The Assassin’s Creed games have featured a huge list of historical events and characters over the nearly two decades since the games began. Covering a millennium's worth of history in the form of many murders, both real and fictional, it is difficult for fans to believe that there are a number of huge ideas and pieces of content cut from the games as well.
From alternative missions and weapons to entire storylines and periods of history that could have been covered in the series but weren’t, the Assassin’s Creed series has justified a position as one of the greatest video game series of all time.
7 Altair’s Crossbow
The original Assassin’s Creed game followed Altair in the Middle East on a quest to restore honor to the Assassin Order by murdering twelve people. There were a variety of weapons that could be used in the game, but there was very nearly another.
A concept nearly used in the original game was a crossbow Altair was going to have, but the developers decided to remove it after realizing it would be inaccurate for crossbows to exist as far back as the setting of this game.
6 Unity Was Meant To Span Centuries
There was an idea for Assassin’s Creed: Unity to follow artifacts as they changed hands over the course of several centuries. This idea would have allowed the game to show off many versions of Paris as the city continued to age.
While this idea can still be seen in use via the time anomalies feature, it was deemed too difficult to pull off for a whole game and the scope of this was abandoned. The Paris shown in the game is another amazing Assassin’s Creed setting but is much more stoic than the initial idea wanted.
5 Haytham Was Nearly The Main Character Of Rogue
The Haytham Kenway character, a Templar Grand Master and feature of multiple Assassin’s Creed games, was originally talked about as being the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Rogue. However, the idea was scrapped as it would cause continuity problems with Forsaken, one of the Assassin’s Creed books.
This book was written in the form of Haytham’s journal, and events in his life chronicled more closely in a game like Rogue would have made it nearly impossible to stay completely in-line with what was written in the book.
4 Coop In Assassin’s Creed 1
The very first Assassin’s Creed game was also supposed to feature a drop-in coop option which would have allowed players to jump into the assassination missions of other players. Not only would this have been very difficult to incorporate into the game so long ago, but it would have changed the direction of the series drastically.
When Desmond Miles was added to the game, this was one of the cuts made, and didn’t return until Unity. Still, it is interesting to imagine history with coop being a bigger feature of the Assassin’s Creed games from the very start.
3 Syndicate Nearly Ruined And Rebuilt London
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate nearly had a dynamically changing version of London that would be torn down with each Templar death enacted. Every murder would have destroyed some aspect or area of the city, and these areas would remain broken down until the player later did side missions that would fix them.
This would have included a number of extra missions that could be completed at any time but were deemed too difficult to create given the completely alternate versions of the city that would have been featured ongoing in the main story.
2 Philadelphia In Assassin’s Creed III
An area that was nearly included in Assassin’s Creed III was Philadelphia, but it simply didn’t work for the style of the game. Philadelphia is a city known for long, wide streets, and it would have been difficult for the free-running, open-world format of the Assassin’s Creed games to work there.
Developers gave up on the idea and focused on Boston and New York. Parts of Philadelphia, like Independence Hall, still show up in cutscenes during the game. There have not been many attempts to use cities similarly built to Philadelphia in the franchise since the third game.
1 Desmond As The Ultimate Assassin
Nolan North, who played Desmond Miles in the early Assassin’s Creed games, revealed an idea that Ubisoft pitched to him about the games. He said that Desmond would gain all the abilities of Altair after the events of the first game, and those of Ezio after the second, and so on throughout further games.
The idea was for this to turn Desmond into the ultimate assassin master by the end of the games, enabling him to finally defeat the Templars with the knowledge of ages past within him. As it turned out, Desmond did not survive the events of Assassin’s Creed III and the modern story of the franchise has devolved since.