The Assassin's Creed franchise has told stories throughout most of known history, and with a corpus so large, even dedicated fans may wonder just how many games there are in the Assassin's Creed franchise as a whole. With nearly two dozen games under its name, told from the perspectives of over a dozen different assassins and liberators that lived throughout the centuries, it can be a difficult series to keep track of. Ubisoft laid the groundwork in 2007 for a progression of games that has spanned three console generations and could infinitely be expanded upon, potentially setting the stage for an ageless franchise.
While Ubisoft has several well-known brands under its name, Assassin's Creed is the one that is most consistently updated, revisited, and overhauled to push forward not only the franchise itself, but the company as a whole. With the next Assassin's Creed game rumored to be the biggest change in the series and introducing multiplayer, now is an opportune time to look back on the franchise, as Assassin's Creed's long-running story could end shortly and give way to new things. Because the Assassin's Creed franchise is so big, with both mainline and spinoff games that tackle alternate settings and protagonists, many historical settings have already been covered, from Ancient Egypt all the way to the French Revolution. Of course, because history is so vast and full of different cultures and events, along with Assassin's Creed utilizing its own science fiction questline with the race of Isu precursors, the series can go in any direction at any point in time. Desmond Miles carried the franchise through its first five outings, but the scope of the series has grown far beyond its origins.
The main series Assassin's Creed games follow the same plot threads and build off of each other, recently bringing back long dead Assassin's Creed's Desmond Miles in the latest installment, revealing more about the Isu race and the artifacts they left behind. The spinoff games follow smaller questlines that don't really alter the main story in huge ways, but still offer their own unique tales that expand on the lore of Assassin's Creed. Even though the Assassin's Creed franchise is monumental in scope, Ubisoft still has plans to continue forward with the series and expand on of all the games that came before.
All Main Series Assassin's Creed Games
- Assassin's Creed
- Assassin's Creed 2
- Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
- Assassin's Creed: Revelations
- Assassin's Creed 3
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Assassin's Creed: Rogue
- Assassin's Creed: Unity
- Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
- Assassin's Creed: Origins
- Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
Valhalla's recent canon-expanding Dawn of Ragnarok DLC, further cementing its place in the pop culture zeitgeist. The franchise has seen games that explore piracy on the high seas, historical London, and the broken kingdoms of England in the 9th century.
Just where Assassin's Creed will go in the future is less certain. The success of the game's more recent entries, combined with a huge cast of memorable stories and characters, leave more than a few avenues for future games to follow, but Ubisoft has also begun experimenting with different ways of delivering content to s, including making that content a part of a live-service model with Assassin's Creed Infinity, though firm details on the project remain scant. Some fear that Assassin's Creed Infinity's live-service model could damage the franchise, but for a series as prolific as Assassin's Creed has proved to be, such a change could prove a worthwhile shakeup in the end.
All Assassin's Creed Spinoff Titles
- Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles
- Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
- Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery
- Assassin's Creed 2: Multiplayer
- Assassin's Creed 2: Multiplayer Rearmed
- Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation
- Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China
- Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India
- Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia
- The Tower Assassin's Creed
- Assassin's Creed: Rebellion
- Assassin's Creed: Freerunners
- Assassin's Creed: Pirates
- Assassin's Creed: Identity
- Assassin's Creed Unity: Arno's Chronicles
- Assassin's Creed: Memories
- Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy
Assassin's Creed spinoff games began almost as early as the series itself, with Altair's Chronicles debuting the year after the first game, in 2008. With nearly 20 non-mainline games released in the interim, it can ultimately be difficult for series completionists to keep up, and the range of the spinoffs has varied quite widely in form and function. From browser-based games like Project Legacy, which appeared on Facebook, to a trading card game called Assassin's Creed: Memories, and a host of side-scrolling action games, the history of Assassin's Creed spinoffs worth playing is not an inconsiderable one. Many of these are no longer readily available, as any number have been shut down (such as Project Legacy and Memories), made unavailable on the services where they used to appear (such as the iOS-exclusive Assassin's Creed: Pirates), and others have simply become harder to find in the wild.
Many of these Assassin's Creed spinoffs are still around, however, such as 2019's Assassin's Creed-branded version of The Tower, which can be ed on iOS devices, the gatcha Assassin's Creed: Rebellion, and the browser-based Assassin's Creed: Freerunners, still available to play via Ubisoft's dedicated site. Less arcade-driven entries are those in the Assassin's Creed Chronicles trilogy, side-scrolling action titles that traveled to China, India, and Russia and delivered tangential storylines of interest to series lore buffs, and games like Bloodlines, which despite being a spinoff title, acted as a direct sequel to the events of the very first Assassin's Creed.
Assassin's Creed has a huge library of titles at this point, and those who dare to try to play them all will have their work cut out for them. Whatever the future of the franchise may end up looking like once Infinity becomes a reality, Valhalla and other recent entries continue to offer more than their share of content to gamers hungry for more. But for the true completionist, knowing how many Assassin's Creed games there are is merely an invitation to dive more deeply into the wider history of the franchise.
