely it is. So I think it is not happening soon. Yeah, I agree. So it's not happening anytime soon. I could just be ignorant to it, but I feel like beyond like the obvious like Prince of Persia connection, like I'm not sure what I'm not sure what it like, I guess events or gameplay instances that they could really market for Persia. I'd rather they do a Prince of Persia game using some Assassin's Creed design philosophy to go back to Persia. And then they can, you know, step away from the animus stuff if they want to with that. And they can, you know, do more Prince of Persia fantasy ish lore and stuff. Next is the age of the Stirlums. And this is just not going to happen. Okay, next. Ivan the Terrible in Russia. He couldn't make a perfect temple. I'm down for that. We had our chance for Russia after Syndicate. I wanted it so bad, but I really specifically only want Russian Revolution. Anything before that in Russian history, I really couldn't give less of a shit about. The next is the Holy Roman Empire, which is basically Germany. There's a lot of different settings for that. Otto the First, you know, who restarted the Empire or there's conspiracies where they may have faked time called the Phantom Time conspiracy where the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a real conspiracy. The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Pope conspired together to make them all rule and reign on the year 1000 AD because that was supposed to be meant to be special for like Christianity. And as a result made up the entire early medieval period. I love that. I do want to say, though, as far as like general in general, the Holy Roman Empire, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I feel like Ubisoft is more likely if this Champions League is even half accurate. I feel like they're more likely to do a France and Germany game in 2022 than they are to do a France only game in 2022. So I think HRE is coming up. Yeah, I could agree with that. Next is the first Scottish War of Independence. So you remember the movie Greyheart? Yeah, it's literally that and I included it because Scotland isn't in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. And in the game, they actually say for the Bruce and the Bruce is a reference to Robert the Bruce. And that's what started the war led by Andrew Moray and Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson is my favorite historical figure, dude. I want that. Yeah, I'm going to say both no thank you and not happening. Sorry, Scottish people listening to this. I owe I thought until very recently that Braveheart was an American Revolution movie. Oh, no, no, no, that was Patriot. Because I feel like I had seen like clips of it like it's on television at random and I didn't feel like Mel Gibson had an accent. Does he? Yeah, no. That was the movie Patriot. Mel Gibson was in a movie called The Patriot. Yeah, and that was during the American Revolution. But whenever I would see him like shirtless and braveheart, I'd be like, yeah, kill the redcoats. All right, moving on. There's going backwards from Valhalla because see Charlemagne and or Clovis. Charlemagne was Charles the Great. Don't even know what those two things are. Charlemagne. Charlemagne is the host of the Breakfast Club radio show. He started the Carolinian dynasty and the Holy Roman Empire when he was crowned King of Romans in 800 CE. I'm going to be real with you, Noah. I've been following this far, but nothing you just said made any sense to me. Charlemagne Templar. Okay, thank you. I am so sick of hitting ones. If we're going to go anywhere, they need to be assassins. I hope, I mean, that's independent of the likelihood of something, but I'm very hopeful that I agree. But he said hitting ones and I checked out. Oh, would champions, I forget what year it's set in. Would champions be... Yeah, yeah. That would be assassins. That would be assassins, definitely. Good. Good and cool. Because in heresy, they're assassins. What's next? King Arthur. He was actually probably real. And in the lore, he had Excalibur. And there are a few references to him in Valhalla. Isn't Excalibur in Valhalla? It is. I feel like this Valhalla being set in England, they're not going to do another just England game. And if they wanted to do a King Arthur thing, it would have maybe factored more into Valhalla. So I feel like they've, they had their chance, they didn't take it, and it were probably for the better on that, but... We mostly saw Eastern England in Valhalla and King Arthur was mostly Western England and Wales and Scotland. Yeah, but what are they going to do? They're going to be like, hey, it's England again. Fewer Vikings this time. I don't know. Well, they could have Tintagel Castle and the Knights of the Round Table. And now instead of, you know, being a Viking, you're Romano-Britain, who's fighting the Anglo-Saxons. Yeah, nah. They could even reuse the same character models. They could reuse dialogue. Yeah, no. Also, Avalon was a game that was meant to be like King Arthur period and that Serg cancelled. So... Fucking Serg. Is it Serg or Sergie? I don't know. I've heard Serg. But I think the actual term is asshole. Hookblade says, fuck you, Serg, however your name is pronounced. Next is Rome, because there are a ton of rumors about Rome. No, they missed their chance. They could have done it. They missed it. They're not going to do it. I want ancient Rome so bad. Like that 3D model you can find online. It would have been perfect following Odyssey. It would have been. Yeah. I mean, even if nothing else in Italy, just like a one-to-one recreation of the city of Rome. Yeah, okay. But Noah, what would you rather have if you had to choose between them? It's the year 2018 and they're asking you. Do you want... No, listen. Do you want AC Rome next year and it's Odyssey but in Rome? Or do you want AC Valhalla? Fuck. You know, I never really wanted the Viking setting because I knew that