Any franchise that lasts a number of years always winds up with a few unrealized projects, whether from partnerships that fell through or ideas that simply just didn’t come together. Assassin’s Creed has a bunch of them, and details and footage of another one have emerged.
This particular game was called Assassin’s Creed Destiny, and it was part of a collaboration between Ubisoft and Chinese conglomerate Tencent. You might be aware these industry giants are currently working on Assassin’s Creed Jade, a mobile game first announced back in 2022.
They had a couple of other potential releases on the docket as well, and one of them was remarkably similar to Jade. In fact, according to details gleaned by MP1st, Assassin’s Creed Destiny was also set in China, and during the same period, taking place around 206 BCE, nine years after the events of Jade.
It would’ve been a full, triple-A game on modern hardware, marking a grand return to Chinese history after Assassin’s Creed Chronicles way back in 2015. Jade is still fulfilling that promise, but on a different scale. Destiny was being handled by TiMi group, and we now have a smattering of images and clips demonstrating what could’ve been.
This definitely looks like a full-on Assassin’s Creed game. You’ve the player character skulking around a palace during the Qin Empire. Your mission is to prevent an invading army from stealing some form of treasure. Doing so gets bloodier and messier than anyone would like, but you spend the majority of your time in the shadows, taking out soldiers and other enemies.
It looks intriguing – the architectural layouts offer plenty of exploration and the swords and spears make combat feel weighty. There’s a spinning blade, somewhat like an umbrella, that seems like it would’ve been very entertaining.
Destiny was only canceled last year, a casualty of restructuring at TiMi. It’s unknown how far along the game ultimately was, or if any of its ideas live on in Jade. There’s no release window for the mobile game yet, but at least we can now look at what could’ve been.