Believe it or not, Assassin’s Creed does have an end

It's kind of hard to imagine now, but one day we'll live in a world where a new Assassin's Creed won't be released every year. With Ubisoft's plans to annualize the franchise it won't be any time soon, but the publisher has admitted that it knows how it wants to the story to conclude.

"We have an idea of where the end is, what the end is," Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag director Ashraf Ismail told Eurogamer. "But of course Yves [Guillemot, Ubisoft's overall boss] announced we are a yearly title, we ship one game a year. So depending on the setting, depending on what fans want, we've given ourselves room to fit more in this arc. But there is an end."

Ismail explained that the studio has "multiple development teams" with a "brand team that sits on top and is filled with writers and designers concerned with the series' overall arc."

"So there is an overall arc, and each iteration has its place inside this," he said. Ismail went on to say  that annualizing the franchise has allowed the developers to tease future plot points with much greater accuracy and while he didn't flat out say this next part, I imagine they'd be able to use this to their advantage as we get nearer to the end of the series.

"We're now able to seed stuff earlier and earlier in our games," Ismail continued. "So for example in [AC4] we have Edward, who was seeded in AC3. But there's a lot more stuff in our game that is hinting at other possibilities."

For now, and as long as Assassin's Creed keeps selling well, I don't think we'll have to worry about an end. So with that, where would you like to see Ubisoft take the franchise in future installments?