we'd get the parkour that we wanted. I know it's Odyssey again, but I think I'd rather Odyssey than Valhalla. Odyssey in Rome than Valhalla. Because at least I can get the setting that I really wanted more than Vikings. Gotcha. I'd vote Valhalla because I don't really care about either setting but, and I didn't like Odyssey, but Tim, what do you choose? Valhalla. Noah's been outvoted and kicked off the island. What's next? Because like the ancient Rome like... Never mind. Sorry. There's a hundred years more in Black Flag which... We know. We know what you think about that. We've already talked about. I've gone from thinking it's like 40% likely to thinking it's like 70% likely. So those are all the big settings that I think could happen or don't really think they could happen. Then there are the other leaks, obviously Persia. AC Warrior, do you want to talk about AC Warrior in Japan? Yeah, fuck it. Let's talk about Warrior. Did that ever get onto the subreddit at all? No. Or did we... It got caught by Auto Moderator. No, he never reposted it. So this is a hookblade exclusive leak, everybody. We did talk about it a bit last time, but it is like, again, I think I said this before. It's the one if I could choose out of all the rumors what game we would get next, that's the one I would pick. So it's really weird to me because they named it Assassin's Creed Warriors, all right? Yeah. But they said it during the Edo period when the samurai were on the decline, they say it's only going to be set around Edo or modern-day Tokyo. Yeah. Oh, and there's going to be a massive resurgence of stealth and parkour. So why is it named Warriors? Yeah, that's a very... I mean, I also feel like the codename champions is a little sus, to be honest. Or I think it's just champion, but I think that's also sus. But they don't fit the convention of how Ubisoft typically codenames or names their game because they almost never just, you know, coded a location. They almost never just like code it with the kind of character you play. Like it wasn't like there was any point where Odyssey was codenamed Assassin's Creed Mystios. Or they choose thematic ideas or things that reference like the time period, like Golden Age did. But they almost never either... I mean, people in leaks all the time just put like the name of the country thinking that that would be a codename. It almost never is. And people put a console... Like Spirit strikes me as particularly strange. I know we know that's fake now, but like champion just doesn't fit the mold of what they usually codename their games. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, so Jorvrafter said that champions seemed likely as a name because you play as a champion based on what he knows about the next game. Well, I guess that lends it a bit of credibility. It just still strikes me as odd. Yeah. I mean, the fact that he only said that it seems likely rather than, oh, yes, I know for a fact that this is true based on my own insider sources, could mean that this is still a fake leak, but just getting closer to the mark of what Jorvrafter and Jonathan have heard. Yeah, warriors, however. Yeah, New Engine, Anvil Next 3.0, Assassin's Creed Warriors. You play as a female only protagonist named Akako, who grows her hair over time and can be customized in barbers, depending on the length. Outfit systems straight up same as Valhalla. And same armor pieces as Odyssey. They're diable like in Ghost of Tsushima. Around the city of Blocksmouth seems to us general stores and doctors, tree of Templars, game spans 10 years. It's like it's like an AC fans wet dream, basically. Yeah. Talking about improved parkour and stealth, largely city based setting, single female protagonist, fewer dialogue options, more motion-capped cutscenes. It's essentially like if you took everything that people critique about these last few games and you brought us back to the way things were when they were good. But it's too good to be true. And it's very detailed, which is typically a sign of fakeness, because people tend to have fanfic-type inclinations with it when they come up with these fake things. Right. I mean, the real leak from 4chan on Empire, which was Origins, it was basically just said, hey, so the next game is called Empire. It's in Egypt, and it's not going to be this year. This year is Watch Dogs 2. Next year is going to be Egypt. It's Watches Fuck. Have fun. I'm like, that was it. They said it was beautiful, and Witcher 3 inspired. You know, and it was like very broad details. Yeah, and then this is detailing how her hair grows. And the actual plot of the main story. Yeah, it's a lot of words, too. You would think that anyone involved at the level to know absolutely all of those details is not in a position where leaking that information would be a good thing for them. Yeah, and that's what I said about the India leak, too, because if that's at Ubisoft Montreal and they only have a map that's made from something online, which online assets do get used in very early development sometimes. If they only have that type of assets available, then like 15 people right now are on the project that have permissions for it, and you're going to get fired. Yeah, that's a very good point. Also, I found the map really unbelievable that came out with India, not just because it looks so bad, but because if you look at the way they section off the different areas of the map, that's not how game maps ever look. You don't have a game map where you have one huge single area, and then another thing that gets its own color and name on the key of the map is just these little tiny bubbles that are spread throughout, that are in five different places on the map. Like, that's just very, like it might be accurate to what was historically the division of land, but when they make a game, they give you different sized areas with some variety, but never games where you have like one huge swath of land that's all one