Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series is making a proper leap-of-faith onto mobile with Assassin’s Creed: Jade. Set in Ancient China, this new mobile experience will adapt one of the most requested settings into an open-world mobile game.
While complaints are already rampant from console and PC players, we think that this is a perfect fit. Furthermore, we’d argue that modern Assassin’s Creed is already more suited towards mobile than any other platform.
Why Modern Assassin’s Creed is perfect for mobile
Now, we here at Droidgamers love our console ports. Feral Interactive’s brilliant Alien Isolation port proves that fantastic console games can be just as amazing on mobile. However, modern Assassin’s Creed already feels like a game designed for phones.
Take Assassin’s Creed: Origins, the first RPG AC game in the series. Instead of the highly condensed games of old, you’re reversing through wide expansive environments, locales so dispersed that there’s a mobile-style auto walk system.
But it’s the heavy mobile-RPG style of modern Assassin’s Creed that proves it is less suited to console. Alongside MMO-lite levelling mechanics, AC games now include simplistic button mashing, Genshin-esque combat that could be easily translated to on-screen touch actions. There’s even abilities with cool-downs now.
This leads into the way that questing works, just like a mobile MMO. Major quests are short, but feature larger environments (such as Temples), but small quests are simple fetch missions asking you to travel from point-to-point-to-point. They’re easy to make and simple to play, with very many being memorable.
Perhaps it’s the vapid, pull-out-and-play nature of modern Assassin’s Creed games that make them feel like mobile titles. While not a negative for mobile — that content is perfect for portable play — it does feel less suited towards console.
What does this mean for Assassin’s Creed: Jade?
Modern Assassin’s Creed is making its mobile debut with Assassin’s Creed: Jade. A new mobile-only title set in ancient China, the game has already seen heavy backlash for its mobile exclusivity.
However, Jade‘s mobile exclusivity makes perfect sense. Not only is it modern AC game with systems synonymous with mobile, but also its setting makes the most sense. With Chinese gamers making up a large percentage of mobile players, bringing the Chinese-inspired game to phones is the best decision.
It will be interesting to see if anything about modern Assassin’s Creed will be changed on mobile. As we’ve discussed, everything about the AC formula is perfect for mobile. However, knowing Ubisoft, there will be unneeded changes for the sake of it.
Your own Assassin?
We do know that Ubisoft is at least planning one major change for Assassin’s Creed: Jade: create-a-character. Instead of playing as an established character, like Altair, you’ll create your own assassin to play as.
This is a pretty standard mobile feature, one to make you more invested in your character. More emotional investment usually means more monetary investment, which Ubisoft will use to push its cosmetic microtransactions.
As with the console games, microtransactions will likely be prominent in the game. Whether they’re cosmetic or pay-to-win, it likely can’t get any worse than ever mainline Assassin’s Creed games are already doing… We hope.
However, the introduction of a created character does prove that Ubisoft wants AC mobile games to be different in some ways. This could just be a way for the company to justify the full price they sell the console games for. Whatever the reason, AC mobile games will still be full games on Android.