After several rumours and leaked listings, Ubisoft has finally officially announced remaster compilation, Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection on their official blog. The compilation will release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 15th for North America, and November 17th for Europe.
As previous leaks indicated, Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection will include remastered versions of 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II, 2010’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and 2011’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, which were previously compiled in the last-gen Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Trilogy for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. All three games are said to have, “Improved graphics” in their new PlayStation 4 and Xbox One incarnations, likely meaning a bump to native 1080p HD resolution at the very least, considering that the last-gen Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game capped at 720p. All three games will also include all of their DLC expansions free of charge in Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection, along with animated short film, Assassin’s Creed: Embers, and three-part feature, Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, which will further flesh out fan-favourite protagonist, Ezio Auditore’s backstory.
There is a caveat however, since, similar to other recent remaster collections such as Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and BioShock: The Collection, the multiplayer element has been completely removed from Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection. Assassin’s Creed II was single-player-only to begin with, though this means that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations will no longer offer the ability to play online on current-gen consoles. This may not come as a surprise to fans though, not only because of other recent remaster bundles removing their games’ multiplayer suites, but also because the Assassin’s Creed series seems to be moving away from multiplayer anyway, after the series’ previous installment, last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, ended up being a single-player-only game, despite the series having multiplayer modes since Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s original release on last-gen hardware in 2010.
Ubisoft has more or less avoided hopping on the PlayStation 4/Xbox One remaster train, unlike most other major publishers this generation, before now at least (although they did make several remasters for the last-gen Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii), with EA seeming to be the only other major publisher shunning the remaster movement, and even going as far as to declare current-gen PlayStation 4/Xbox One remasters to be, “Lazy.” It’s possible however that Ubisoft might be making a brief exception to their lack of PlayStation 4/Xbox One remasters with Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection, since there is no new Assassin’s Creed game planned for release this year, a first since 2008, and they may wish to spotlight some of the series’ finest titles in time for the Assassin’s Creed movie that’s hitting theatres on December 21st, and apparently takes place in the same canon as the games that inspired it. In a related note, Ubisoft is also remastering their comedy RPG hit, South Park: The Stick of Truth for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this year, though this remaster is also being given away for free to anyone who pre-orders and buys a first-run copy of the game’s sequel, South Park: The Fractured But Whole.
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