thing and then tiny little bubbles of the one other thing. Like, it just doesn't make sense to me. That's actually something that I'd love to see in a future game where it takes place during a war like the Peloponnesian War. You could actually see those fronts moving back and forth, and maybe there'd be small contingents on like just a single land mass over here, and then the rest of that area is being assaulted by the opposing army. Yeah, like a truly systemic war system would be really cool. Any other thoughts, boys? This is like the way Noah and only Noah was talking about champions. I like the idea, and I hope that they do that, but they probably won't because that sounds too good of an idea. It would be too good, yeah. Ubisoft doesn't like making things that are good. I personally just cannot wait for the financial report call to come out. How likely is it that we'll actually get concrete information about the future of Assassin's Creed in this call? So in the last call, they confirmed, I think, five games are going to be coming for the 2021 to 2022 fiscal year. So Ubisoft's fiscal year is not January to December. It's April to March. So we are currently in the fourth quarter of Ubisoft's 2020 to 2021 fiscal year. So in 2021 to 2022's fiscal year, we should be getting like five games according to Ubisoft, including Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine. And a lot of people are thinking that we're also going to be getting Skull and Bones this year. And probably what's it called? Beyond Good and Evil 2 is going to be 2022 to 2023. I assume that even ever comes out. So that leaves one to two games that we're going to get this year, and they'll probably confirm again at this meeting or at this financial cause. Number one, how many units or the broad estimation of units sold for major games they've released this year? Because they only talk about AAA games. They don't talk about AA games or if they do, they don't talk about as much games like Anno and Riders and Dance Dance Revolution or whatever the version they make is. They don't consider those AAA releases. And they generally also only release one Tom Clancy game a year. So which is going to be quarantine. So we should figure out how many games we're getting in 2021 to 2022. And they've also historically said stuff about whether or not we should expect a new Assassin's Creed title, which does not mean a remake or remaster like Assassin's Creed 3 or the Ed Seer collection. Both years they said that there's not going to be any new Assassin's Creed title. Both years we still got the remaster because there's always going to be Assassin's Creed content. So is there going to be a new Assassin's Creed title? How many titles are they getting this year? What's the most likely titles to fill in the halls that they have? An Assassin's Creed is Ubisoft's best seller. So nine times out of 10 if there's a hall and they haven't said there's not going to be an Assassin's Creed this year, we're getting an Assassin's Creed to fill that hall and make some profits. So if they say in this call that there will be an Assassin's Creed game in this fiscal year, that would include if it went in spring 2022. Yes, it would go from anytime between April of 2021 to March of 2022. And if they say there's not an Assassin's Creed game in this fiscal year, does that mean we know that these leaks talking about spring of 2022 are probably wrong? Yes, they are. And what would you think is more likely in that scenario that we get something like champion in late 2022 or that we don't do that entirely and 2022 brings us to China? I don't know. See because if we're not getting it in early 2022, my best guess is it is probably being cancelled. Like the game from 2016 and most likely 2019 was going to be a Rome game. So most likely those two games were cancelled. I'd assume that the game that's meant to be post Valhalla was also cancelled if we're not getting one this fiscal year. And I don't know what that means for China because I've been thinking that China is going to be fiscal year or late 2023 as the release date because they need to make a new engine and there needs to be time for the actual install base of the next gen hardware. I mean, they could always do 2022, late 2022, even if they released something in early 2022, which is a previous fiscal year. They could also just do a remaster or remake. They could just push out a remaster of AC1 with trophy support for the PlayStation finally. And instead of doing the full remake like a lot of fans want, including bloodlines and altires, chronicles, they could just do a budget push out like AC2 through revelations and just say, here you go and make their money for the year. All right. So at least with that talked about, we'll have some content for, you know, whatever this call confirms or denies, you know, at least then they'll know how that compares to what we've talked about here, what that tells us. Right. Yeah. No matter what there is content coming within the next year, how much is the question? That's a good way to look at it. Noah, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise on history and game development and Assassin's Creed. Yeah, it's been great. And thank you for listening, whoever you are that I'm talking to right now. We appreciate your support and we would love it if you could like this video if you're listening on YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on Twitter at Hook Blade. You can find our good buddy Noah on Reddit as Enstav13 and where he's part of the mod team for the Assassin's Creed subreddit. By the time that this releases, I will just have published my 42nd setting post, which covers my 100th setting. Nice. I've been the hook. And I have been the blade. And I've been the corny writing. And we will see you on the next episode. Bye. Give me one sec. Let me take a drink. We don't want to dry throat Noah on this podcast. Nice and lubricated for you guys.