Ubisoft is running out of tricks. The Assassin's Creed franchise, once a cultural juggernaut, now finds itself chasing its own tail: remaking beloved classics like Black Flag instead of building new ones that matter. It's the kind of move that screams creative exhaustion.
The studio's recent slate tells the story. Odyssey divided fans. Valhalla disappointed them. Mirage felt thin. And Shadows arrived already burdened by development chaos. Even the upcoming Hexe, set during medieval witch trials, carries troubling reports of a difficult production. At some point, nostalgia-fueled remasters hit a ceiling. Ubisoft will eventually need a genuinely new game that captures the magic of the Ezio era and beyond.
The answer might already be in development elsewhere. Netflix announced an Assassin's Creed television series set in ancient Rome during the reign of Emperor Nero in 64 AD, the year of the Great Fire. The show stars Sandra Guldberg-Kamp and Youssef Kerkour, with showrunners whose résumés include work on Westworld and the Halo series. The show itself may not land, but the setting is pure gold for a game.
Italy has been Assassin's Creed territory since the beginning. The Renaissance, colonial America, the French Revolution, feudal Japan: the franchise has roamed continents. Yet somehow Rome itself, the historical source code for the Italian Renaissance settings players have already explored, remains untouched. Origins gave players Julius Caesar as a supporting figure and a portal to the Order of the Ancients' founding mythology. A game set under Nero, Caesar's great-great-grandson, would pick up that thread and run it forward across an empire in collapse.
The technical opportunity is equally compelling. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's Rome was celebrated as one of gaming's finest open worlds in 2010. Yet it pales against the architectural richness and density of Unity's Paris, which even that game's harshest critics acknowledged as nearly flawless in execution. Modern hardware and design lessons could finally do ancient Rome justice.
Building Nero's Rome presents a fascinating historical puzzle. The Plastico di Roma Antica, a renowned scale model of the city as it stood under Constantine I four centuries later, could serve as a reference. Then work backward. Many landmarks players might expect, like the Colosseum and Trajan's Column, hadn't been built yet. In their place: Nero's megalomaniacal projects, most lost to history. The Colossus, a 120-foot statue in his own image modeled on the Colossus of Rhodes, would make an iconic viewpoint. His Golden Palace, the Domus Aurea, supposedly built on land cleared by the Great Fire, could anchor a section of the map and become visual storytelling.
The narrative potential cuts deeper. Historical sources disagree on whether the Great Fire was accidental or Nero's deliberate act to make room for his palace. Nero blamed Christians and crucified them. In Assassin's Creed lore, the Hidden Ones and Order of the Ancients were the ancient names for the Assassin-Templar conflict. Based on Origins' timeline, the Order backed Caesar and Augustus. The Hidden Ones sided with republicans and those opposing absolute power. A game could pit these factions against Nero's regime, but with a twist.
Popular memory paints Nero as a bloodthirsty maniac. Historical scholarship suggests otherwise. He lowered taxes on the poor, banned capital punishment, and allowed enslaved people to sue abusive masters. He didn't play fiddle while Rome burned because the fiddle didn't exist yet, and he was out of the city when the fire started, rushing back to organize relief. The famous image is propaganda and slander layered over centuries.
A game set in Nero's reign could subvert everything players think they know. Show a ruler who began as troubled but well-intentioned, then gradually descend into paranoia and tyranny after assassination plots emerged following the fire. Force the player's character to build a relationship with Nero, to see his justifications and reforms, then watch helplessly as he murders his own mother, Agrippina the Younger, and becomes the monster history remembers. That's moral complexity the recent entries abandoned.
The best Assassin's Creed games aren't the most polished or feature-complete. They're the ones that force players to question the righteousness of their faction's cause. Connor in AC3 debates his father Haytham and breaks with George Washington. Edward Kenway in Black Flag charts his own path, avoiding both Assassins and Templars entirely. A Nero-era game could deliver that same friction. Support the emperor, and you'll watch the empire descend into civil war and another dynasty's rise. Oppose him, hoping to restore the Republic, and you'll learn the Republic is dead beyond resurrection. Neither path wins cleanly.
That's the story Assassin's Creed needs: one that surprises, twists, and forces characters to reckon with the cost of their convictions. Not a remake with better textures. Not another entry with RPG mechanics bolted onto historical tourism. A genuinely new game that takes players through history and through the interior life of someone grappling with impossible choices.
Black Flag already proved Ubisoft could do this. Prettier graphics and streamlined missions won't make that game any more meaningful than it was on PS3. Ancient Rome, by contrast, offers untouched narrative and visual terrain. Ubisoft should set down the remake schedule and sail toward Nero's burning city.
Author Emily Chen: "The franchise is stuck in amber, and nothing short of a genuinely bold historical setting and a story willing to challenge its own mythology will unfreeze it."
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