Assassin's Creed II slays DS Nov. 17, not on PC 'til '10

About this time last month, the Entertainment Software Rating Board slipped word of a Nintendo DS installment in Ubisoft's highly anticipated stealth action game Assassin's Creed II. Today, Ubisoft made the game official, saying Assassin's Creed II: Discovery for the DS and DSi would join the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions of the game on store shelves November 17. An unrelated PSP edition of the game, titled Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines, will arrive on the same day.

Though the console and DS editions of Assassin's Creed II will share a protagonist, Nintendo's installment tells a spin-off story, in which Ezio travels to Spain to rescue a fraternal brother held by the Spanish Inquisition. Whereas the tepidly received original Assassin's Creed DS was created by Gameloft, a company Ubisoft divested itself of in 2007, Assassin's Creed II: Discovery is in development at Griptonite Games, a Foundation 9 studio.

Ezio's side-scrolling adventure will see him squaring off against Templars, as well as platforming through various Spanish locales. DSi owners will have the added perk of being able to plaster photographs of themselves on "Wanted!" posters found throughout the game.

In related Assassin's Creed II news, Ubisoft has announced through its Twitter feed that the PC edition will not be joining its console brethren on November 17. Instead, the publisher has opted to delay the PC edition to the first quarter of 2010, in order to allow for "a bit more time for the dev team to deliver the best quality game to you."

Notably, the original Assassin's Creed on the PC, which saw release nearly five months after the console editions, sparked a lawsuit in 2008. Ubisoft's claim stemmed from allegations that an employee at the company charged with reproducing Assassin's Creed's disc had leaked the game online a full six weeks before it was to be released at retail. Ubisoft claimed that the leaked edition of the game was downloaded more than 700,000 times, costing the publisher millions of dollars.