Since Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, four consecutive Assassin's Creed games have featured various competitive multiplayer modes. That will change with the upcoming Assassin's Creed Unity as Ubisoft is looking to create a more cohesive "shared experience" among friends who play the game. Basically, Ubisoft is ditching competitive multiplayer in favor of cooperative multiplayer, and here's why.
"We made choices on the game early on that we're going for the shared experience," Assassin’s Creed Unity’s level designer Bruno St-André explained to GamingBolt. "This meant that we developed core mechanics more on cooperation instead of confrontation.
"So we put a-lot of effort into redefining the fights so that multiple players can actually engage in them and have a better strategy against the AI, which reacts differently each time," he continued. "Same thing for navigation and same thing for the stealth. All of our effort and our decisions were based on this topic. We really wanted to be focused on that.
"It’s been six years since I am on the brand. I’ve worked on Assassin’s Creed 2, Brotherhood, Revelation, Liberation and then Unity. It’s been asked nearly every year by the fans to be able to play co-op and finally were able to deliver it with next-gen consoles. That was really our focus and we’re heading strong in that direction."
Earlier in the interview St-André assured gamers that it's "the same experience as Assassin's Creed before, but now you can share it. You can play with your friends in missions, exploring, collecting, all of this."
Of course, as we learned at the Assassin's Creed Unity not all of the game's missions are playable with co-op.